What is Havening Therapy & How Does it Work?
Havening therapy, or the Havening technique, is regarded as a psychosensory treatment. Like EMDR, it refers to the notion that trauma and life’s stressful events are stored in the brain and activated by conscious or inadvertent recall. Once this recall occurs , symptoms are generated. This activation also makes the pathway that generates these feelings subject to disruption.
The havening technique is designed to disrupt this pathway through a process called synaptic depotentiation. The end result is a complete diminution in terms of the emotional charge related to that disturbing memory. Unlike Thought Field Therapy which had been a huge staple of my practice, I have found havening to achieve permanence in terms of healing. I have yet to have worked with a client who has not given me positive feedback about this revolutionary and innovative treatment.
Havening was developed by Dr. Ron Ruden following his ongoing observations of babies in distress who were able to effectively calm down as a result of their mother’s applying warm havening touches. He later learned that this served to promote the release of delta waves. When he combined this with distraction techniques via imagery, other chemical reactions ensued which served to “de-ice” the disturbing material that had previously become frozen in the amygdala. This intervention has been able to provide my clients immediate relief, sometimes in less than 15 minutes!
Self Emotional Regulation Through Havening
Another wonderful aspect of Havening pertains to its ease in terms of learning to use it. As a result many of my clients actively utilize it on their own thereby deriving a powerful self emotional regulation strategy. This allows them to better manage their emotional state as well as decrease the need of treatment time.
At this juncture it is widely used in the United Kingdom and is also growing quickly in its use in the United States. It is now also beginning to approach recognition as an evidence based treatment as some new research is recognizing its quick healing abilities.