Executive Function: Above & Beyond the Frontal Cortex – Lorelei Woerner- Eisner & George McCloskey

Sought after occupational therapist and international lecturer, Lorelei Woerner-Eisner OTR/L, C-IAYT, RYT500 shares her 20 plus years of experience, continuing education, and therapeutic techniques, as well as her integrative perspective on wellness. This convenient online course brings fresh integrative research-based and clinically proven techniques to enhance initiation, engagement, attending behavior and memory, as well as processing and self-monitoring.

Explore integrative tools you can use with challenges such as: the kid who scores well on tests but performs poorly in school, who is distracted and impulsive, who lacks motivation or is hindered by anxiety.

• Expand your principles of yoga, mindfulness, breath and the gut in developing: flexible thinking, memory, planning, organization, impulse control, emotional regulation, attending behavior, task initiation and habit building
• Strategies to cultivate motivation, efficacy, carry over and decrease fear, anxiety, and resistance
• Modify sensory input to increase alertness or facilitate calming

Lorelei walks you step-by-step through Executive Function beginning with the foundational elements of brain function, effects of the gut and sensory input, as well as stress and fear. Then she will show you how to apply that into integrative treatments while learning and experiencing specific strategies that will make a real difference in children’s lives.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to explore integrative and cutting-edge techniques that you can use the very next day!

Enhancing Executive Function:

Going Beyond the Prefrontal Cortex

Broaden your view of executive function and increase your effectiveness as a therapist.

Principles of Executive Function Levels of the Whole Person

• Physical – movement, posture and anatomy
• Breath and physiological systems
• Intellect – cognition, self-expression and sensory
• Personality – preferences, values and behaviors
• Emotional tone and the subjective
• Brain development & autonomic nervous system (ANS)
• Pruning and the use it or lose it principle
• Vagus nerve’s relation to physical and emotional effects

Effects of Stress on EF

• Effect on neural networks
• Cortisol and fight/flight effect on the brain
• Differences between fear and anxiety
• Getting to the basis of anger and frustration

The Gut Brain

• Enteric nervous system: the “second brain”
• Neurotransmitters in the gut that affect mood
• ADHD-gut connection
• Enhance mood and memory through nutrition

Sensory Processing

• 3 developmental levels of regulation
• Swings effect on the Reticular Activating System
• Adjustments in sensory input to create balance
• Calm the sympathetic nervous system thru sensory input

Strategies to Develop Healthy Habits

• Using your mind to change your brain
• Power of thought and visualization
• Routines and steps to build habits
• Enhancing neurogenesis and neuroplasticity

Yoga, Mindfulness and Meditation Principles

• Mind-body-breath connection
• Yoga poses for self-regulation
• Interoception to build deeper self-awareness
• Power of the pause

Breath and Regulation Techniques

• Using breath to affect arousal levels
• Increasing and decreasing heart rate and blood pressure
• Supports movement and posture
• Techniques for focus, delayed gratification and processing in the pause

Sensory Processing Strategies

• Using the sensory systems to promote self-regulation and calm the sympathetic nervous system
• Looking at rhythmicity and touch as factors in enhancing EF

Attention-Memory Connection

• Learning requirements for memory
• Emotion-motivation connection
• Intrinsic motivation to enhance processing
• The driving force of optimism and hope
• How multi-tasking is counter-productive
• Strategies that support focus and recall

Putting the pause on Impulsivity

• Marshmallows: the importance of learning to wait
• Anti-rush therapy to promote waiting
• Do-overs to teach healthy alternatives

Self-Generation and Self-Determination

• Promote delayed gratification, self-monitoring, task initiation, emotional control
• Supporting persistence to stick with dull and challenging activities
• Allowing time for processing, planning and self-correction

Strategies for Healthy Social Connections:

• Using the whole self as a therapeutic tool: emotion, modeling and positioning
• The power of relationship in therapeutic effectiveness
• Cuing and facilitation to promote participation, engagement and increased independence
• Teaching tolerance and awareness

Treatment Strategies for Challenging Emotions

• Decreasing stress to facilitate EF
• Understanding fear, as the basis for many challenging emotions
• Using the teachable-moment “failures”

Improving Executive Functions: Strategies to Rewire the Brain and Change Behavior

Featuring George McCloskey, PhD, International Expert and Best-Selling Author of Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties and Essentials of Executive Functions Assessment

• Proven Interventions for Children, Adolescents and Adults
• Profile your client’s EF strengths and weaknesses to target specific interventions
• Promote EF development – strategies for directing, cueing, prompting
• Transition strategies from being externally prompted to internally regulated
• Tailor interventions that can be used individually or with large groups/classrooms
• Teach your clients to be more independent

Drawing on Dr. McCloskey’s clinical expertise and experience, you will develop the skills you need to better assess, grow and improve executive functioning in your clients. With captivating descriptive examples, engaging case illustrations, and proven strategies you can immediately implement, you can help your client change their brain and behavior!

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