25th IIBA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
May 22 - 26 May, 2019
Praia Do Porto Novo - Vimeiro, Maceira - Portugal
The Bioenergetic View of Love,
Healing, Connection, Authenticity
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Welcome to the IIBA 25th Conference

Don't miss this event - Join us in Portugal to work and enjoy all together!

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Therapeutic work with clients - body to body - can resonate in deep and positive ways we don’t always recognise.

What we do recognise however, is that many of us go to IIBA conferences to renew loving connections with our bioenergetic colleagues.
We take part in the search for authentic insights and we learn new therapeutic interventions that help us heal old wounds.

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How is it that Bioenergetic Analysis can provide the riches revealed by the words love, authenticity, connection and healing?

Alexander Lowen defined and wrote about these riches in his many books.
Many other colleagues developed his work by integrating it with the new knowledge from affective neuroscience and attachment theory.
Today, innovative theories from social psychology add to the picture.

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Our challenge to-day is to bring this theory into our practice by deepening our understanding of the ‘two person’ relational psychotherapy that is to-day’s Bioenergetic Analysis.

We need to better understand that what takes place, out of consciousness and at the energetic and relational level, can form the most potent source of a client’s change.
After all, when a mother resonates body to body with her baby’s emotions, the baby’s brain begins its long developmental journey towards the formation of an authentic and social sense of self. The powerful body-to-body connection of sexuality sustains this formation from young adulthood to old age.

Featured Conference Events

May 23 - Keynotes

Plenary Session Chair: Francisco GARCIA ESTEBAN

The Other as a Potential Enemy

Speaker: Luigi ZOJA

Position: Ph.D. - Psychoanalyst and writer
Country: Italy

Even the most normal thought is constantly infiltrated by paranoia. According to the statistics, as a form of mental disorder it is relatively insignificant. Whereas other forms of mental pathology exclude the individual from society, paranoia can assist in the gaining of great power, by providing the public with a scapegoat. The classic twentieth-century examples are Hitler and Stalin. Ever since the mass media have existed, they have had the great responsibility of combating this distortion, which is a cause of the worst evils, or of going along with it. In the digital world, theoretically the chances of achieving complete, objective information have increased enormously: in practice, however, the main thing that has increased has been confusion in the average citizen. It seems that knowing the other personally remains the best defence against indiscriminate hatred.

Book List

The Face and Body of the Other

Speaker: Garry COCKBURN

Position: IIBA CBT - BSW (Hons), MNZAP (APC)
Country: New Zealand

When an infant sees herself in the eyes of her loving mother, she knows that the “I” inside herself, is reflected in a “me” out there in the world. It is safe “to go on being”, as Winnicott would say. This is the real beginning of human consciousness and the start of an unfolding mystery of transcendent encounters with experience. Love, mythology, religion, art, poetry, and psychotherapy at its best, help to fully disclose this. The opposite is emptiness or hatred of self, a narcissistic absorption in the self, and fear and paranoia about the other.
Alexander Lowen knew this in his body, as his first experience was of eyes in the face and body of his terrifying mother. He dedicated his life to creating a form of somatic psychotherapy that would restore the “deepest feeling of the heart” and transcend “the fetters of unconscious fears”. We have inherited his vision and the challenge to recognize ourselves, our me, even in the face and body of those who hate or are self-absorbed. This is still the major challenge of our times.

May 24 - Keynotes

Plenary Session Chair: Maryse DOESS

Companionship and Connection: Reparing the Cycle of Life for a Thriving World

Speaker: Darcia NARVAEZ

Position: PhD in Educational Psychology
Country: USA

Humans are born highly immature with much to develop neurobiologically after birth. To accommodate a needy offspring, humans evolved a nest that matches up with the maturational schedule of the child, providing the buffering needed to optimize development. Each human self-organizes around experience, especially in early life when neurobiological systems are establishing their parameters and thresholds. However, industrialized nations have degraded the nest, so much so that illbeing is spreading around the world. Baselines have shifted for child raising, what is considered normal child and adult behaviour promoting cultures that perpetuate suboptimal development. I discuss what humans need to flourish and how to repair damaged selves and communities.

Book List

Connecting Authentically with Ourselves and Others - Expressing the Emotional Truth

Speaker: Vita HEINRICH-CLAUER

Position: IIBA Faculty
Country: Germany

In times where there is more body-styling and body-shaping than sensing and feeling the body – or just being our body - we are challenged to encounter the narcissistic style of contact. In Bioenergetic Analysis we are offering energetic work within a relational frame that is based on somatic resonance and analytic understanding. Working with the voice and sounds can give access to what we call “true body-self”. The resonant voice reflects, even more than the speaking voice, something about our current internal state and our current mood, as well as about deeper levels of our selves. There is an idiosyncrasy of bioenergetic work with the voice in contrast to therapeutic approaches that work solely with the body. On the way to authenticity we are definitely asked to deal with our negative introjects, energizing them, giving them a motoric and vocal expression.

May 25 - Keynotes

Plenary Session Chair: Miriam BERGAMINI MANTAU

Life force: Source of Self-Regulation, Love and Connection

Speaker: Guy TONELLA

Position: IIBA Faculty
Country: France

Lowen had faith in the "life force", in its intelligence, and in the boundless potential of the human organism, and he set out some of the resources essential to its regulation and the regulation of one’s self.

Working with the "life force" is at the core of the bioenergetic therapeutic process since vitality is blocked by characterological defenses, disorganized by PTSD, and exhausted by the loss of love and attachment. This blocking disturbs memories enshrined in the depth of our cells and it disturbs our plunging into connection with nature and the universe.

We bioenergetic therapists are “ferrymen” between the atom and the spirit, “ferrymen” between nature and culture, “ferrymen” between individual homeostasis and ecological homeostasis, “ferrymen” between the grounding in the earth and the oceanic feelings of the soul.

If our own bioenergetic therapy has been able to germinate these different levels of consciousness with/in us, then we will pass them on to our patients. We will transmit bonds of attachment that unite us both to humanity and to nature: the nature of these links is sensori-emotional and they are intrinsically intelligent and deeply regulating.

Panel Discussion
Panelists: Pye Bowden , Patrizia Moselli , Odila Weigand
Debate with participants

Travel Information

Venue

Hotel Golf Mar***
Praia Do Porto Novo
Vimeiro, 2560-100 Maceira
Portugal

Why stay here?
• Amazing views
• Great pool area
• Excellent quality of food
• Free WiFi
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Travel

• Airport: Lisbon (LIS)
• The hotel is located in the north of Lisbon (1h drive).
• For transportation or any information about the climate or other useful details (time, currency, ID document, etc) ...
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Getting Around

Besides the beaches of Santa Cruz and Porto Novo, with all activities typical of a holiday resort, there are also many other touristic spots to visit (natural water spas, historical monuments).
And beautiful Lisbon is not that far.
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Conference Fees & Registrations

€ 387

IIBA Member

337€ - Early-Bird Fees

387€ - Regular Fees

482€ - Late Fees

€ 257

IIBA Trainees

207€ - Early-Bird Fees

257€ - Regular Fees

357€ - Late Fees

Go

€ 507

Non-Members

442€ - Early-Bird Fees

507€ - Regular Fees

582€ - Late Fees

Go

INFO About Fees & Registration

Click on ticket for details

Organisation

Organisation Committee

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Pedro Ribeiro Da Silva  @

Ana Luísa Correia Botas  @

António Jorge De Azevedo Ramos  @

Paola Bacigalupo*  @

*Paola Bacigalupo has been the liaison between the Board of Trustees and the Scientific Committee.

Scientific Committee

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Maria Rosaria Filoni   @

Miriam Bergamini Mantau   @

Michael Brennan   @

Garry Cockburn   @

Danita Hall   @

Margit Koemeda-Lutz   @

Training Days

Louise Fréchette   @

Danita Hall   @

Margit Koemeda-Lutz   @

Odila Weigand   @

IIBA Awards

Miriam Bergamini Mantau  @

The 25th IIBA Conference is proudly sponsored by

Official Carrier

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Memories from past Conferences
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25th IIBA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The Bioenergetic View of Love,
Healing, Connection, Authenticity