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Timothy Gordon

MSW, RSW

BIO

Timothy Gordon

MSW, RSW

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www.TheZenSocialWorker.ca

 

Timothy Gordon is an award winning author, social worker and peer-reviewed ACT trainer. He specializes in treating attachment and trauma related disorders.

Tim is also a yoga teacher who integrates movement and yoga practices into his work.

He has worked in research on grant funded projects and in applied settings, including Canada's Parliament.

Currently Tim divides his time between an independent practice where he carries a full time caseload and teaching.

Tim is passionate about empowering people in various settings to integrate acceptance and mindfulness into their work.

Current State of the Evidence for Yoga as a Psychosocial-Mental Health Treatment


SUNDAY / 8:00 - 10:00

 

Yoga can alleviate suffering across many problem areas, especially mental health. Discover how new evidence supporting processes in yoga can be engaging and make your work more effective and personally meaningful for working with mental health using asana, pranayama, meditation, and chanting. Recent research has reinterpreted traditional yogic practices as training specific processes that show increases in engagement with a person's values—what matters to them most (Donald, Atkins, Parker, Christie, & Ryan, 2016). With this conceptualization, Tim will show you how you are able to integrate evidence-informed practices into your work, training yoga for working with mental health populations effectively.

At the conclusion of this 1.45-2hour workshop participants will be able to:
1) Identify typical research designs in yoga and explain best practices.
2) Discuss empirically supported treatments using yoga and the common processes upon which yoga can be applied as an adjunct or standalone treatment.

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Yoga Theory and Evidence in Practice


SUNDAY / 10:20 - 12:20

 

Are you looking to enhance your skills or learn new ways to introduce skills into your yoga teaching or therapy practice? This is the breakthrough masterclass for you.
While yoga alone has demonstrated improvements in mental health for anxiety and depressive symptoms and increasing well-being (Pascoe & Bauer, 2015), from a psychotherapeutic perspective, using yoga and other movement practices to train present moment awareness enhances the natural benefits of yoga but applies them intentionally for clinical benefit. The yoga postures that are trained and demonstrate in this class are those that are found effective and are presented in a way that increases present moment awareness process engagement—mindful movement—to better serve even clients otherwise resistant to mindfulness practices, those looking for novel ways to expand their practice, or clients who struggle to sit still or notice their experience. Along with yoga, more formal mindfulness training and increases in self-compassion all serve to foster connection with the present moment and ultimately long-term improvements in living a meaningful life.
In this masterclass, you will be given the tools to not only integrate varied present moment awareness practices into your sessions, but also conceptually understand them so that you can incorporate these new skills into the work you’re already doing in a way that feels fluid and natural.

At the conclusion of this 1.45-2hour workshop participants will be able to:
1) Explain yoga asana, pranayama, meditation, and chanting as the context for discrimination training, discrete trials, and multiple exemplar training.
2) Demonstrate the central discrimination tasks of (1) improved functioning and (2) changing context with a relevant yoga asana, pranayama, meditation, and chanting practice.

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