Conference Agenda

This experiential workshop introduces an Indigenous Narrative Therapy approach to trauma that integrates concepts of the embodied mind with dialogical self‑therapy. Grounded in Indigenous relational worldviews, Lewis Mehl‑Madrona and Barbara Mainguy will present trauma not as an individual, intrapsychic defect, but as disruption in networks of story, body, land, and community. Participants will learn how stories “live” in the body—through posture, movement, voice, and symptom—and how changing stories requires working with these embodied expressions, not language alone. The workshop will emphasize how to do this work in practice. Through live demonstration with volunteers, the presenters will show step‑by‑step methods for eliciting problem‑saturated stories, tracking somatic cues, and inviting alternative narratives that are culturally grounded and community‑connected. Participants will see how dramatic methods, drawing, and positional work can externalize inner voices and characters, locating them as I‑positions in a dialogical self rather than fixed traits or diagnoses. Teaching segments will alternate with guided practice in small groups. Clinicians will experiment with specific interviewing sequences, embodied awareness exercises, and simple forms of enactment (such as positioning chairs or using objects to represent voices, ancestors, or community roles). Particular attention will be given to working safely with traumatic material: pacing, titration, the use of ceremony and ritual elements, and the importance of collective witnessing. Throughout, Mehl‑Madrona and Mainguy will highlight points of convergence between Indigenous self‑theory and dialogical self‑therapy, offering a language practitioners can use in mainstream settings without losing Indigenous philosophical integrity. By the end of the workshop, participants should be able to: describe the embodied and relational nature of narrative in trauma; map stories as interacting I‑positions; and apply a basic sequence of Indigenous Narrative Therapy and dialogical self‑therapy techniques in their own clinical or community practice.