Recordings

*This page is under construction
 

With the ACBS Virtual Summit registration, you’ll get access to:

• all Virtual Summit: ACT and the Body sessions from 8 October (live and recorded)
• plus all pre-recorded IGNITE submissions
• plus curated recordings from the 2026 ACBS World Conference (including workshops, plenaries, panels, etc.)

—available to watch anytime 10 September - 10 November 2026.

Scroll down to explore the World Conference recordings that are included.

(Please note: continuing education credit is not available for any recorded viewing.)
 

2026 Featured World Conference Speakers:

Joanna J. Arch, Ph.D.	Peter Fonagy,  Ph.D.	Manuela O'Connell, Lic.	Mark van Ommeren, Ph.D.	Kelly Wilson, Ph.D.

The Place of Poetics in Contextual Behavioral Science - K. Wilson (Plenary)

In this plenary, I will explore the role of poetics within contextual behavioral science, with particular attention to how it can shape the doing and teaching of psychotherapy. By poetics, I do not mean ornament or metaphor alone, but a disciplined sensitivity to the tone, form, rhythms, textures, and unfolding of lived experience.

Human motivation is often opaque and rife with contradiction. We are shaped over time by the questions we encounter—some spoken plainly, others embedded in the quiet demands of family, work, love, and culture. Much of what we call identity emerges in response to those pressures. Although we are aware of some aspects of this shaping process, a great deal of learning and motivation occurs outside the bright, dumb light of awareness.

A poetic stance does not rush to explanation or correction. Instead, it slows, listens, and follows the living structure of experience as it reveals itself in relationship. In that shared light—between therapist and client, teacher and student, human and human—complexity is not reduced but honored. When we are willing to remain present to uncertainty, without collapsing into  the certainty of pedagogy or technique, paths appear that are dignified, meaningful, and worth the pain they require. Poetics, in this sense, names the creative and ethical discipline of staying with what is alive long enough for transformation to arrive.

I am not calling for a rejection of science, but for a right-sizing of a particular scientific posture, and for recognition that this sensibility runs deeply through the intellectual history of contextual behavioral science.

The Art of ACT - Jo. Forsyth, Ja. Forsyth (Workshop)

ACT is often taught as six core processes, but masterful practice requires more than “doing the hexaflex.” In this intermediate-to-advanced workshop, we move beyond fidelity to protocol toward the art of process work grounded in relational awareness.

When might defusion be contraindicated? How do we detect pseudo-acceptance or values used in the service of avoidance and control? How can we determine which process is operating in the moment, while recognizing when a well-intended intervention has missed its mark? Can we integrate interventions from other traditions in an ACT-consistent way and, if so, how?

Through live demonstrations and applied case examples, we will teach participants how to assess and use language as intervention, map processes in real time, and sequence interventions based on function rather than form. Special attention will be given to relational processes, including therapist–client dynamics, moment-to-moment functional responding, and the client’s relationship with self, their pain, and history.

Participants will leave with greater clarity about how to do ACT artfully while embodying their own unique voice and clinical style.

Mastering Creative Hopelessness: From Concept to Compassionate Clinical Skill - Kjelgaard, Walser (Workshop)

Creative Hopelessness is one of the most powerful processes in ACT. While many clinicians understand the concept, staying with the lived experience of Creative Hopelessness in the therapy room can be surprisingly difficult. When clients reach the limits of familiar problem-solving, urgency often emerges, and therapists may feel pulled to reassure, direct, or “help” in ways that subtly restore control rather than allow genuine contact with unworkability. In this experiential workshop, participants are invited to deepen their capacity to engage Creative Hopelessness as a compassionate, embodied clinical skill rather than a conceptual intervention. We'll explore why this process is so challenging for both clients and therapists, and how well-intended qualities such as competence, responsiveness, and care can inadvertently interfere when discomfort with not knowing takes the lead. Through demonstrations and experiential exercises, participants will practice noticing and staying with the urge to fix, while learning to recognize the subtle shifts that reflect contact with the limits of control and the opening that follows. The emphasis is on presence, timing, and trust in the process itself.

Trauma, the Therapeutic Relationship, and the Bridge between Psychoanalytic and Contextual Behavioral Traditions - S. Hayes, Walser, Fonagy, Turrell (Panel)

Psychoanalytic and contextual behavioral perspectives have long shared the view that human psychological actions need to be viewed functionally rather than by mere appearance. Despite that, it is a historical fact that these two traditions have often viewed each other as being an opposition. That era seems to be passing as psychotherapy work focuses more deeply on processes of change, considered in a way that doesn't ride roughshod over the details of our clients' lives. This panel will explore how a bridge might best be constructed between these traditions, focusing on trauma and the therapeutic alliance as an example. Ideas central to each tradition will be used as process lenses for seeing where the two traditions might connect with each other. From the psychoanalytic side there will be a focus on mentalization – the capacity to understand self and others in terms of intentions, feelings, and beliefs – and how it impacts flexibility and rigidity in the aftermath of trauma. CBS ideas of relational learning, psychological flexibility, and perspective taking will be explored. As with all genuine conversations, the intent is to bring a posture of openness and a willingness to see each other's viewpoint serves as a testbed for the idea that the overlapping but distinct ideas of psychoanalytic and contextual behavioral thought might be mutually beneficial when seriously and mutually considered.

Epistemic trust and trauma: Pernicious impact and therapeutic solutions, a mentalization based treatment approach - Fonagy (Plenary)

Trauma is often understood in terms of overwhelming affect, disrupted attachment, or traumatic memory. Increasingly, however, it can also be understood as an epistemic injury: a disruption in the capacity to learn from other people. Experiences of abuse, neglect, humiliation, coercion, or chronic misattunement may undermine not only trust in specific individuals but confidence in communication itself, leaving people uncertain about whether information from others is relevant, reliable, or safe to use.

From this perspective, many of the difficulties associated with trauma can be understood as consequences of disturbances in epistemic trust. Individuals may become hypervigilant and dismiss potentially helpful information, or become excessively credulous and vulnerable to exploitation. In either case, opportunities for adaptive social learning are compromised.

This presentation will explore the relationship between trauma, mentalizing, attachment, self-other differentiation, and epistemic trust within a contemporary Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) framework. Drawing on developmental research, social cognition, psychotherapy process research, and clinical experience, it will consider how trauma disrupts the capacity to benefit from interpersonal communication and how psychotherapy may help restore this capacity.

The presentation will focus on practical therapeutic implications, describing how therapists can foster epistemic trust through curiosity, collaboration, validation, transparency, and the repair of misunderstandings. Rather than viewing psychotherapy primarily as the transmission of insight, the talk will suggest that one of its most important functions is to restore a person's capacity to learn from others and to use new social experiences in the service of recovery and growth.

Progressing Research on Process-Based Therapy: Discussing Challenges and Lessons Learned - Levin, S. Hayes, Gloster, McCracken, Arch (Panel)

Process-based therapy (PBT) is a pivotal development in the application of CBS to psychological interventions. PBT provides a common framework to bring together researchers and practitioners across therapeutic approaches, shifting from treatment packages to processes, and guiding radical shifts to how treatments are developed and studied. This work is in an early phase with key challenges to address as PBT research progresses. For example, assessment methods are needed to guide personalization of treatment for each individual based on relevant processes that are precise, clinically useful, and practical. PBT highlights inherent limitations of purely normative approaches based on aggregates, requiring methodological advances to guide prediction and influence of behavior idiographically in ways that can be organized into broader insights. Scientific strategy is needed to progressively build knowledge enabling treatment personalization and to implement PBT in ways that navigate systems-level challenges and unmet needs for mental health care. This panel will explore challenges to be addressed for progressing PBT research, discussing lessons learned from PBT research and innovative ideas for next steps to move PBT research forward.

Punishment as Process in Clinical Work: A Functional Contextual Approach in ACT - O'Connell, Walser (Workshop)

Within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), punishment is a foundational behavioral process often misunderstood, under-discussed, or framed in moral rather than functional terms. From a functional contextual perspective, punishment refers to contingencies that reduce the future probability of behavior, identified through their effects over time, not inferred from momentary aversiveness or therapist intent alone. Punishment, when used deliberately and transparently, can function as a skillful clinical intervention. This workshop examines punishment as an intentional, ethically grounded process within ACT practice. Emphasis is placed on developing conceptual clarity and functional sensitivity to punitive contingencies introduced to reduce behaviors that constrain psychological flexibility while supporting values-consistent responding and relational safety. Through brief didactic segments and role-play demonstration, participants will observe how subtle therapist behaviors (e.g., shifts in attention, pacing, tone) can be applied with care and monitored across time. Attention is given to differentiating intentional punishment from coercive control and to tracking behavioral effects without over-attributing function in the moment. The workshop is designed for clinicians seeking greater behavioral precision in engaging punishment responsibly within clinical work.

From Processes to Precision: Live Case Conceptualization Using Process-Based Therapy and Mindgrapher Diagnostics - Jansen, S. Hayes (Workshop)

Process-Based Therapy (PBT) is evolving the ACT tradition toward highly individualized, dynamic, and contextualized intervention planning. Yet many clinicians still struggle to integrate process knowledge with real-time case conceptualization and personalized intervention design. This workshop—co-led by Steven C. Hayes and Gijs Jansen—offers a unique live demonstration of how to combine PBT principles with innovative assessment technology (Mindgrapher), structured e-learning, and tailor-made ACT interventions to create a precision therapeutic plan for a specific client in a specific situation.

First, participants will learn how to use PBT’s multidimensional framework to understand human suffering through evolving biopsychosocial processes. We then demonstrate how Mindgrapher, a diagnostic mapping tool, can quickly reveal patterns of avoidance, cognitive fusion, relational behavior, emotional regulation, and values engagement. This visual “process map” enhances both therapist understanding and client insight.

Together, we will conduct a live case conceptualization, walking through each step: (1) data collection & process mapping, (2) identifying high-impact leverage points, (3) matching ACT/PBT interventions to the client's unique process profile, and (4) integrating digital learning pathways to support change outside sessions.

ACT Across Contexts: Insights from 20 Years of Anxiety and Cancer Intervention Research - Arch (Plenary)

This talk will highlight key findings, lessons, and emerging directions from two decades of research on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) across diverse populations—ranging from adults with anxiety disorders to those coping with cancer. I will begin by summarizing our early work evaluating ACT for anxiety disorders, then turn to our ongoing efforts in adapting and assessing ACT to support mental health, spiritual well-being, and treatment adherence among adults with cancer. Similarities and differences will be highlighted. Central insights emerging from this work include the need to balance the many capabilities of ACT with simple, focused interventions, as well as the advantages and lessons of collaborating with community clinic staff to deliver ACT interventions. I will conclude by discussing key challenges and future directions for advancing ACT interventions across these contexts.

Embodied Flexibility: How the Body Expands the Horizon of Contextual Behavioral Science - O'Connell (Plenary)

Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS) has offered a powerful, pragmatic, and functionally coherent account of human suffering and flourishing through the model of psychological flexibility. Within CBS, the body has often remained in the background, rather than being engaged as a central target of learning and transformation.

Over the past decades, somatic and body-based interventions have expanded across psychotherapy. This plenary proposes the possibility of an embodied CBS—one in which the body and somatic experience are more fully included within our understanding of learning and change. The talk reviews embodied interventions already operating within CBS and argues for their more explicit integration. The plenary introduces embodied metaphors as a way of integrating somatic interventions as contexts for learning new behavior. Embodied metaphors use bodily experience as the vehicle, allowing flexibility processes to be evoked and shaped directly at the level of lived experience.
Finally, moving toward a more embodied CBS is presented not as an add-on, but as an opportunity for conceptual growth, clinical refinement, and deeper alignment with the complexity of human suffering and resilience.

When All the Books are Gone: Poetics in Human Behavior Change - Coyne, K. Wilson (Workshop)

The "holy grail" of clinical practice might be summarized as knowing the answer to this question: How can clinicians create a context where they say the exact right thing, at the exact right time, and in the right way to evoke epiphanies leading to meaningful growth and change in their stuck clients? Idionomic analysis is one answer, and while it is an essential part of behavioral assessment, it can feel heavily technical, clinical, and distant from the subtle and complex human experience it tries to capture. However, consideration of the poetics of human behavior change – rhythm, meter, tone, form, metaphor – may bring the practice of ACT to life in the way poetry evokes complex feelings and meanings through feel and sound rather than mechanism and manual. This workshop will explore, experientially, the poetics of behavior in individual psychotherapy. Using a contextual behavioral framework, presenters will discuss issues of process, invite participants into immersive experiential exercises, and provide opportunities to explore writing in behavior change.

Body-related shame and the transformative power of perspective taking - LeJeune, Pegrum (Workshop)

People in stigmatized bodies, including those in larger or physically disabled bodies, often encounter experiences of rejection, stigmatization, or invalidation. These experiences can become internalized, resulting in increased body-related shame. While addressing distal stressors requires systemic change (Meyer, 2003), proximal stressors can be addressed through individual therapy. This workshop is designed to introduce attendees to the Empathic Reimaging Task (ERT), a CBS-based perspective-taking intervention that also draws from imagery rescripting. The ERT has been used in clinical trials to target various forms of shame and self-criticism. In this workshop, we will focus on how the ERT can be used in clinical settings to address proximal stressors related to stigmatized bodies. Attendees will learn how the ERT can help clients 1) access self-acceptance, empathy, and adaptive needs related to shaming experiences, 2) practice self-compassion and values-based relating to their body, and 3) recontextualize shame as a response to societal stigma rather than individual fault.

ACT Like Nobody's Watching: Women Practicing Psychological Flexibility from the Inside Out - M. Morris, Costello Whooley, T. Morris, Coyne, Jaye (Workshop)

Knowing what we "should" do to be more psychologically flexible is one thing, but actually doing it? That's a different matter. As women therapists, we have an extra layer to navigate: all those internalized rules about how we're "supposed" to be (you know the ones we're talking about!). This workshop is your invitation to throw away the rule book and discover ACT from the inside out through the magic of play and Improv. No more just talking about psychological flexibility – we're going to live it, breathe it, and laugh our way through it!
 

In this experiential playground, we'll use games and exercises to:
- Transform "I should" into "I choose" through actual practice (because our brains need more than just good intentions)
- Practice *being* different - with ourselves and others - through the experimental context of play and spontaneity.
- Build our psychological flexibility muscles 

This workshop is about getting out of our heads and into our bodies, trying new things, and discovering what psychological flexibility actually feels like.

Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Large Scale Humanitarian Settings: Lessons Learned - van Ommeren (Plenary)

What advice can we give to decision-makers with some, but finite, resources for mental health responsible for 100,000s of people recently affected by war or disaster? Helping everybody severely distressed? Helping everybody at risk of a mental disorder? Helping everybody with a mental disorder? Helping everybody with a severe mental disorder? Helping people with certain priority conditions only, such as posttraumatic stress? Helping everybody who seeks help? Helping everybody? And what is the potential role of psychological interventions, including ACT ? Must these be open access? And can these successfully be operationalized to be effective at scale? This talk discusses how WHO has considered and responds to these dilemmas.

IGNITES - 5 minute presentations that will inspire you!

More information coming soon!