Program & Session Details (All times shown in GMT)
- 5:30 - 6:45 | This is what bodies do: Changing the relationship with the body - Liz Patton, DClinPsych
This is what bodies do: Changing the relationship with the body, Liz Patton, DClinPsych
Session Abstract: Women's bodies change through menstruation, pregnancy, birth, surgery, illness, menopause, and the slower changes that come with time. In gynaecological care, I meet women at the points where these changes are most acute: after hysterectomy, after mastectomy, through endometriosis, through the perimenopausal and menopausal transition. What arrives in the room is rarely only a medical problem. It is a problem of relationship, between a woman and the body she now has, and between that body and everyone who has ever seen, touched, named, or expected something of it. This work has me reflecting on the contextual environment for all women, and on the people who love them. Women going through bodily change are only one part of the picture.
Changing the relationship with the body can involve taking a closer look at the Self and Social view: a perspective-taking process that lets a person see herself across time and in relation to others. It holds self-perspective and social perspective as one integrated capacity rather than two separate things.
Educational Objectives:
1. Describe how the Self and Social view can be applied to women's relationship with the body, particularly through periods of bodily change.
2. Identify flexible processes that support women in facing the fears that arise as their bodies change.
3. Apply perspective-taking work to clinical encounters with women, in ways that hold self-perspective and social perspective as one integrated capacity rather than as two separate processes.Dr Liz Patton is a Clinical Psychologist based in Geelong, Victoria, with more than 13 years of clinical experience. She works primarily with women navigating persistent pain, chronic health challenges, and the profound transitions that come with being a woman. She has been at Barwon Health for over 11 years, where she has helped establish psychological services within the newly funded Women's Health Clinics, supporting women experiencing persistent pelvic pain, menopause, and other gynaecological concerns within a multidisciplinary hospital setting. Liz also runs a private practice and offers clinical supervision.
Her earlier career in neurology rehabilitation and interdisciplinary pain clinics shaped her interest in nervous system-related presentations and persistent pain, and her research has focused on pain education. She is particularly interested in how psychologically flexible approaches, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and DNA-V, can be integrated into hospital-based care for women whose experiences have too often been dismissed or minimised. Liz is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, the Australian Pain Society, the International Association for the Study of Pain, and the Australian Menopause Society.
- 7:00 - 8:15 | When the Body Won’t Rest: Sleep, Psychological Inflexibility, and the Amplification of Psychological Distress - Eric Morris, Ph.D.
When the Body Won’t Rest: Sleep, Psychological Inflexibility, and the Amplification of Psychological Distress, Eric Morris, Ph.D.
Session Abstract: Sleep is embodied. When it breaks down, the consequences extend far beyond fatigue, affecting cognition, emotion, and how people experience themselves and others. This seminar presents a program of research examining poor sleep as a psychological amplifier, with psychological inflexibility emerging as a key process linking disrupted sleep to a range of clinical difficulties.
Drawing on cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in community samples, findings will be presented showing associations between poor sleep quality, psychological distress, and increased suspicious and paranoid thinking. Dissociative experiences and psychological inflexibility will be discussed as potential pathways linking poor sleep to paranoia. When the body cannot rest, people become less grounded in present-moment experience and less flexible to responding to inner states. Longitudinal data from an international pandemic-era sample further indicate that worsening insomnia predicts worsening paranoia over time, highlighting the broader interpersonal and social consequences of sleep disruption.
The seminar will then examine mechanisms associated with insomnia itself. Studies investigating psychological inflexibility processes, including cognitive fusion, experiential avoidance, reduced present-moment awareness, sleep hygiene, sleep control beliefs, and pre-sleep arousal, suggest that rigid responses to internal experiences and inflexible beliefs about sleep may contribute to insomnia severity and sleep-related distress. Findings indicate that cognitive fusion and pre-sleep cognitive arousal show particularly strong associations with disrupted sleep, with pre-sleep cognitive and somatic arousal emerging as important mediating mechanisms. Within this framework, the body increasingly becomes experienced as a problem to be solved, sleep as a performance to be managed, and the struggle to control sleep may itself become part of the maintaining process.
The seminar will conclude with pilot findings from SLEAPI, an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy insomnia intervention adapted for autistic adults, demonstrating meaningful improvements in insomnia and anxiety symptoms. Together, these findings position insomnia as a clinically significant transdiagnostic process and highlight psychological flexibility as a potentially important target for interventions that help people relate differently to distressing bodily and psychological experiences.
Educational Objectives:
1. Describe the associations between poor sleep, psychological inflexibility, and transdiagnostic psychological distress, including paranoia and dissociative experiences.
2. Identify psychological processes associated with insomnia severity, including cognitive fusion, pre-sleep arousal, sleep control beliefs, and experiential avoidance.
3. Discuss the implications of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy informed approaches for understanding and intervening in insomnia across diverse clinical populations.
Dr Eric Morris is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University and Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Northern Health, Melbourne, Australia. He has over thirty years’ experience working as a clinical psychologist in Australia and the United Kingdom, engaging people with complex mental health problems and their families in public mental health services. Through ACTUALISE Lab at La Trobe University, Eric researches Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as an intervention for recovery from psychosis, insomnia, and for workplace resilience training, along with process-based therapies for autistic adults. Eric is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. He is a Fellow of the Association for Contextual Behavioural Science. He is a co-editor of "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness for Psychosis" and "Psychological Interventions for Psychosis: Towards a Paradigm Shift" and co-author of the group treatment manual, "ACT for Psychosis Recovery". Eric is the co-author of the self-help guide, "ACTivate Your Life: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Workbook for Building a Life that is Rich, Fulfilling and Fun."
- 8:30 - 11:15 | Surviving and Thriving in the Body (TBD)
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- 11:30 - 12:45 | Panel Discussion (TBD)
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- 13:00 - 14:00 | IGNITE Session 1 (TBD)
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- 14:15 - 15:30 | Just Take a Deep Breath [and Start Hyperventilating]: Understanding the Complex Interplay Between Physiology, Interoception, and Lay Beliefs - Alicia E Meuret, Ph.D.
Just Take a Deep Breath [and Start Hyperventilating]: Understanding the Complex Interplay Between Physiology, Interoception, and Lay Beliefs - Alicia E Meuret, Ph.D.
Session Abstract: Breathwork has become increasingly prominent in psychotherapy, digital health, and consumer wellness technologies, yet many approaches lack rigorous mechanistic validation. This presentation examines the relationship between respiration, interoception, and anxiety, with a focus on panic disorder and translational research on respiratory interventions.
Decades of basic research demonstrate that panic disorder is frequently characterized by chronic overbreathing resulting in abnormally low carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels, or hypocapnia. Although oxygen levels remain normal, hypocapnia can produce dyspnea, dizziness, chest pain, paresthesia, and sensations of suffocation, symptoms that closely resemble panic attacks themselves. These effects may be particularly pronounced in individuals with elevated interoceptive sensitivity, such as patients with panic disorder or anxiety, as well as those with chronic somatic conditions such as asthma, who are more likely to perceive and catastrophically interpret bodily sensations.
Contrary to common assumptions that “taking a deep breath” is inherently calming, excessively deep breathing can increase ventilation beyond metabolic demand, reduce CO₂, and paradoxically intensify physiological arousal and panic like symptoms. This may inadvertently undermine the intended anxiolytic effects of many relaxation and guided breathing practices, particularly among individuals vulnerable to habitual overbreathing.
The presentation will review findings from multiple randomized controlled trials on Capnometry Assisted Respiratory Training (CART), a biofeedback intervention designed to normalize CO₂ through slower and shallower breathing. Across studies in panic disorder and asthma, CART has demonstrated substantial and durable clinical improvements alongside normalization of respiratory physiology. Results from a recent randomized controlled trial evaluating a commercially available guided breathing application (Apple Watch “Breathe”) will also be presented, highlighting ongoing questions about how paced breathing interventions influence underlying respiratory physiology despite their widespread use.
Educational Objectives:1. Describe the role of respiratory physiology and carbon dioxide regulation in anxiety and panic-related symptoms.
2. Explain the mechanisms and clinical applications of Capnometry-Assisted Respiratory Training (CART) for anxiety disorders.
3. Evaluate the benefits and potential physiological risks of contemporary breathwork and guided breathing interventions, including consumer wellness applications.Prof. Dr. Alicia E. Meuret, Ph.D., is a Licensed Psychologist with the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and the Indiana State Psychology Board. She is the Director of the Anxiety and Depression Research Center (ARC) at SMU. Dr. Meuret is a tenured professor in the clinical psychology division of the Department of Psychology at SMU.
Dr. Meuret completed her doctoral studies at Stanford University's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and her postdoctoral studies at the Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard University and the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University.
Her research program focuses on novel treatment approaches for anxiety and mood disorders (with a focus on low positive affect/anhedonia), biomarkers in anxiety disorders and chronic disease (asthma), fear extinction mechanisms of exposure therapy, and mediators and moderators in individuals with affective dysregulations, including non-suicidal self-injury and reward hyposensitivity (anhedonia). Dr. Meuret is the founder of Capnometry-Assisted Respiratory Training (CART) and Positive Affect Treatment (PAT).
Dr. Meuret has published over 130 scientific publications and has received ongoing funding for her work from the National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies (>$10 M), including NIH R01, U, and R61/33 grants. Additionally, she has authored over 250 presentations at scientific conferences, including invited talks, keynote and plenary addresses, and psychiatry grand rounds. Dr. Meuret serves on several NIH reviews and on federal and scientific expert advisory boards. She was president of the International Society of the Advancement of Respiratory Psychophysiology (ISARP) and is a member of the American Psychological Association (APA), Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), Psychiatric Research Society, Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy (Fellow status), and ISARP. Dr. Meuret has received multiple honors for her work, including from the ADAA, the Psychiatric Research Society, and the American Psychosomatic Society.
Dr. Meuret is the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board and serves on the Board of Directors of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, and was the past president of ISARP and the Anxiety Disorders Special Interest Group at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. She served as a technical expert for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Effective Health Care Program and DSMB chair at UTSW for psychopharmacological studies. Dr. Meuret is a Beck Institute Fellow and Rotunda SMU Outstanding Professor. Dr. Meuret serves on eight editorial boards and was a Guest or Associate Editor of Behavior Therapy, the International Journal of Psychophysiology, and Behavior Research and Therapy. Dr. Meuret actively fosters female leadership representation, chairing academic society career development leadership programs, including the ADAA Alies Muskin Career Development Leadership Program.
- 15:45 - 17:00 | Beyond Safety: A Conceptual and Experiential Exploration of Appetitive Embodiment - Emily Sandoz, Ph.D.
Beyond Safety: A Conceptual and Experiential Exploration of Appetitive Embodiment - Emily Sandoz, Ph.D.
Session Abstract: Embodiment is a unique and multidimensional aspect of human experience. As a repertoire, embodiment involves (1) the perceptual experience of living in a body, along with (2) thoughts and (3) feelings about the body, (4) actions toward and with the body, and (5) the role bodily perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions play in identity. Embodiment is often approached as falling on a continuum from negative embodiment to positive embodiment. A contextual perspective, however, invites us to consider embodiment functionally in terms of breadth and flexibility. This presentation will explore appetitive embodiment as an aspect of wellness that can inform conceptualization, assessment and treatment. Appetitive embodiment may offer an important target both when body issues are central to presenting struggles, and when the body is available as a resource to support growth in other domains. Exploration will proceed both conceptually and experientially, and land on discussion of clinical implications.
Educational Objectives:
1. Participants will describe different facets of embodiment
2. Participants will contrast appetitive embodiment with positive embodiment
3. Participants will describe one way they might target appetitive embodiment in their workDr. Emily K. Sandoz (she/they) is the Director of the University Honors Program, the Emma Louise LeBlanc Burguieres/BORSF Endowed Professor of Social Sciences, and Full Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Emily is also the Director of the Louisiana Contextual Science Research Group, which supports collaborative contributions from students and professionals from all over the world. They have co-authored three books on acceptance and commitment therapy for struggles with eating and body image, along with chapters and journal articles on contextual behavioral science, social justice, clinical behavioral processes, and psychological flexibility. Emily has led more than 100 training workshops for professionals around the world, and serves as a peer-reviewed ACT trainer. They also practice as a Clinical Psychologist and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, focusing on clinical behavior analysis.
- 17:15 - 18:30 | Increasing Physical Activity with Self-Guided Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Findings from Different Intervention Approaches - Michael Levin, Ph.D.
Increasing Physical Activity with Self-Guided Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Findings from Different Intervention Approaches - Michael Levin, Ph.D.
Session Abstract: Physical activity is a key behavior for promoting health and wellbeing, but is also challenging to change and maintain. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has been found to improve health behaviors, including physical activity, but most of this work has been done through therapist-delivered interventions. Delivering ACT in self-guided formats has significant promise for increasing its scale and reach. Yet, it is not clear how best to adapt and deliver self-guided ACT to achieve its potential for health promotion.
This presentation will review the findings for physical activity outcomes across a series of trials evaluating different self-guided approaches to delivering ACT for health promotion. One line of research that will be discussed focuses on reducing the negative effects of weight self-stigma through an ACT self-help book for outcomes including physical activity. Another series of studies explores whether an ACT matrix app focused on tracking behavior in relation to moving towards values (or away from unwanted inner experiences) impacts physical activity and broader wellbeing. A third approach integrating ACT with dietary and physical activity education in a web-based format will also be discussed. These studies will provide the context for exploring different ways ACT can be used to promote physical activity as well as challenges and lessons learned from this work (e.g., navigating weight loss goals from an ACT perspective, limitations in broad ACT approaches for improving physical activity).
Educational Objectives:
1. Describe ways that ACT can be used to promote physical activity
2. Discuss the research evidence for ACT in improving physical activity
3. Explain challenges with ACT self-help interventions for physical activity
Michael E. Levin, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University (USU) where he co-directs the USU ACT Research Group with Dr. Michael Twohig. His research focuses on the development, evaluation, and implementation of digital ACT interventions for a wide range of areas including health promotion, chronic health conditions, depression, and obsessive compulsive and related disorders. He has conducted over 50 clinical trials evaluating digital ACT programs through ongoing federal and foundation funding over the past 15 years. This research has led to the dissemination of ACT Guide, a publicly available suite of digital ACT self-help programs.
- 18:45 - 20:00 | Embodied ACT: Relational Presence and Embodied Metaphors in Clinical Practice - Manuela O'Connell, Lic.
Embodied ACT: Relational Presence and Embodied Metaphors in Clinical Practice - Manuela O'Connell, Lic.
Session Abstract: Within CBS, growing attention is being given to the role of the body, embodiment, and therapeutic presence in psychological flexibility and behavioral change. This experiential workshop explores how embodiment can deepen ACT practice through relational presence, somatic awareness, and embodied metaphors. Participants will learn how bodily experience can function as a direct pathway for fostering openness, awareness, connection, and values in real time.
Special attention will be given to the therapist’s embodied presence within the therapeutic relationship and to the use of embodied metaphors that emerge through posture, movement, gesture, and sensory experience. Through experiential exercises and clinical reflections, participants will explore how psychological flexibility can be cultivated as a lived, relational, and embodied process.Educational Objectives:
1. Describe how embodiment and bodily experience can be integrated into ACT and CBS as processes that support psychological flexibility and behavioral change.
2. Apply relational and embodied interventions, including embodied metaphors and therapist presence, to foster openness, awareness, connection, and values in clinical practice.
3. Develop greater sensitivity to posture, movement, gesture, and sensory experience as opportunities for cultivating psychological flexibility within the therapeutic relationship.
Manuela O'Connell, Lic.: Clinical psychologist specializing in ACT, Mindfulness, FAP and CFT. Peer Reviewed ACT Trainer and Fellow for ACBS. ACT trainer and supervisor along Latin America in the Spanish speaking population. Board President of ACL Foundation (Live with Awareness, Courage and Love). Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. I have been involved also in body work and somatic training for the last 30 years also a certified Eutony teacher. In this area I have been integrating somatic experiences with Mindfulness and ACT in the form of Embodied Metaphor into my clinical work and has presented around this topic extensively. Author of a general public book Una vida valiosa from Random Penguin House in Spanish and delivered ACT for the general public interventions. Co-author of The ACT Workbook for Anger with Dr. Robyn Walser and wrote several publications in the area of the therapeutic relationship and couples work.
- 20:15 - 21:15 GMT | IGNITE Session 2 (TBD)
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