Although it may seem that people suffer from an endless number of emotional problems and challenges, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre maintain that most of these can be traced to five biologically based organizing principles: the need for connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality. They describe how early trauma impairs the capacity for connection to self and others and how the ensuing diminished aliveness is the hidden dimension that underlies most psychological and many physiological problems.

Heller and LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model(R) (NARM), a method that integrates bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulate the nervous system and resolve distortions of identity such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment that are the outcome of developmental and relational trauma. While not ignoring a person's past, NARM emphasizes working in the present moment to focus on clients' strengths, resources, and resiliency in order to integrate the experience of connection that sustains our physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.

Aline LaPierre, PSYD, is founder and director of the NeuroAffective Touch(R) Institute and developer of NeuroAffective Touch(R) specializing in teaching the integration of therapeutic touch and psychotherapy. Dr. LaPierre is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, and The New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, and is trained in many body-centered modalities, including Somatic Experiencing(R), Continuum, Body-Mind Centering, acupressure, as well as craniosacral, deep tissue, and neuromuscular bodywork. Past faculty in the Somatic Doctoral Program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute (2000-2010), she is deputy editor of the International Body Psychotherapy Journal and vice president of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP). A clinician, author, artist, and teacher, she maintains a private practice in West Los Angeles. For further information on NeuroAffective Touch(R), please visit www.NeuroAffectiveTouch.com.