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Appearances by Dr. Marcy Axness

“The young child’s brain is focused on sensations and actions, not on words–and they learn mainly through imitation. Don’t negotiate, demonstrate. To paraphrase Ghandi, be the change you want to see in your child!”

Dr. Axness is passionate about all facets of child development, adoption, parenting, and the complex cultural influences on how we become who we become–as children, as parents, as people. She is a dynamic and popular speaker, probably because she just loves learning and sharing about these topics on human development!

If you are interested in having Dr. Axness present a lecture, workshop, or class series for your organization, event, school, church, or even at your home with a gathering of interested folks, she is happy to consider speaking engagements when her schedule allows. To inquire about availability and fees, please contact us.

Media & Press | Calendar: 2011, 2010 | Talks/Workshops

Marcy Axness is a superb presenter. She has the rare gift of distilling the latest research and the most sweeping of truths into concise vignettes and memorable stories that go straight to the heart of the matter and the heart of the listener. And always with the lightest of touches, the latest in PowerPoint and the most accessible of styles. For every parent and every parent-to-be, Dr. Axness’ work is a must see, hear and read.
–Dr. Randolph Severson, Psychotherapist, author

You are an excellent communicator of these concepts to the general public, with a solid scientific understanding.
–Dr. Curt Sandman, Ph.D.
Professor and Vice Chair
UCI Dept. of Psychiatry

Marcy Axness is a communicator par excellence.
–Dr. John C. Sonne
M.D., Psychiatrist/Family therapist

Media and Press

Mundo Hispanico

Dr. Axness is featured in the March 2010 issue of this Spanish-language publication on the topic of the importance of sound and voice during prenatal development: En el vientre nos pueden oir.

Mothering Magazine

Dr. Axness has joined Mothering magazine’s online Expert Forum.

Living Hero

As a subject of Living Hero: Conversations with Living Luminaries and Mavericks, Marcy engages in an extensive discussion of raising a generation for peace. An excerpt from that interview is featured in a Jari Chevalier’s brilliant audio meta-essay from Living Hero’s new Synthesis Series: ”Where’s The Imagination?”

Reader’s Digest

Dr. Axness is featured in the Reader’s Digest article ”Words to Inspire: 7 Things You Should Say to Your Kids–And 7 Things You Shouldn’t”

Trauma, Brain & Relationship: Helping Children Heal

Dr. Axness appears with Bruce Perry, Daniel Siegel, and other child development experts in this documentary about what children most need for healthy psycho-social development in their early days, months, and years – and how we can best help them if they don’t get it.

“The Very First Relationship” (3:38 clip from film)
All relationships, and especially primary relationships, profoundly impact the developing brain, for better or worse. When children feel “seen,” safe and supported, their nervous systems develop in a very coherent manner; but if they don’t feel safe and connected in their primary relationships, their brains develop in a disrupted way… which strongly suggests implications for AD/HD and other psycho-social disorders.
View clip
Order DVD or VHS
Read transcript of Dr. Axness’s comments

The Bleeping Herald

This cyber-zine has a worldwide readership of progressive thinkers, willing to continually re-examine what they “know for sure.” TBH is published by the group who brought us What the Bleep Do We Know?, the film that swept the nation a few years back with its compelling, if controversial, exploration of human potential. One of the film’s directors, Betsy Chasse, has been inspired through her own experience of new motherhood to develop a series of articles about parenting for peace, and she invited me to contribute Raising Generation PAX: Peace Begins with How We Parent, From the Very Beginning.

The Wet Set Gazette

Ongoing bimonthly
This publication for expectant and new moms in Southern California features a column by Dr. Axness.
Read current column

Pregnancy Magazine: What’s Going On In There? How Babies Spend Their Time in the Womb

November, 2004
Dr. Axness is quoted in an article about what the baby in the womb experiences and learns.

Talkradio Appearances

Shrink Rap (KCSN) – Marcy was interviewed for a half hour about “Quantum Parenting: 7 Steps for Peace at Home & In the World” – LISTEN

The Dennis Prager Show (KCBS) and Leslie Primeau’s popular Edmonton Tonight (CHED), where Dr. Axness was the featured guest on this listener call-in show.

Keynotes, Workshops, and Trainings Calendar

Talks and Workshops

General Parenting

“The word discipline is related to disciple–a joyful follower. Parents, be the loving, calm authority that your young child will take joy in following, and discipline will not be such an issue.”

• Birth to Seven: Laying the Foundation for Your Child’s Lifelong Success
• Rhythm, Routine & Relationship: Antidotes for the “Disorder” Epidemic
• Womb Through Wonderland: Scientific principles for optimal early development
• Confessions of a Parenting Expert: If I Knew Then What I Know Now… (What I’d Do Differently With My Kids)
• Wolf-Wise Parenting ~ How to Be A Confident Parent in an Insecure Age
• Avoiding Seven Mistakes of Well-Meaning Parents: The Scientific Basis for Re-Thinking How We Raise Children
• Full Circle: How Parenting Our Own Children Invites Us to Heal
• Staying in Love with Your Child

Fertility/Pre & Perinatal

• Life Before Birth: The Shaping Nature of Prenatal Experience
• Awakening Fertility: The MindBody Solution
• Quantum Parenting: Shaping Your Child’s Success from Before Conception
• Wolf-Wise Parenting ~ How to Be A Confident Parent in an Insecure Age

As a conference planner, I want to stay away from the trite or bland. I count on Marcy Axness to be neither. She brings currency and depth to her presentations. Best of all, she is an unabashed voice for children.
–Jim Gritter
Catholic Human Services, Traverse City, MI

Adoption

• Affirming the Adoptee’s Experience: The Path to Intimacy
• The Chosen Family: Optimizing the Adoption Experience
• When Does Adoption Begin?
• The 57 Varieties of Open Adoption
• Life Before Birth: The Shaping Nature of Prenatal Experience
• Primal Issues in Adoption
• Smoke & Mirrors: Why Reunion Relationships Are Soooooo Tricky
• Separating Mothers and Babies: An American Tradition for Over Half A Century
• Society’s Two-Faced Attitude on Adoption
• Bad Seed: Nature, Nurture and that Old “Impulse Control” Argument
• [See Below: Why did Di’s Death Hit Me So Hard?]

Educational/Professional/General

• Steiner’s Prescient Vision: How Current Brain Research Supports Waldorf Education
• Overwhelming Experience: The New Science of Understanding and Treating Early Trauma
• Understanding the Trauma of Separation in Adoption: A “Hero’s Journey” Perspective
• Why did Di’s Death Hit Me So Hard?

Talks & Workshops ~ Expanded Descriptions

Birth to Seven: Laying the Foundation for Your Child’s Lifelong Success

…little-recognized but critical aspect of the birth-to-seven stage–supporting the healthy development of the will energies. This is something Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf education founder) recognized and it is now being borne out by the most cutting edge brain science, the neurobiology of attachment, etc. (By will of course I don’t mean what many parents think of when they hear that word–as in “willfulness.” The antagonistically “willful” child actually suffers from meager will development. If you’ve read Gabor Mate’s book Scattered, this line of reasoning is well developed.) What Steiner referred to as the will energies–related to the etheric body–is closely related to the newly-understood, critically important orbitofrontal region of the brain, whose integrative, regulating functions are critical to healthy social-emotional functioning as well as to learning. The exciting new field of “attachment neurobiology”–whose main proponents are UCLA’s Daniel Siegel and Allan Schore–has focused on the OFC, and all of these findings intimately relate to Steiner’s 100-year-earlier awareness of will development!

Rhythm, Routine & Relationship: Antidotes for the “Disorder” Epidemic

Beginning even before birth, a childs body, mind and soul are being sculpted by the dynamic interplay of nature and nurture. This talk explores a little-recognized but critical aspect of the birth-to-seven stage–supporting the healthy development of the will energies. This is something Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf education founder) recognized and it is now being borne out by cutting-edge brain research on the neurobiology of attachment. (By will we dont mean what many parents think of when they hear that word, as in willfulness. The antagonistically willful child actually suffers from meager will development.) Classic theories of early development are integrated with the latest attachment and brain research to give a full picture of what children need from parents and caregivers to support their optimal development. Focus will be on practical, daily ways to help lay foundations for your childs success–and your enjoyment of parenting!!

Avoiding Seven Mistakes of Well-Meaning Parents: The Scientific Basis for Re-Thinking How We Raise Children

• Unconscious conception
• Unmindful pregnancy
• High-tech birth
• Materialist approach to infancy
• Ignorance of neurodevelopmental realities in toddlerhood (over-explaining, etc.–correlates to Steiner’s will development)
• Ignorance of psycho-social developmental realities (need for boundaries and a loving authority, not catering “friend”)
• Wish to give “head start” (premature academics; lessons about the “real world,” etc…. while ironically wishing to “protect̵ them by subjecting them to culture–tv, movies, books–featuring a sacharine, façade-y, “goodness,” as opposed to fairy tales…)

Staying in Love with Your Child

Based on the research that comes out of the decade of the brain, it teaches parents how to connect with kids in ways that sooth, calm and regulate both themselves and their children. In so doing, the training teaches not only attachment skills but trauma identification, prevention and healing.

• Empower parents with tools for recognizing states
• Strategies for supporting state regulation & organization in themselves and their children
• Avoid the vicious cycle of "He doesn’t like me" --> parent feels shame --> rejects child --> child feels threatened/shame --> disregulated state/dis-integration --> not “attractive” to parent for attachment engagement… etc.
• The art of presence

Life Before Birth: The Shaping Nature of Prenatal Experience

How do our prenatal circumstances ~ conception, gestation, birth ~ affect our current physical and psychological experiences of life? Fascinating pre- and perinatal research will be presented, along with personal experiences of primal healing work, to explore the implications of various kinds of prenatal scenarios. Focus will be on the inherent potential for healing. A brief, simple–but very effective–guided imagery will be offered for those participants who wish to enhance their connections to their own prenatal memories.

Awakening Fertility: The MindBody Solution

An introduction to The Whole Person Fertility Program, which applies the findings of psychoneuroimmunology (known as “behavioral medicine” or “mind/body healing”) to the area of reproductive health. The program entails a specific course of family history gathering, self-inquiry exercises, experiential processes and guided reflection designed to facilitate a healthy balance in the body’s psycho-neuro-endocrinology that in turn allows for healthy conception and full-term pregnancy.

When Does Adoption Begin?

What are the effects–on baby and mother–when a prospective birth mother “emotionally relinquishes” her baby during her pregnancy? How does it affect prospective adoptive parents to have their sights, hopes and dreams set on one particular baby being carried by one particular prospective birth mother?

The 57 Varieties of Open Adoption

A look at the continuum of openness…from closed, through “quasi-open”, to fully open on all levels. We’ll explore the notion that it is possible to have a crucial kind of openness even if it is impossible to know your child’s parents, and by contrast, the circumstance of a very “closed-in-spirit” adoption, even when the birthmother/father is known to the adoptive parents.

Separating Mothers and Babies: An American Tradition for Over Half A Century

~ Looks at our deepest attitudes, from legal to primal, about children and parenting… the ways we have been nudging Mother out of her role of primary importance… particularly the newest wave, the ridiculously-named “safe haven” laws… how Huxley’s motherless vision in Brave New World really ain’t that far away given our current trajectory… and how, paradoxically, enlightened adoption philosophy & practice can be a beacon toward nurturing and preserving the primacy and importance of the mother-child bond

Bad Seed: Nature, Nurture and that Old “Impulse Control” Argument

The intergenerational legacies of reproductive patterns… how do adoptive mothers talk to adoptees about sex… reconciling ambivalence about the birth mother “emerging” in their daughters’ generativity… to foster a healthy sense of their “sacred fertility,” while honestly approaching reawakened grief over their own infertility… Does the adopted woman identify with her adoptive mother’s (sanctioned) infertility or her birth mother’s (illegitamate) fertility… and what happens when she does get pregnant?

Understanding the Trauma of Separation in Adoption: A “Hero’s Journey” Perspective

The objective of this 1/2-day training is three-fold:

1. To impart to the participants an overview of separation trauma in adoption, including:
   • newly-emerging “neurobiology of attachment” research, and its implications for adoption
   • the developmental and biophysiological principles underlying the “primal wound”–and why even the youngest infants placed experience separation trauma
   • discussion of child trauma in general, including implications for healthy attachment
   • developmental/behavioral/psychosocial effects we can expect to see in traumatized children.
2. To discuss practical, progressive approaches that have proven effective with traumatized children, including:
   • the critical role of parents, and how to resource them to meet it
   • creating a “therapeutic web” for children
   • why one of the best therapies is “not-therapy”
3. To inspire the participants by exposing them to some new ways of seeing and understanding the populations with whom, and for whom, they toil so hard every day. This is why I like to talk in terms of re-envisioning adoption as a Hero’s Journey, invoking three or four of the major archetypes (which are, in a sense, “self-portraits” of our instincts.) I have found the archetypes an effective tool for bringing deeper meaning and richness to what can often become, for the adoption worker, a daily grind in which mechanistic, bureaucratic tasks overshadow the humanity that is central to their work. And because archetypes can help us better understand–and have compassion for–our own inner workings, this fresh perspective invites in a measure of self-nurture to help combat burnout.

Why did Di’s Death Hit Me So Hard?

–An exploration of how events in our daily lives and the world trigger unrecognized, unackowledged, ungrieved losses in us; what triggers us and why; archetypal energies; the dual nature of reality–how the past and present are always “superimposed”; ways to address trigger points. I will share stories of circumstances and “current events” that have called forth dormant feelings, and will invite participants to share theirs as well. [For adoption audiences:] I will perhaps read pertinent excerpts from my upcoming novel, UPON WAKING, about an adopted woman coming to terms with her losses.

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© 1998 - 2012 QUANTUM PARENTING ~ Marcy Axness Ph.D. ~ 818.366.7310