Healing From Trauma - 4 Embodied Methods

 The subject of trauma has gained enormous attention over the last several years. Systemic trauma, parental trauma, how to heal from trauma, trauma and psychedelics, etc. But what exactly is trauma? How does it manifest, how does it affect us, and how can we heal from it? Does it require intense psychotherapy, psychedelic medicine, or somatic release? We’ll explore these questions in this article.

As a former training psychologist, I’ve discussed trauma in great detail and seen it manifest in myself, my clients, and those of my colleagues. There is some disagreement on how to treat trauma. One of the reasons I left the psychotherapeutic industry was a perspective on trauma that encouraged victim-perpetuation rather than empowerment. The emphasis on the evils of “the system,” viewing negative experiences as inevitable consequences of a colonized milieu, put the people we were trying to help into a position of belittlement, disavowing them of their ability to navigate the cultural landscape, perpetuating the exact dynamics of systemic racism, sexism, etc. that the people of the Bay Area vociferously claim to despise. It’s not that these topics should not be addressed, but pursued to the exclusion of all else, an already disempowered individual faces a world that they perceive will continually beat them down. Their ailment grows worse or they join the tirade and ignite the fire in their belly in opposition to an idea rather than in synchrony with formed reality, yet another inauthentic expression.

What is Trauma?

Trauma is any experience that goes beyond our ability to cope or make sense of and that encourages the splitting off or disowning of certain aspects of our personality. Though traumas can be horrific, such as serious physical injury or sexual abuse, they can also be mundane, such as a parent snapping at you to be quiet when they were irritated. Because the impact of traumatic events is related to our ability to cope, we form much of our relational ego in our early years while learning to adapt to our environment. These alterations to our self-concept promote our psychic, or in some cases, physical survival.

When traumas occur in isolated events, their impact is not as great. The real trouble is when they occur as part of an engrained dynamic. The individual in situations of repetitive trauma is trained how to be, and they push down and deny any part of them that would act in opposition or self-interest. Sexual abuse victims, for instance, experience intense anger (among other emotions) towards the violation, the perpetrator, and anyone that could have protected them, but expressing this could result in serious bodily harm or other consequences. As a result this anger gets directed most often towards themselves in the form of depression and self-harm (addiction, cutting, head-banging, etc.). These emotions will inevitably embed themselves somewhere within the body, the seat of our unconscious.

How Do We Heal Through Trauma?

From these examples, we can see that there is an emotional response that is denied in the interest of self-preservation. In the heady, egocentric culture in which we live, the value of the emotional body is devalued. The ego, this thinking voice inside our head, is just one piece of us. Another side directly experiences the world, and this is connected through the body, the vehicle through which we navigate. But the body is so much more than that!

"Trauma is any experience that goes beyond our ability to cope or make sense of and that encourages the splitting off or disowning of certain aspects of our personality."

Nature imbues us with a hard-wired set of emotions, and we experience them through sensation and feeling. This is how we relate directly to our lived experience. Emotions are archetypal patterns of energy that we’ve learned over eons to ensure our survival in a complex world. When a deer spots a predator it will freeze. A surge of energy will rise from somewhere in its gut, and promote tension throughout the entire body. This minimizes the chance he will be detected. When the threat passes, one can witness the deer shake out the tension in reverse order, beginning with its head and neck and ending with a flick of its tail. It is here where the problem of trauma and its solution arises.

To have a thinking self, a sort of meta-narrator that observes and articulates what is happening to us, is an extraordinary gift. It lends us another degree of adaptability and is what separates us from our animal kin. We do not have to operate in accordance with Nature. When our freeze response arises, due to the world beyond Nature we have built, i.e. culture, it may actually be in our best interest to move. Soldiers on the battlefield overriding their fear response is a great example. However, that does not stop emotional energy from arising. It must follow the arc of initiation, tension, expression, and release. Our ego can override this, and if we never express the emotion and release the tension, that energy will stay in our body and roost up in a particular spot where it will continue to grow and fester into something that demands our attention. All trauma manifests in the body.

Again, we can do this in isolated contexts and get away with little consequence. But when it happens repeatedly, the energy will continue to concentrate and grow until it can be released. A fascinating example of this is the difference in rates of PTSD in World War II veterans vs. veterans of today. One may think that it was simply lesser known back then or there was a greater emphasis on men “sucking it up”, but this is simply not the case. WWII vets returned to the states via sea-born vessel. This meant that each man was with many others that had been through similar experiences he had – getting shot at, seeing friends bodies torn to pieces, destroying the bodies of enemy soldiers – for several weeks. During this time, men were able to cry, scream, and release the tension that they had stored during wartime to ensure their collective survival. Not only did they have this time to emote, but it was also a period of adjustment before coming back home. Our soldiers today travel mostly by air, which means that they can be home less than 24 hours after being in action. This gives the body no period of adjustment and no dedicated space to release the tension gathered. It’s a wonder our soldiers come home as healthy as they do.

Practices for Accessing and Healing Trauma

Because trauma manifests as stuck energy in the body, this energy needs to be accessed and addressed. Modern psychotherapy is catching up with this idea and understanding that analytic investigation of personhood cannot achieve healing on its own. The number of somatic modalities emerging are enormous and encouraging. A good therapist will help to access these parts of the self, encourage their client to fully feel their emotions when things come up, as well as provide a trusted means of support and means of integration. Many therapists however will get hung up on the structure and investigation of the client’s defenses, the means they use to deny these repressed emotions, instead of supporting their client in endeavors that will bring them to the surface. This is a means of colluding with victimhood.

One of the reasons why psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy has been so effective in treating PTSD, addiction, depression, anxiety – all different defenses – is that these substances actively connect our brains in ways they are not used to being connected. The thinking mind loses much of its power to control our conscious experience, and we feel fully all the trapped (and untrapped) energies within us. This is why it is crucial to curate one’s set and setting for these experiences. If these trapped energies emerge in an unsupportive container, it will be re-traumatizing. In the care of people that understand these states and the enormity of encountering long repressed energy, the trauma can safely be navigated, the narrative rewritten, and a more empowered self integrated.

"Launch yourself into the abyss and you’ll discover it’s a feather bed." 

Any healing journey will require supportive others, but psychotherapy is far from the only practice that can help. Below are a few methods that you can do on your own or in a supportive group to begin accessing and expressing trauma.

Breathwork

If traumas are excess energy trapped in the body, we need to find a way to allow that energy to be expressed. Breath is another form of energy, referred to in Vedic philosophy as prana. There are many forms of breathwork, but those that have been most successful in treating trauma are those that overload the body with this energy, namely holotropic and neurodynamic breathwork in which one cyclically hyperventilates for 1-3 hours. If we think of the body as a system of waterways, trauma are bits of debris that dam up the works. If we increase the pressure flowing through, we have the opportunity to shake these dams loose and restore the flow. During these breathwork sessions, it is important to give oneself permission to express whatever needs to be expressed, to have faith that the body knows exactly how to heal, and trust the process. Screams, shouts, tears, laughter, all are welcome.

Catharsis Meditation

This is an incredible tool for relating to and expressing emotion. I utilize it whenever I get activated by interactions I have with people, friends, and partners. Focus on an intense emotion and where it manifests in the body. Think back to a recent intense emotion: when were you last pissed off? Terrified? Horribly sad? Think about that experience and feel into the body. What arises? Is there a sharp pain in the heart? Tension around the temples? Emptiness in the gut? Bring your awareness to these sensations and describe them in this way – don’t assign them a dead name like “anger” or “sadness.” Breathe into the sensations, again giving them more prana so they can be activated. Treat these sensations as if they are living beings within yourself. Does the energy move anywhere? Keep following it. What other sensations and emotions arise? Do any images come up akin to dreams, or a memory perhaps? Maintain non-judgmental awareness and resist the urge to ego-tize them. Do this practice for 20-45 minutes or as long as feels appropriate.

Yoga and Intuitive Movement

Nothing gets energy in the body moving like moving the body. Engaging in yogic practices will help to identify areas of stuckness while strengthening and limbering the body to grow resiliency and increase flow. Ecstatic dance helps to understand where we take ourselves too seriously, where our hang ups are and how afraid we are to be authentically and sillily seen.

Pursuing Higher Purpose

If you determine what your highest good is and move towards it, any area of stuckness will be struck. You do not have to wait to be whole to pursue your dream, pursuing your dream will help you to be whole. All those things that want to remain hidden will be driven mad by your pursuit, and now you have the tools to encounter them in a grounded and adult manner.

With any of these experiences, whether it be through breathwork, psychedelics, yoga, therapy, arising spontaneously through the course of living, it is not enough to merely express the tension or trapped emotion. While this is a necessary first step, our ego is still entrained. The idea is not to eliminate the thinking mind, but to bring it into relationship with our emotional body. This is why there is such an emphasis on integration of these experiences. Writing about it in a journal, creating artwork, dancing, or other forms of intuitive movement, are excellent ways to do this. What’s more, we must actualize our integrations in our habits. When we go back to old coping strategies, we must do something different. This will entail leaning into fear, the most difficult part. Just know that on the other side of this fear is your destiny. Launch yourself into the abyss and you’ll discover it’s a feather bed.