TRAUMA…
70% of people in the US have experienced trauma but only 3% have been diagnosed with PTSD.
Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
70% doesn’t even seem right… my bet is its more like 100% of people. You see Doctors are able to discern PTSD and if my trauma is labeled worthy enough to cause post-traumatic stress that interferes with my day to day life or rather just life stuff, if it’s not physically detrimental or measurable people are labeled as dramatic or faking, so these numbers are obviously skewed.
Why in the hell are we ignoring the biggest problem facing society today???!!!!
Trauma doesn’t have to be one huge experience. Trauma Ph.D., Peter Levine says in his book Waking the Tiger Healing Trauma” common occurrences can produce traumatic after effects that are just as dehabilitating as those experienced by veterans of combat or survivors of childhood abuse”.
The Body keeps the score by Bessel Van Der Kolk is another trauma textbook for stroke yoga. He writes “you don’t have to be a combat soldier or refugee camp in Syria to encounter trauma” and goes farther to say trauma affects not only those directly exposed to it, but those around them.
Trauma is the real epidemic affecting humans.
The textbooks supporting Stroke Yoga.
Must read list!!!!
We are finding out so much more about trauma and how it affects the brain.
Even these unique things about us are used as a way to separate. My anxiety is worse than yours.
Hearing things like it could always be worse or just don’t let it bother you, just let it go, get over it.
Spiritual bypassing and fake positivity.
Not being able to fake positivity or radiate kindness was and is continually hard for me because trauma rears its ugly head often and old survival patterns once formed and repeated, toxicity breads from unhealed trauma, trust me I know!
But instead of being so turned off by real talk and emotional conversations, avoiding hard topics hard topics or saying just love and accept everyone, this bullshit Suzie sunshine approach. Through avoidance and denial, we lose sight of relief from this constant suffering.
Imagine if we actually talked to one another and respect one another’s stories. Healing or as I like to say transforming trauma begins when people feel heard and seen.
Safe zones are necessary Having people that are capable of holding space for you to unpack these traumas can be instrumental but not necessary. I’m honestly not sure that trauma ever heals or is meant to be healed.
You see the fact that so many people experience trauma so often isn’t sad or one of those aww moments. It us something that unites us as a human Race.
Making it easier and almost impossible not to connect with your fellow human, if we do not let it divide us.
Humans are one of the unique creatures that do not die from fear in a traumatic situation, like almost every other creature on this planet that might hunker down in fright and simply die in an overwhelmed state. But humans as perfectly and divinely designed as we are, our bodies or really this construct of our minds called the ego, allows us to go elsewhere in our minds, keeping us alive through even the most frightening experiences.
Out bodies will simply not allow us to die from fear alone. Rather the trauma lives in our bodies until one is ready to transform it into the most powerful intuitive wisdom.
Lucky for us our bodies are wired for trauma, our cells actually receive trauma and store trauma inside our DNA and it essentially becomes engrained in our genetics, it can be passed down for up to 7 generations until it is transformed.
But Why?
Well, Van der Kolk describes humans as being extremely resilient creatures.
It is kind of a superpower, considering he notes, avoiding trauma in ones life is nearly impossible on this earth.
Obviously, the answer is not simply to suffer through the rest of your life. Peter Levine teaches
“What we need to do to be freed from our symptoms and fears, is to arouse our deep phycological resources and consciously utilize them. If we remain ignorant of our power to change the course of our instinctual responses in a proactive rather than reactive way. We will continue being imprisoned and in pain.”
Further describing trauma as something that “evokes a biological response that needs to remain fluid and adaptive, not stuck and maladaptive.” In other words, trauma encourages change, evolution.
Trauma is the catalyst for change. How fucked up and beautiful all at the same time.
Bessel Van der kolk supports this notion saying “trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way the mind and brain manage perception. It changes not only what we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think”.
You see trauma can produce an involuntary reaction in the body without anything actually happening.
Bessel van der Kolks life’s work proved this idea the mind or the ego may be able to escape elsewhere to ignore the trauma but the body, the body always remembers!!!!
Educating folks about there own nervous systems and reorganizing the thoughts are helpful ways to counteract the affects of trauma.
In his work, Kolk names 4 avenues that utilize the brains own natural neuroplasticity to help survivors feel fully alive, he doesn’t use the word heal:
talking about said trauma
human connection
taking medicine
purposely inducing the trauma in a way that contradicts the helplessness and rage of the trauma
he recommends a combination of more than one avenue.
Using yoga as a method of treating trauma Bessel Van Der Kolk wanted to explore. Author of trauma sensitive yoga in therapy David Emerson volunteered to teach traumatized women within his new study on abuse in childhood including 3 components of yoga
Asana , meditadion and breathwork.
What they found in there work was that by encouraging students to observe what is happening in different parts of their body from pose to pose, trauma survivors were able to build something called self-regulation- the ability to understand and manage your behaviors and reactions to feelings and things happening around you.
Therefore, Changing the relationship between trauma survivors and their bodies. A kind of getting to know one’s self.
You see yoga is about looking inward instead of outward, listening to the body and liberating yourself from fear.
It has been my experience that yoga is really a very effective way to regulate the body’s response to trauma and regulate the Vagus nerve- the nerve that runs from the brain into the face and al the way down the body.
This nerve is responsible for visceral sensation or this trauma response, sending signals of safety or danger, fight or flight into the parasympathetic nervous system and straight into the gut.
By stimulating and really reseting or reminding this nerve you are in fact no longer in said danger, you can reduce the body’s response to trauma.
Yoga again specifically deep breaths, is the best way t o do this, humming and singing also stimulates the vagus nerve.
So to sum up, Strokes are very traumatizing. Hell, Life itself on earth can be traumatizing.
The body often continues to live in this fear response mode for years after a stroke demonstated by arm peotection positioning and balance and cognition issues, therefore yoga is once again a natural pairing for stroke survivors.
And quite frankly trauma survivors everywhere!!