Trauma: Understanding Resilience and the Mind-Body Connection from an Eastern vs Western Medicine Perspective
Looking for a massage that goes deeper than deep tissue? While massage is often about finding that sweet relief from the daily wear and tear we put on our bodies, sometimes it has a deeper purpose. When working in the context of trauma and its connection to our mind, body and spirit, there is a wealth of wisdom that can be applied to aid in understanding where trauma comes from and how our bodies keep the score of the trauma we experience in our lifetime. Our trauma trained Massage Therapists here at Peace of Mind Sacred Wellness can help you to uncover emotional holding and tension patterns and reclaim your resilience while gently meeting you where you are: with non-judgement and un-opposing of opinions, world beliefs, religion, race or sexual identity.
That’s the universal nature of outer reality and inner experience. Therefore, there’s no end to disturbed equilibria as long as you live. But to help you survive, your brain keeps trying to stop the river: struggling to hold dynamic systems in place, to find fixed patterns in the variable world, and construct permanent plans for changing conditions. Consequently, your brain is forever chasing after the moment that has just passed, trying to understand and control it.
Eastern Perspective on Trauma
In Buddhist tradition, how successfully we manage our trauma is determined by our movement on the path to enlightenment. The goal is to maintain the awareness and presence to life’s challenging circumstances, and to prevent falling into the abyss of a fixed negative life orientation, which then becomes the focus of identification as “self.” For example, if one asks the question, “Who are you?” the answer might be: “I am a rape victim”; “I am a tsunami victim”; “I am a cancer patient”; “I am a refugee.” In these identifications, the person has lost the multi-dimensional reality of their humanity, and has attached themselves to the toxic or negative situation in which they find themselves – even though it is only one aspect of the whole individual and to provide a path out of – or at least toward reducing – suffering.
To understand trauma and suffering, we need to understand how the brain works. The brain continues to produce simulations even when they have nothing to do with staying alive. Simulations make you suffer. The simulator pulls you out of the present moment. Clips in the simulator contain lots of beliefs, mini movies that keep us stuck. We all suffer sometimes and some people suffer a lot. Compassion is the natural response to suffering, including your own self compassion. Because self-compassion is more emotional than self-esteem, it is a powerful tool to reduce the impact of difficult conditions. It builds resilience.
“The root of compassion is compassion for oneself.” -Pema Chodron
Western Perspective on Trauma
In Western traditions, through an Integrative approach, we heal trauma in part through Mind/ Body medicine and the understanding of resilience. Resilience allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back at least as strong as before. Rather than letting difficulties overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.
Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make a person resilient, such as:
the ability to regulate emotions
the ability to view it as a form of helpful feedback
Trauma occurs when our biological systems are pushed past a threshold of tolerance and remain stuck in the survival strategies such as flight, fight or freeze. How is it that one person’s trauma can be overcome while another seemingly less traumatic experience is their demise?
These very questions led researchers, scientists, physicians and psychologists to the “understanding of resiliency.” Resiliency is defined by our ability to adjust to a changing environment. Our parents helped form our “core map”. That core map stays the same BUT we don’t live in the core map, our territory continues to change.
The response to trauma in the body comes from the mind. It is the meaning we give an event, not the event itself that creates a response. We will call it a “Memory.”
The Mind Body Connection -Our Brains Territory MAP
The Memory filters through the Brain to create our:
We then assign Meaning through:
The meaning we assign may be conscious or unconscious. It is best to understand it on a conscious level using words to translate the event/experience. The person with the most flexibility has the most catalyst for change. This then creates a Behavior Response through the experience of the event itself, the observation of that experience and then how we imagine that experience. We assign a tiny map in the brain that is now part of the larger territory map. All day we are creating tiny maps that contribute to our larger map.
Resilience directly relates to the breadth of our map.
The larger vocabulary and meaning we can assign to an experience will allow for more diversity, contributing to a larger territory to respond to. The client may change their territory, change their map or they may need to leave the map. Sometimes in leaving the map they can gain an understanding of their territory and their stressor.
The question becomes, can you adjust the meaning of your trauma/suffering?
“How am I processing the territory map?” The How is the meaning you give it. What did you say to yourself? Can you now make choices closer to your core values? Your mind-body map is helpful in understanding how patterns of tension form in your body’s tissue.
You can assist yourself and begin to work with your trauma by:
Effect change by noticing the meaning that you assigned to the event.
Become aware of the language you use to describe the event.
You are an empowered partner in your own healing journey.
The Story Under Tension Patterns
Tension patterns are often what motivate you to get a massage. They are bands of tightness. The Physical pattern where we continually or repeatedly hold tension in the body. At Peace of Mind Massage and Sacred Wellness we have Trauma Trained Massage Therapists that are aware that muscular and whole-body responses to an overwhelming event can remain stuck in a stress response or pattern of tensions in your body.
Patterns create the problem. The Problem may present to you as sleeplessness, nausea, tension, pain etc.
Working with your Emotional Release
Our practitioners are trained to support you in your own feeling and can assist you to back to health by acknowledging, accepting and supporting you just as you are. If you have the intention of working with your feelings during a massage session we will respond to your breath and movement and will assist you in releasing holding patterns. A large percentage of holding patterns in the body are because of emotional repression, emotional denial and emotional avoidance. So, when releasing a holding pattern we are also touching and supporting your emotional body.
Why Emotional Release Happens
Underneath most of our myofascial holding patterns is repressed emotional trauma. Now we have an understanding that our emotional trauma is held in the soft tissues of the body. The concept of tissue memory is fundamental to our understanding of the connection between bodywork and emotional trauma release. Cellular structure and the electrical energy body have the ability to retain memories.
How Emotional Release Manifests
Releasing emotions in sessions is supported by encountering areas of the body that are tight, where energy is blocked and fluid flow is restricted.
Basic rules to work with your emotions as they emerge so as to not create or reinforce a holding pattern.
Self Judgement – The most damaging to your self compassion.
Withdrawal – Can leave you feeling abandoned or isolated.
Avoidance – Pushes them deeper into the tissue and reinforces a pattern of tension.
Accept emotional expression – It is okay to have tears.
Integrate the experience: • Be present with your emotions as they arise • You do not need to do anything • Feelings are not harmful • Keep breathing • Feelings are not problems to be solved
Support for your Multidimensional Body
Wear protecting and supporting crystals and stones:
Amethyst is the stone of higher consciousness. If you are looking for connection, protection and more spiritual awareness. ◊ Smokey quartz is a powerful protective stone that clears and cleanses negative energy. ◊ Black obsidian is a very powerful protective stone. It repels negativity and disperses unloving thoughts.
Use Imagery: Imagery stimulates the right hemisphere of your brain. For example, you might imagine myself deeply rooted as a tree, Your attitudes and emotions are blowing through your leaves and branches but your tree remains rooted and standing.
Be present with a mind that is quiet and malleable: ·Achieving such a state of mind requires that we first develop the ability to regulate our body and speech so as to cause no conflict. To quiet the mind practice awareness of the whole body. Try to experience your breath as a single sensation sensing the body as a whole. Whole body awareness supports the singleness of mind.
Be Present In Awareness Itself
Your awareness should be distinct from the potential intensity of the emotion. Remember that the emotions are contained within awareness itself. Simply notice that awareness, and find the place within it that it is safe to explore your thoughts and emotions. Resting in awareness brings a beautiful sense of inner clarity and peace. As we individuals grow in our resilience, we become better at being present, aware, and conscious. If we can learn to live with an open heart, we will be able to remain strong in challenging conditions.
When we become aware that we are closing down, it is an opportunity to lift ourselves up. Herein lies the chance to reverse an old pattern that keeps us stuck in our trauma story, therefore stuck in a holding pattern within the body.
“We all start at different levels of unconsciousness, but wherever we are, we can always improve with practice” -Pema Chodron
Give us a call at 303-881-5533 to speak with our receptionists and find the trauma informed massage therapist who is right for you. Visit us 7 days a week, Saturday and Sundays 9-6pm and Monday through Friday 9-8pm at 1249 S. Pearl Street, Denver, CO 80210.
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