Today's free Brown Bag Lunch at 12:30 will feature the book, Healing Trauma, by Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. The book includes an integrated CD with twelve body-based "Somatic Experiencing" tools for emotional and physical release and the recovery of wholeness. He describes his book in its subtitle as a "Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body" From 1:00 - 2:00 following the Brown Bag Lunch, Kaye E. Smith, MSW, LCSW will present a workshop in which she will describe the twelve Somatic Experiences in detail.
From Peter A. Levine, Ph. D. Healing Trauma, Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado, 2005
"The best resource of all is the ability of your body's sensations to shift from discomfort to comfort from constriction to openness, from fear to compassion. It is this ability to move or pendulate (a term Peter Levine coined) out of states of shutdown, anxiety, anger, helplessness or estrangement into the opposite, vitality, safety, joy, initiative and connection. Those are the best resources of all and the basis of true self-esteem. (Summary on the CD at the end of Track 3.)
"A key in moving through trauma is learning to separate out the sensations, thoughts, images, and emotions that may cause arousal. When you are able to note and track sensations as they change, instead of being stuck in habitual traumatic patterning, then thoughts and images that used to cause strong reactions will begin to lose their hold on you." p 55
"When we enter a new situation, we're activated to focus our attention on this new event. However, traumatized people tend to be riveted on their traumas. New situations are connected to - and constricted by - that past event. The key to dissolving this constriction is simply learning to stay with the sensation until it begins to change." p.55
"The feeling of collapse that traumatized people often experience in the face of life situations can be seen as an incomplete response to threat. By learning to complete this collapse response by going into and out of it fully you can begin to regain a sense of strength and resiliency in any challenging situation." P. 61
"When animals go into immobility because of threat, their response is time-limited. When they come out of immobility, the locked energy is available for either flight or counter-attack. As humans, we often find that the energy locked in the immobility response is so strong that we're frightened by it. The key to completing this uncompleted immobility response lies in uncoupling our fear from the response itself. This allows the stuck energy to be freed up for use wherever it is needed within the body….The process needs to occur gradually rather than abruptly; it is best to take one small phase at a time.". p. 63
The drive to complete the freezing response remains active no matter how long it has been in place. When we learn how to harness the power of this drive, it becomes our greatest ally in working through the symptoms of trauma. The drive is persistent. Even if we do not do things perfectly, it will always be there to give us another chance. The key is to uncouple fear from the biological immobility response so that the response can complete itself-work through into a meaningful course of action" p. 63.
