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Transform Trauma with Body Awareness
- Dr. Julie Brown Yau
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Hello and welcome to Healing from Within I am Sheryl Glick your host and author of my newest book A New Life Awaits Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening which shares a contemporary look at the world social landscape of dysfunction as a result of a separation from our natural spiritual nature and ways to find our way to an integrated physical and spiritual renewal for success in this life and beyond. Today I welcome Julie Brown Yau author of The Body Awareness Workbook for Trauma
Hello Julie and thank you for joining us on Healing From Within today.
Julie as listeners of Healing From Within are so well aware my guests and I share intimate insights into the true nature of being or our duality and spiritual as well as physical elements to living a healthy positive and successful life journey as we empower all aspects of our energy and awareness of higher consciousness. Learning who we are is the key to accepting allowing and flowing through all life’s challenges ultimately to find peace and love.
In today’s episode of Healing From Within Julie Brown Yau a psychologist and developmental trauma specialist at Compassionate Care ALS blends her unique approach with clinical psychology physical and subtle body energies and spiritual perspective in discussing and healing trauma. She will share how a traumatic event such as an accident act of violence abuse or any form of childhood trauma may leave profound psychological pain including post -traumatic stress anxiety or depression Trauma can alter the nervous and immune system which leads to a multitude of physical symptoms and disease. We will discuss ways to reconnect to our bodies after trauma cultivate calm and find lasting emotional balance,
Julie I always love to ask my guests to think back to their childhood and remember a person place event that may have shown them or others the lifestyle they might seek as an adult for often the person we are to become is already the person we are at the beginning of life
Let’s talk about where trauma starts for most people. Developmental trauma that emerges when basic childhood needs are not met is one form of trauma and I would imagine in one way or another each child loses a small part of their being in growing up and being socialized to the rules and regulations of their families and society NOW We are living in a time where there is a greater number of children with anxiety depression and autism than ever before so tell us something of this.
The essence of Trauma as described by Bessel van der Kolk an expert on post-traumatic stress identifies dissociation as the essence of our response to trauma. Dissociation if time limited is a healthy adaptive response. It’s as if a switch connecting you to your body is turned off and you move into a state of internal disconnection which prevents you from feeling what you perceive as intolerable. So it is the escape when there is no escape. However if this dissociative state is prolonged your fundamental world view becomes distorted and you may miss the signs of danger when they are there or you may detect danger when there is none. You can say your body is still scared even though you know the danger is over.
With dissociation you may feel disoriented unreal a bit spacey confused of just different. You may drift off into your own world or be consumed by a totally different task than the one at hand or you might become clumsy bump into things and be unresponsive to your immediate environment Many people are dissociated but they aren’t able to reconnect or integrate their experiences without help. Understanding that feelings of helplessness are often part of the dissociative state is essential.
How has somatic psychology helped us understand the connection between trauma and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.
Unresolved trauma continues to live in your body. Following a traumatic experience how you feel in your body, even the way you hold your body, colors your perception of yourself and the world. Your body is either perpetually scared, on high alert and overly vigilant or shut down and disconnected to varying degrees. This causes an inner tension that heightens your perception of actual and potential danger, consciously and or unconsciously. Fear blocks your inherent love and wisdom. Your body may not know that the trauma and danger is long past even though you’re rationally aware of this.
Somatic psychology has shown that our bodies hold on to trauma and trauma can manifest in physical symptoms such as pain hormone imbalance sexual dysfunction and addiction. In addition we know that developmental trauma—that emerges when basic childhood needs are not met can result in profound emotional stress and lead to serious diseases. Building on this knowledge we can learn simple skills for connecting and calming the body balancing emotions and rewiring old patterns of reactivity for better self-regulation. The mind body approach in this book is designed to guide you away from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD toward posttraumatic growth.
Your most sacred and important relationship is with yourself. This means living as an integrated and interconnected self, a spontaneous and embodied being grounded, at home in your body, authentically expressing your essential self. When trauma disrupts or obscures your relationship with your inner being all other relationships are compromised. Without a healthy relationship with yourself, you’re vulnerable to depression shame anxiety headaches lack of self-worth lack of a sense of safety, self-judgment intrusive thoughts and loss of connection with others. And many physical ailments have been traced to trauma.
Trauma at it’s core creates disconnection and you may suffer from many emotionally mentally physically painful feelings that cause you to isolate withdraw or compromise yourself in other ways. Trauma causes fear and fear separates you from love the love that you are, and the love that you could share with others.
Some consequences are you may feel you are a horrible person or that the world is a cold and empty place or you may be self-critical feel disconnected spiritually or be excessively judgmental. Hidden rage may escape in angry outbursts.
3A Tell us about your physical biological and subtle energetic bodies. Your dad was an aikido teacher and I am a Reiki Master teacher who and understanding the universal laws of energy as well as knowing we are spiritual beings having a physical life helps us to understand the importance of experiencing your own being and interconnectedness to others the world and beyond. In both aikido and meditation by tuning into your body sensations you can feel the life force energy or life force. Life force is believed to k=prana of Indian cultures pneuma of ancient Greece and the vital force of Western philosophy. The intricacies and maps of the subtle energies body and physiology vary from tradition to tradition yet include channels points and chakras in which the flow of life force energy think acupuncture determines the characteristics and well- being of the visible physical body. In aikido we refer to this life force as ki. Rei Ki…. Ki connects our body and mind and the cosmos.
After trauma Ki is distorted, repressed or disconnected. This creates rigidity and feelings of being stuck in the body or mind.
Your life force fuels self-expression, intuition, healthy aggression, sexuality, passions, creativity, and heart’s desire. It allows you to feel alive and joyous and also to fight or flee to safety in traumatic events. During trauma you get a surge of life force energy and afterward id you don’t use discharge or integrate it it negatively can affect your physiology and psychology diminishing your aliveness and vibrancy.
I am always amazed after a healing session in seeing the light and reduction of stress and lines and worries on the face of my clients. It is as if a light within has expressed itself and shines in the joy of their realizing who they are and how they feel in connecting to their own soul essence.
What are the three exercises to reconnect and relate to your body—yourself as a whole in a new healthy way?
The first exercise is Myself, Healed Imagine a lasting transformation that you would like to happen Use your senses to imagine feel hear taste and even smell your transformed self. If you heal from trauma you could feel confident connected open joyful alive trusting fearless.
The second exercise is How I Envision Myself Healed Here we have a chart where you can examine Physical Emotional Cognitive Behavioral Social and Spiritual qualities that reflect a change in how you live life…example Social Ability to feel comfortable in a variety of social situations….Comfort in participation in activities that could not previously be done….ability to stay present when engaging with others…desire for company of others….healthy balance between work and play….healthy balance “me time” and time with others.
The third exercise is Grounding and Orienting This simple but powerful grounding and calming tool will become part of your self-soothing toolbox.
Sit in a comfortable supportive chair. Notice the state of your body. Are you relaxed nervous calm? Your body may feel numb, fearful, tingling, trembling, or agitated. You may notice feeling disoriented, or becoming emotional or disconnected.
Next feel your feet contacting the floor
Feel yourself sink into the chair
Now look around the room. Move your head slowly as you take in your surroundings. Be aware of your breathing.
If your body takes a spontaneous deep breath, feel the exhale and notice how your body responds. It will likely feel good.
Find an image of a person smiling broadly and smile back This will have a calming effect on your nervous system and your body will begin to feel a sense of safety.
An exercise to Cope with Developmental Trauma and Strategies to Survive Trauma. The good news is your brain is pliable throughout your life and your body has an inherent imperative to heal.
Trauma can color your perceptions of yourself others and the world. The adaptations patterns and behaviors you have developed were necessary to keep you safe. Sometimes these includes withdrawing from situations, rather than staying connected, zoning out, rather than remaining present, always being nice, rather than expressing how you truly feel and attending to other’s needs while not being in touch with your own. You learned these survival strategies in frightening situations such as being shamed rather than accepted, hurt rather than being comforted, ignored rather than being listened too, left alone when feeling distressed, or not held or attuned to as you needed to be to feel safe.
Over time these ways of being become familiar. Indeed, they are a normal response to embedded trauma but when in such a pattern long after the trauma is over you remain in your traumatized self. We can reprogram our minds and thoughts to recognize what happened and provide ways for the body to lean into the fear and eventually conquer it.
Every day there are reports of another tragedy loss due to floods hurricanes or fires. How do we deal with the trauma of those horrific events? can we begin to improve this situation?
Women have come to speak openly about the trauma of sexual assault and childhood abuse? How do we help heal and then prevent this abuse which has been going on in all society cultures religions forever?
The vast array of emotional physical and psychological disorders that disconnect people from their bodies vitality and others may originate beyond personal experience and your family of origin. A recent epigenetic study demonstrates trauma and its effects can be inherited from one generation to another. Your difficulties and symptoms with trauma could be inherited from your parents or grandparents, or even further back through collective trauma such as slavery racism homophobia or war related violence including genocide. You may inherit the memory epigenetically and psychologically. If trauma remains unresolved in your lineage you may experience the residual effects of that trauma symptomatically much as you would with any developmental trauma. The way your brain will develop is encode in your DNA. Experiences and environment influence the chromosomes in your DNA and how the genes express themselves and changes in them can result in positive or negative adaptations.
Though trauma can be carried for multiple generations our destinies are not set in our DNA. You can resolve trauma even when you’ve suffered it early in your life or inherited the effects of your parents and ancestor’s traumas.
How might the challenges or trauma inflicted on people of color on transgender people and immigrants be similar and or different? And how must we begin to look at these situations?
In general what are the effects of a traumatic event?
An overwhelming event such as a car accident a terminal diagnosis a fall physical abuse and emotional blow such as a divorce death or natural disaster is often referred to an acute or shock trauma.
When you experience the impact of an unexpected or very frightening event the acute trauma shocks you sending a jolt through your nervous system.
You can’t grasp the full significance at the time so it creates a trauma response in the body. As you know trauma lives in the body not the event.
Typically there is also an intense wave of emotion too intense to digest at the time and immediately afterward. You may fee intense sadness anger or rage and this may cause internal disorganization in which your body is unable to return to a state of balance. These emotions remain but are often repressed or split off from consciousness which causes disturbances in your body/mind until they are integrated
How does developmental trauma in infancy or early childhood affect you?
When your essential needs are not met when you are young it can feel dreadful inside your body then and now as the trauma is embedded throughout your body. Sadly, you didn’t know it was the environment that was insufficiently responding to you and letting you down. All you know is that you didn’t feel good inside you internalized these experiences as your owsn failures. When something bad happens, you feel it’s you who are bad. You adapt to these early life conditions with a strategy that ultimately limits your authentic self yet allows you to allow you can survive. You go through life with and inner sense of “badness” about yourself that really was not you. Or you may perceive the world as unsafe because of external circumstances dysregulating your body systems so your body feels unsafe to inhabit. Or your perception of the world and others remains stuck in survival mode and erroneous beliefs—nothing is safe, no one can be trusted and others remain stuck. You may lack self-worth or you need to fight to survive.
So developmental trauma isn’t only about what may have happened to you but what didn’t happen for you in your developing years—your essential needs weren’t met, you didn’t experience safety in your body and emotions and you couldn’t express yourself authentically in the world. You may feel shame anger or guilt and or completely shut down in response to the failure of your caregivers and environment to meet your essential needs. Typically, body motion ceases immobility and heart rate slows bradycardia with little or no sympathetic nervous system activity. You can see the shut down response in an infant child or adult with a blank face and stare. Their muscle tome may also be flaccid. The impulse to shut down is propelled by terror—its fear potentiated. This can lead to a lifetime impact of nervous system dysregulation a mind filled with unrelenting negative beliefs and feelings about yourself and the world, and bodily discomfort.
If you grew up without reliable closeness to others or shared non-verbal communication the right hemisphere’s functioning seemingly fades and you may become left hemisphere dominant, a survival strategy that denies you the ability to experience the richness of a socially and intimately engaged life, a secure feeling of safety in the body and the full range of emotions. These stressful relational perceptions of childhood are encrypted in the unconsciousness of the right brain not the left.
What would you like readers of The Body Awareness Workbook for Trauma to take away with them after reading the book?
After a shock trauma and so many of us are going to experience that in one way or another it is natural for your body to shake or tremble. Trembling is a physiological survival response a release of life force energy meant to allow your body to return to homeostasis your normal baseline of balance.
When the traumatic event is over you may be frightened from the trembling or shaking and try to stop it not releasing the excess energy but the physical response is a healthy and good thing for until that survival energy is discharged or integrated into the body the energy will remain trapped at the cellular level and can impair your immune system or emotional and social capacities. For instance you may feel emotionally numb, or in a constant state of vigilance or lose interest in connecting with others. Other symptoms include anxiety depression panic intrusive thoughts and headaches. By reconnecting with the life force that remains bound within you after the trauma you’re optimizing your ability to heal and grow.
I want to thank you Dr. Julie Brown Yau author of The Body Awareness Workbook for Trauma and giving a well detailed practical definition of Developmental Trauma Acute or Shock Trauma and Intergenerational trauma along with the encouraging suggestion that the body has an inherent will to heal and you offer many exercises to address becoming well aware of your bodies energy and ways to calm relax and engage in healing thoughts and actions to restore vitality and the immune system. To read more about life force energy trauma and healing go to www.juliebrownyau.com
In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within I hope listeners have come to understand that most people in our lives are dealing with a form of trauma from either their childhood family or an acute shock trauma and will need help psychologically physically emotionally and spiritually to heal by releasing the trapped emotions and energy within. Unfortunately many people will just expect you to get on with it don’t be a victim and put it out of your mind but the body is holding this fear and we must help the body by providing exercises as shown quite positively and effectively in this book and consistently working on ourselves to improve our health release stress allow and accept the past but not allowing the past to diminish the vibrancy and love we can create in the present moment if we realize our soul potential to weather and conquer all challenges. We can ask for help and we must know that healing is a function of mind body spirit nature. As multi-dimensional beings we possess the heart filled love to heal ourselves and our world.
Julie and I would have you know that there are many benefits to exploring your inner life and the repressed memories or fears of any developmental trauma or acute shock trauma for in finding exercises that allow you to let go of trapped energies and memories you will come to know we are souls of love and infinite possibilities and we able to heal our body mind and spirit and raise our level of awareness. The journey of life leads us to discover our human birthright which is to be able to feel and tolerate all emotions and be whole! Begin the process for the rewards you will find are well worth the effort.
I am Sheryl Glick host of Healing From Within and author of A New Life Awaits Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening which shares how we may understand the complex happenings in todays world not as political economic social religious problems but a disconnect from Spirit and offers ways to know your multi -dimensional life force or energy for creating a healthy joyful and purposeful life both here and beyond the physical life plane. Go to my website www.sherylglick to read about and listen to visionaries and leaders in metaphysics science spirituality psychology medical practitioners educators and the music and arts share ways to know life death and creation in its finer aspects. Shows may also be heard on www.webtalkradio.net and www.dreamvisionsradio.com
