Aquatic bodywork and trauma healing: After Peter Levine, PhD. NICABM Seminar title: Healing Trauma Through Somatic Experiencing
This post is part of the series New treatments for trauma: a review with special reference to aquatics. (Subscribe to keep up with future posts here.)
When an aquatic bodywork client shows subtle shifts in posture, or parts of the body begin trembling, vibrating, pulsing, or moving in other ways, they may be showing signs of the somatic release of old trauma. This is a natural, healing response shared with other mammals. Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing® method demonstrates why the body matters so much in trauma healing. He also talks of a possible link with ecstatic states.
The yogi's judicious use of natural forces [kundalini] can be compared to the farmer who floods his fields one by one within their earthen banks, letting the water thoroughly drench the soil before breaking open a new channel into another. For safety's sake, the yogi employs method and restraint so as to use nature's energy intelligently to gain wisdom. BKS Iyengar Judicious use of natural forces (kundalini yoga)
Somatic Experiencing® is a body-awareness approach to trauma that is based upon the realization that humans have an innate ability to overcome the effects of trauma. This is the seminar I was most looking forward to in the NICABM series; it was so popular that a repeat play was requested and 7,752 practitioners signed up representing countries all over the world.
Peter Levine outlined what animals can teach us about the experience and resolution of trauma and what it is about human biology in particular that can turn this natural response into pathology. He related this to the neocortex, a part of the brain that is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language.
When restrained, animals go into tonic immobility - they stop moving and lose muscle tone. If frightened before or after a traumatic event the immobility response can go on indefinitely. In people, fright can remain for a long time also, since the neocortex resists the response that moves someone out of immobility - 'fear of fear'. It is important then to uncouple fear from immobility.
To provide a metaphor for this, Peter invited listeners to look at their open hand, then make a fist - this is like trauma he said. Opening that fist reveals your hand but where did the fist go? Trauma recedes through this rhythm of contraction and expansion (called 'pendulation' in Somatic Experiencing® terminology). The fundamental aim of SE is to re-educate the neocortex to experience this natural healing rhythm.
This immediately struck me as resembling one of the rhythms of aquatic bodywork where the whole body and its limbs are expanded out and folded in many times during a session. In my post, Aquatic bodywork and trauma healing, Diane Tegtmeier describes pendulation as 'releasing and resourcing'. She has incorporated this concept into the aquatic training program for trauma healing that she is currently developing with Inika Sati (a Somatic Experiencing® practitioner).
How a practitioner responds to someone who has entered a trauma state can affect their healing. Peter Levine sees the immobility response as an 'arrest' after which an animal or person orients towards the danger and moves into fight-or-flight or seeks help. If someone is frightened as they come out of freeze (or the therapist working with them becomes afraid - postural and facial aspects of fear are immediately picked up), the trauma may be reinforced.
Deepening core awareness and the implications for aquatic bodywork, Part 3: Some ways of working with the psoas on land and in water (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extract: Somatic Experiencing®. This body-oriented method of working with trauma, developed by Peter Levine, has been mentioned in Parts 1 and 2. He believes that trauma is the result of physiology, not psychology, specifically our instinctual fight/ flight drives. According to this approach, discharge of repressed emotions is not sufficient to address underlying developmental and psychophysiological stress. A practitioner is trained to notice subtle shifts in posture or parts of the body trembling, vibrating, pulsing, or moving in other ways. They then guide someone in following their internal sensations while staying very present....This technique appear to have much to offer as an adjunct to psoas-trauma healing, especially where resolution and reintegration is needed in addition to releases. Read more.
Kundalini and trauma processing
At the end of this NICABM seminar with Peter, I was thrilled to hear his brief mention of the possible connection between effective trauma processing and the release of kundalini energy through the chakras of the body. This link is something I've been exploring in the water also, as described in An aquatic kriya: the bodywave.
He pointed out that some ecstatic states include combinations of sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal, but without the fear that triggers trauma. This brings me full circle to Bill O'Hanlon's insights into the positive value of trance in the first seminar of the NICABM series. Working in this arena requires skill and subtlety; and also a willingness to explore beyond the boundaries of conventional understanding.
Questions: 1. Have you used the 'releasing and resourcing' cycle in your own practice? Give an example? 2. Do you have any thoughts on this possible link between ecstatic states and trauma? (Add your comments below. Please be careful to protect the confidentiality of clients in anything you share.)
I'll leave you with some extracts from further posts on Aquapoetics that explore kundalini, altered states, shadow work, and energy healing in the context of aquatic bodywork and trauma work. A full list of other posts I have extracted to use in this series on trauma is also given below. Please enjoy browsing and commenting on the blog or writing to me wherever you feel inspired to do so.
An aquatic kriya: the bodywave (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extracts: I have a body
that has tended to be physically expressive (especially in water) of the
impact of not only physical but also emotional and spiritual
experiences in my life. From a difficult birth to the usual gamut of
life challenges, I have found bodywork to be an intriguing way to bear
witness to and (in my subjective experience) transform positively the
negative effects these mind-body-spirit impacts have had. The bodywave
was an effect that opened me up to this 'healing' possibility more fully
than I believe would otherwise have occurred.
...
There is the
additional curious finding that even though an outside person can see
the distortions or twitches or jerks the person's body makes, the person
themselves is often completely unaware of them. They go into a kind of
trance state which seems to prevent 'normal' inhibition of these
movements. It is possible that this is just a curious side-effect of
nervous system dis-inhibition that occurs in some people and has no
benefit or significance regards health or otherwise. It is also possible
that it does have a benefit. So far, my informal questioning of those
who have neuroscientific backgrounds has not produced any useful
insights into this.*
In my own experience as a receiver, there
have been phases during which my body repeated strange nervous system
effects. It's important to note that I am always aware of these
effects, but I am able to allow them, and that this is a choice I make.
After a certain time and repetition, and perhaps the consciousness I
brought to them as body memories (reactions to trauma) that were no
longer appropriate or necessary, most of these effects have stopped
happening. I believe that this made a difference to me - a beneficial
one. But it is no quick fix and it requires a certain willing
surrender. Also I can't prove the benefit, or that it was due to the
water work.
*I now realize that these insights may be provided by the
new studies of trauma and neurobiology.
Read more.
A return to the water (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) This is the first of a series of five posts inspired by my own personal aquatic therapy work as a receiver in 2009. I worked with Inika Sati, Diane Tegtmeier and Sunheart, all practitioners based at Harbin Hot Springs, home of Watsu. The series also takes my explorations of altered states, kundalini and shadow work to deeper levels. Extract: My personal experience is that the physical body is intimately linked with and affected by state of consciousness; and that both exist within a dynamic energy field that immersion in body-temperature water can be extraordinarily effective in revealing and transforming. I believe that attending to the troubles of the body in the purely physical dimension is not as likely to be of lasting value, or as effective in healing, as setting the body in a context where its energy field can be attended to also. Water offers such a setting. Read more.
Pristine waters: murky depths (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extract: We ought to be as willing and capable of guiding someone through the murky, monster-ridden deep as we are at playing in the pristine, glistening realm of spiritual waters. And for that, it's best to be well-acquainted with both places ourselves.....Ideally we hold space for both aspects when working in water since aquatic bodywork seems to trigger both transcendent and descendant experiences in people. Read more.
Water bridges a therapeutic gap (elsewhere on Aquapoetics) Extract: Water is not only a bridge between energy and matter, but also between the conscious and unconscious minds, the rational and the emotional, waking state reality and altered states, and the subjective and objective realms. Currently science does not know how to bridge this gap. Read more.
Go back:
Select list of other posts on this blog mentioned in this review of trauma treatments (click link)
