Trauma Training Tip
August. We enter the 5th season in the Lunar Calendar – Late Summer. The air is thick. Our bodies may feel dense and heavy. It is the season of the Earth Element, and the Stomach and Spleen.
In the context of the self-protective response, the Stomach and Spleen are responsible for “digesting the gristle” and “harvesting the lessons.” When we experience a life-threatening event, our organs of digestion are temporarily shut down so all our energy can go to our muscles and joints to mobilize our fight or flight response. It can be challenging to “digest” or “harvest” much of anything!
This shut-down is intended to be temporary. However, if it becomes habituated with repeated stressors, or a sense of life threat in infancy, our capacity to transform food as well as life experiences may become compromised. It may be hard for us to assimilate lessons from life experiences – and our ability to accurately identify what we “know in our guts” may be compromised. We may be constantly feeling wounded, and needing the sympathetic care and attention of others. This is also the basis for the many versions of gut disturbance we see in many trauma survivors – GERD, obesity, alternating constipation and diarrhea, or inflammatory bowel disease.
This shut-down is intended to be temporary. However, if it becomes habituated with repeated stressors, or a sense of life threat in infancy, our capacity to transform food as well as life experiences may become compromised. It may be hard for us to assimilate lessons from life experiences – and our ability to accurately identify what we “know in our guts” may be compromised. We may be constantly feeling wounded, and needing the sympathetic care and attention of others. This is also the basis for the many versions of gut disturbance we see in many trauma survivors – GERD, obesity, alternating constipation and diarrhea, or inflammatory bowel disease.
Thankfully, we have a variety of interactive and touch techniques to help restore regulation. We can invite body awareness of emotional states – “As you remember your Grandmother’s sugar cookies, what do you notice in your body?” We can also invite peristalsis and Qi to return to the organs of digestion with a thoughtful presence and gentle touch over the belly.You may hear gurgles, burps, or farts. Celebrate these bowel sounds! It means peristalsis and Qi is returning to the organs of digestion. They are coming back on-line and reclaiming their capacity to “digest the gristle” and “harvest the lessons.”
Alaine’s Two Cents
This month’s newsletter honors the passing of John Chitty. John and his wife, Anna Chitty, founded the Colorado School of Energy Studies. Over his long life, John wove a rich fabric of teachings – rooted in biodynamic cranial therapy, polarity therapy, and polyvagal theory. He was a gifted clinician, teacher, and spokesperson for healing in our world.
John and Anna generously gave Chapter 6 “The Autonomic Nervous System” from their book, Dancing with Yin and Yang: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Psychotherapy and Randolph Stone’s Polarity Therapy, (Colorado School of Energy Studies, Inc. Polarity Press. 2013.) as a free on-line offering. In it, they have made the complexity of polyvagal theory accessible and operational for clinicians of all stripes. I highly recommend studying it.
Here is John, teaching Dancing With Yin and Yang: Understanding “Love.” John Chitty was a gentle and gracious soul and a gift to our beautiful and complicated world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csGSTdxfWoQ
Check This Out!
I am so honored to be featured on a Qiological podcast! Michael Max is a thoughtful clinician and a master interviewer. Listen here as he leads us in a discussion of how the fact of trauma is less important than how we move through the cycle of resolution. As he says, “As we know from Chinese medicine, when things stagnate there are going to be problems. But if there is movement, then the healthy qi of a system will work to help us to resolve the difficulties and bring us to a place of harmony, health, and resilience.”
Be on the look-out for “Part 2”, coming up on Qiological in the near future.
Clinical Curiosity
Where is your clinical curiosity carrying you?
Send me a question or two and I will explore them with readers in this corner next month.
Q. I did viscera work last night on my client with complex PTSD. She did a lot of processing and really (mostly) enjoyed it. Today she reports a blinding headache with nausea that started around 2 a.m. She also mentioned that something similar but less intense happened with her belly last week after I did the brain stem hold.
Comments/reassurances/alarms?
A. So glad you are taking opportunities to practice this work!
I think you are gaining an appreciation for the importance of titration of your interventions, particularly with fragile people.
It is often the case when there is a lot of arousal in the viscera that your client has experienced traumatic stress as an infant. She didn’t have capacity to modulate her own arousal back then – and your touch may wake up somatic memories that are overwhelming. Very important to go slow and be deliberate.
She may benefit from a few sessions that start with the Kidney/Adrenal work and then move to the viscera. You may find that you need to remove your hand from her Kidney/Adrenal system if her organs start to move and the loss of a habituated braced state feels unsafe. Remove your hand and allow her to re-calibrate before you go back to her Kidney.
When you do go to her viscera, you may need to sit beside her and invite her hands to hold her own belly – or she may want a pillow between her belly and your hands.
Look for peristalsis, belly sounds – burps or farts. These are signs of a return of qi and function to her organs of digestion. Beautiful music!
I would ask her to let you know how she’s doing and keep a close tab on her so she knows she has your presence and concern.
When working with trauma survivors, there are two risks – we can either keep it safe, missing the trauma physiology completely – or, in our efforts to access trauma remaining in the tissues, we can over-treat and cause an abreaction. Of the two, I say it is preferable to risk the abreaction and learn something than to always keep it safe.
What do you think?