Trauma Training Tip
It’s Fall here in the Mid-Atlantic. Air is crisp(er), skies are clear and sparkly, and leaves are just beginning to turn.
In the Self-Protective Response, the energy of Metal, the element most resonant with the vibration of Fall, supports our capacity for somatic mindfulness. Hence the start of the Tao of Trauma series is in the Fall! (Early Bird deadline extended to October 1!)
The Po — translated as Animal Soul — is the spirit of the Metal. It helps us recognize the messages in our bodies — what PolyVagal theory calls our interoceptive awareness. Our Po helps us use primal embodied instincts well — like grabbing a handrail as we start to fall down the stairs, or lifting our hand as a ball comes to our head. Our Animal Soul guides us instinctively.
Many, perhaps most, of our experiences of “too much, too fast, with inadequate support” involved our bodies. The fear or terror or rage that remains behind incomplete responses to threat may be too overwhelming to engage with. Thankfully, we can “leave” our body when we experience it as a dangerous place to live in. This is helpful in the short term — but costly in the long term. The cost of doing business with this necessary protection, is a loss of our interoceptive awareness.
When we leave, our Qi leaves too — and we need our Qi to reside fully in our tissues for us to function well. Without interoception, we may not know when we need to put a hat or coat on, when we are hungry, what we are hungry for, who is safe to engage with and who is not. It is probably our most important and most under-recognized sense.
Alaine’s Two Cents
In her book, In Our Element: Using the Five Elements as Soul Medicine to Unleash Your Personal Power, Lindsay Fauntleroy weaves together Eastern medicine, Western psychology, Indigenous traditions, and African ancestral principles of spirituality. With a practical approach that incorporates journal prompts, flower essences, yoga poses, and music, Lindsay teaches you how to tap into the five elements for a balanced and empowered life that aligns with your soul’s calling.
I highly recommend this important contribution to cultivating and maintaining ancient healing traditions that meet modern life.
You can purchase your copy here, or wherever you buy books online. It’s available in audio and paper!
Check This Out!
The Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness or MAIA
This is a tool developed by Wolf E. Mehling, MD at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco to explore our capacity for interoception, or somatic mindfulness.
I encourage you to explore this useful tool — by yourself and with your patients. Come back to it from time to time as a measure of how well you are doing at returning to your tissues — and restoring your balance and regulation.
https://osher.ucsf.edu/sites/osher.ucsf.edu/files/inline-files/MAIA2%202018.05.27.pdf
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: My patient is in her 60’s. Her Mom told her that her first visit to a dermatologist for eczema was on her 2ndbirthday. As an 11-year old she spent a week and a half in the hospital with severe, oozing, weeping, scabby, itchy, bleeding skin sores. She was prescribed lots of steroids as well as oatmeal baths and dietary restrictions. She describes her childhood home as “volatile,” with a Mom who was narcissistic and demanding and a largely absent, but loving, Dad. While she doesn’t have eczema anymore, she does experience lots of challenges around boundaries. She often over-does and it’s hard for her to recognize the difference between when she’s pushing and when she’s flowing. She feels anxious a lot of the time. Got any ideas?
A: I have a lot of ideas!
This small baby was likely overwhelmed and perhaps neglected by her narcissistic Mom and absent Dad. Babies tend to store overwhelm in their guts, in their whole digestive system. Our gut biome is critically important for producing T-cells and neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine — and hence managing our inflammatory response as well as emotional distress.
The skin, known as the 3rd lung, is the tissue associated with the Lung and the Colon and the Metal Element. The lining of our guts and our skin are contiguous with one another. When there is inflammation in our guts, it often shows in our skin. She had reason for considerable alarm as a neglected infant, developmentally unable to soothe herself and a Mom emotionally unable to do it for her.
I suggest you work with her skin — perhaps first inviting her attention to join with yours — and then with touch. Bring the quality of respect — the resource word for the Metal Element — to your engagement and your touch. Help her “find” her skin and notice whatever interoceptive awareness comes to her. She will likely go through several waves of activation and deactivation in this important boundary organ.
As you help her cultivate a regulated wave in her embodied experience of her skin, she will organically find a healthier boundary and more emotional regulation too.
So glad she has you!