Trauma Training Tip
Photo by Antonio Lorenzana Bermejo via Pexels
We are moving out of the Spring/Wood phase of the Taoist agricultural cycle and into the Summer/Fire phase. All those flowers that came in spring are turning towards maturity and setting fruit. I see berries on the serviceberry trees and wee green figs on the fig tree. Perhaps you are seeing the flowers on your tomato plants turning into small green, hard fruits – portending sweet red juiciness in Late Summer?
The ancient Taoists taught us to live in harmony with the seasons to find health. The Summer is the time of the heart. Look for, and you will find support for cultivating cardiac coherence, building relationships, and enjoying playfulness in this season.
In terms of Western neurophysiology, it is a time when cultivating the Ventral Vagus nerve will be most available to us. The Ventral Vagus, also known as the “Soul Nerve” by Resmaa Menakem or the “Social Engagement System” by Peter Levine, is the critical foundation for our capacity to walk towards each other so that eventually we can walk with each other. This capacity to find and trust each other is the most critical capacity for us to cultivate in these chaotic and movement-building times.
The Ventral Vagus nerve is the most important brake we have on a mobilization response that is unable to respond in ways that are commensurate with the level of threat in this current experience. We need to be able to see the humanity in each other in order to use that Spring/Mobilization response in a relational way. As I have often said, and I will say it again — All Healing Rests In Embodied Experiences of Kinship!
Clinicians have a special role to play in supporting and cultivating the Ventral Vagus Nerve. When our Ventral Vagus nerve is functioning well, we “play well with others,” we have capacity to think in nuanced and creative ways, and we find overall coherence and health in our physiology and our psychology.
My tip? Find experiences of playful, meaningful, and heart-felt connection. It’s a tough world out there, and these kinds of experiences will help us be more creative, more clever and more nuanced in how we respond to the challenges we are facing. When we are operating from a state of cardiac coherence, we have the full arsenal of our frontal cortex available to discern our next steps forward. And we won’t take those steps alone – we never should. It’s a great time to come together and build the kind of community we all want to live in.
Alaine’s Two Cents
All Healing Rests In Embodied Experiences of Kinship
Put a rat in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water and one is water laced with heroin or cocaine. The rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself in a couple of weeks. That is our theory of addiction.
“Aerial View” of Rat Park, North Wing
https://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park
Bruce Alexander came along in the ’70s and said, “Let’s try this differently.” He constructed Rat Park, an ideal haven for rat – delectable food, ample opportunities for mating, companionship with other rats, and colorful balls for recreation. There are two water bottles in Rat Park, one containing regular water and the other with drugged water. In Rat Park, the rats show a disinterest in the drugged water. They scarcely consume it, and none of them succumb to an overdose. What Bruce Alexander did shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is that it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, and you party too hard. The left-wing theory is that it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Alexander says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
Now, we’ve created a society where significant numbers of us can’t bear to be present in our lives without being on something, drinking, drugs, having sex, shopping… We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of it, is geared toward making us connect with things, not people. You are not a good consumer citizen if you spend your time bonding with the people around you and not stuff. We are trained from a young age to focus our hopes, dreams, and ambitions on things to buy and consume. Drug addiction is a subset of that.
The Ventral Vagus nerve helps us find the nourishing, heart-felt connection we all need.
Check This Out!
Linh Le is a Tao of Trauma Clinical Assistant and member of the TOT Community & Cultural Transformation Group. She’s cultivating a practice around “Return to Yin” with Substack articles, in-person and online workshops, as well as her acupuncture and herbal medicine practice.
Here’s one of her articles on the Fire Element and Unlocking the Wisdom of the Heart.
Here’s her website with info about her on-line Return to Yin and Courage Rising Programs.
Here’s her substack account: https://substack.com/@drlinhlove
Enjoy, learn, and grow!
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 suffered a blast injury while serving in the Army in Iraq. She feels very disoriented and confused and has so much pain, just about everywhere. She is only in her 30’s and had been very healthy her whole life. In all the obvious ways, she should be “recovered” – but she has so much pain, even after several years. She feels disconnected from herself – and challenged to connect with the people in her life who actually do love her. I believe she is a Fire Survivor type.
A:
So glad she has you! An injury like this one – where her whole body was disturbed can be very hard to heal from and can certainly affect her ability to connect with herself and others. She likely knocked her connective tissue “katy-wompus.” Our connective tissue or fascia, both surrounds and connects all of our body tissues to each other. When we experience a blast injury, it injures this whole fabric of connection. In Chinese medicine, the fascia is the yin expression of the Triple Heater – also called the Triple Energizer. It is known as an “organ with a name, but no place.” It has only recently been identified in western physiology.
I would suggest some gentle touch work on her connective tissue. Go to a “soft” place, such as the back of upper arm, where the Triple Heater meridian flows. Bring your attention to the matrix of tissue that creates the structure that connects and separates her muscles, blood vessels, and bones. Since she is a Fire type and we are working with a Fire meridian, bring “love” to your touch. Go to your heart, and then bring your heart’s energy down your arm and hand and into her arm. You are looking for a vibration that will help restore tone to this important structure.
It can be quite volatile, because it is so comprehensive. Go slow. Be steady. You will help her find regulation, coherence, and connection.