Trauma Training Tip
August. Ripe peaches. Juicy tomatoes. Zucchini that won’t stop. Late Summer is all about the harvest. All of nature is getting prepared for the descent into the quiet of Fall and Winter. Like the bears who feast on spawning salmon to prepare for hibernation – we too will plump-up a bit in this season of abundance to prepare for the leaner times that are coming.
The Spleen and the Stomach are the organs of Late Summer. Their job is to receive food and transform it into the unique Qi/Energy that each and every cell of our body needs to flourish.
The Spleen and Stomach don’t only support the transformation of food into energy. They also support the transformation and integration of life experiences into life lessons. They help us harvest or assimilate life lessons that are inherent in every experience – the ones we label as “good” as well as the ones we label as “bad.” We may need to break down these lessons into digestible bits in order to get all their nuanced expression. The energy of this season can help us “plump up” our reservoir of critical life lessons!
We have moved through the agricultural cycle. There have likely been helpful seasons in your year – and also some that were challenging. These functions of the Spleen and Stomach are highly available in this season, to help us digest the gristle remaining from the challenging moments in our year and transform them into lessons that help us navigate life with more ease in the future.
We can be kind to our Spleen and Stomach in this season by taking in good nourishment – from food, people, experiences, and thoughtful reflection. We may find ourselves craving sweets, as sweet is the taste associated with the Earth season. A small amount of sweet will stimulate the Earth – and too much will overburden and overtax it. Celebrate the peaches and cherries, and maybe cultivate a “no” for the donuts and candy-bars!
Alaine’s Two Cents
We are entering a very important Earth season. As a nation, as a world’s people, we have been asked to digest a lot this year! We have a lot of gristle to work through!
If we responded with a strong mobilization response, we may have compromised the peristalsis in our guts – and our capacity for harvesting the lessons that are here for us from this challenging year.
Similarly, if we responded with a strong fear response, the function of our Heart to give us a steady rhythm and whole body regulation may have been similarly compromised.
As we slowly and carefully emerge from quarantine, feed those you love quality food and supportive experiences, take time for thoughtful reflection, look for and celebrate all the nourishment you find in your life!
Check This Out!
Too many people are suffering with “long tail” symptoms of Covid 19 infection. Diverse organs can be affected, with fatigue as a common primary complaint.
In this article, Jane Grissmer, Director of Crossings Healing and Wellness in Silver Spring, MD, guides us in an exploration of the “roots and branches” theory of Chinese medicine. She anchors her work in the Law of the Five Elements as a powerful tool for getting to the “root” of imbalance, and seeing people’s unique expression beyond formulaic protocols.
Part 2, with patient case studies, will be coming in the September issue of Acupuncture Today. Keep an eye out for it.
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’ve read about “over-coupling” and “under-coupling” in your book The Tao of Trauma – but I wonder if you would explain more.
A.
Sure – this is a really important framework for understanding how humans manage and organize their experiences of fear or overwhelm.
When we experience fear, we organize our internal experience by either over-coupling to it (we focus almost exclusively on the fear that comes along with every aspect of the experience) or under-coupling (we avoid anything associated with this experience because it’s too frightening, so we ignore them).
In the example of being side swiped on the right by a blue pickup truck – if we are over-coupled, we won’t trust any blue pickup trucks and we will pay more attention to the right side of our car while driving. If we are under-coupled, we can’t look to the right because it is too scary and will only pay attention to the left side. Neither coupling strategy helps to keep us safe – even though that’s what we think we are doing.
The helpful thing for people who are over-coupled is to help them notice in an embodied way how “this” situation is different from “that” situation. If they are under-coupled, help them notice how “this” situation is similar to “that” situation.
- If a co-worker reminds a person of a former perpetrator in an over-coupled way that is triggering – help them notice how “this” person is different from “that” person.
- If a person repeatedly gets injured riding their motorcycle in dare devil ways – help them notice how “this” stunt is similar to “that” stunt.
- Use tick-tock and embodied awareness to help them notice these similarities and differences.
It’s not about us lecturing to them, it’s about their embodied experiences of untangling the coupling dynamic.
The ultimate goal is to harvest life-giving and expansive lessons rather than ones that contract us and make our world small. The Earth helps us break down our experiences into digestible bits – so we can assimilate the “good” and pass the “bad” on to our Colon for elimination.
Good luck! Important work.