Trauma Training Tip
Photo by Nancy Ottevaere via Pexels
It’s Fall. The time of the Metal Element, the “Awaken Arousal” phase of the Self-Protective Response – and the time for cultivating the critical capacity for curiosity over conclusions, and somatic mindfulness over cognitive judgment.
Each of the 5 Elements, when nourished and flexible, offer us what I call critical capacities for living well in community. The Metal both “Awakens Arousal” in the Self-Protective Response, and when it is healthy and flexible, has the capacity to awaken us to new things in our environment with curiosity rather than a sense of threat. We live life in a somatically mindful way that is expansive and enriching. When a new family moves in down the street that speaks a different language or dresses differently, we are curious, and not threatened. Curiosity is parasympathetic.
In order to ensure a healthy tension in the “creation” cycle described by the 5 Elements, there is also a “control” cycle. The Fire Element controls Metal. Metal needs the warmth of Fire to help make it pliable and flexible. Without healthy Fire, the Metal can be brittle, rigid, and authoritarian – it can’t find curiosity, and it can’t find embodied experiences of kinship – a sense of relationship with people different from ourselves. Such a relationship is critical for a pluralistic democracy with respect for the dignity of all people.
The critical capacity of the Fire is love. Love nourishes Fire – and brings flexibility to the Metal. It controls the negative consequences of a highly disturbed Metal. Please join me in holding the Heart of our nation in yours.
Alaine’s Two Cents
The Metal Season is a beautiful time to look for and find inspiration. Our Lungs are Metal’s organ, and their job is to receive the inspiration of the heavens. Please enjoy these words from Dr. Jaiya John, who was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico, and is an internationally recognized ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and keynote speaker. More about Dr. John here: https://jaiyajohn.com/
Dr. John’s images of the dynamic relationship and functions of the Lung (to receive inspiration and know perfection in the midst of imperfection) and the Colon (to transform the residue of our digestion and eliminate what is no longer helpful) are quite beautiful and insightful.
Our sediment is being stirred. What was at the bottom is coming to the top. Some of it is horrific. Devastating. Diseased.
And some of it is an uprising of human beauty against the machine that we have never seen before. Stay close to the beauty. Be its devoted ambassador. Plant seeds.
Jaiya John says: In the beginning, two spirits roamed every soul. One was Love. The other, fear. Fear, being restless and insecure, mutated into two other spirits, supremacy and inferiority. Both of these would inhabit every human soul and space, forever. Waiting. To be fed.
Dr. John goes on to say: “my lifelong calling and work is freedom from the sickness of supremacy and inferiority. Freedom from oppression. Freedom to live a beautiful life. Food, water, and shelter are nothing if the one being fed, watered, and sheltered is immersed in the profound suffering that is poverty of the soul. I am grateful to carry out the humanitarian work of feeding souls the bread and breath of Love, compassion, and hope.”
Check This Out!
New Soulthentic Podcast Episode on Coherence in the Diaphragm System
Check out the latest podcast interview that Deb DeAngeles and I did with Linh Le of the Soulthentic Podcast.
The YouTube link is embedded above. And here are links to the podcast episode on Apple and Spotify.
There is still room in the workshop on November 8-9, 2025 in Leawood, Kansas if you would like to join us! Click on the flyer below for more info and to register.
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 40’s. She recently lost both her grandmothers and her mother-in-law. She comes from a family who carries great respect, even reverence, for members of their matriarchy. These 3 losses, all in one year, have been devastating. She has developed nearly daily migraine headaches, which she has never had before. They are quite debilitating, often resulting in nausea and vomiting. How do you suggest I work with her? I am a bodyworker.
A:
So glad she has you!
You will be able to be of great service to her by working distally from her head, with the diaphragm system. There are 7 primary diaphragms in our bodies – including 3 in our skull. Likely one or more of them is braced and blocking fluid movement through the brain tissue.
Right now her head is a quite volatile location – and one of the wonderful things about working with the diaphragms is the ability to work distally from acute symptoms. You would run the risk of overwhelm and create conditions for even greater brace or collapse were you to go directly to her head.
I recommend you begin with the “respect” touch on her respiratory diaphragm. Our lungs are responsible for helping us manage grief and loss. She is carrying very strongly held experiences of loss in her lungs – and her respiratory diaphragm. It is a likely spot for overwhelming grief to be lodged in our tissues. The respect touch belongs to the “metal.” This is a touch with “air” in it – it is delicate and respectful – as if you are holding a rare, valuable and fragile antique vase. It will bring an energetic quality that speaks to what is missing for her. Supporting regulation in the respiratory diaphragm will send a regulating message up to the shoulder diaphragm, and then to the 3 diaphragms in the skull. By engaging her distally, she may be better able to receive the regulating message her head is longing for.
The diaphragm system is a common place we use to help us manage emotional overwhelm. The brace or collapse then influences the adjacent diaphragms and the organs in-between.
Go slow. There is likely some overwhelm stored in her diaphragm system. Invite her to experience the full expression of the life force that is braced in her respiratory diaphragm. It will help her body create a de-activation cycle that will support her overall regulation. Once there is more regulation in her respiratory diaphragm, I suspect that vibration will carry a regulating message to her head.