Trauma Training Tip
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February. Big month. Black History Month. Lunar New Year. Welcoming the Year of the Snake – a powerful symbol of transformation and change. And all those Executive Orders. There is some turbulence and there are some urges for mobilization in the air.
Spring is emerging, and bringing nature’s Mobilization Response along with it! Lots of unknowns, some fear, some grief, some anger. We don’t know exactly what’s gonna be in our omelette – but we know there are some eggs getting cracked!
These are turbulent times. Perhaps the most potent, most important question of the day is “What are you doing to find your coherence, to find your grounding, in times like these?”
It’s the very beginning of the Wood season. The sap has started running in the trees. The nascent impulse of spring is beginning to take shape and form.
Spring is the representative of the mobilization response in the Self Protective Response. The questions for the Wood Element is “Are my actions for mobilization commensurate with the level of threat that I am experiencing?”
I would add – when I do feel an impulse to mobilize around an issue, event, or person – does my mobilization response remain inside my zone of resiliency? Or do I “rust my pipes” with stress chemistry? Can I experience arousal, success ,and de-activation all within my personal capacity for regulation?
The risks of going outside my zone in my impulses for mobilization are great. We lose access to our ventral vagus nerve and our capacity for nuanced, thoughtful, relational qualities to our actions. Our capacity to be strategic in our choices gets compromised – at its logical conclusion, we become “blind with rage.” Not helpful.
Can we make good use of our mobilization response, our very benevolent and organic desire to protect and defend ourselves and those we perceive to be vulnerable without going into stress chemistry?
Healers have so much to offer as we work to serve regulation, coherence, grounding in our patients. And of course, it all starts with our own regulation.
Alaine’s Two Cents
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.
We birth Freedom at Dawn.
– Jaiya John
Read more about Jaiya John’s work at https://jaiyajohn.com/
Check This Out!
In Honor of Black History Month, I’d like to lift up the life and contributions of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords in Brooklyn, NY. They mobilized a movement that sought to end heroin addiction in their community with acupuncture. Their leader was Dr. Mutulu Shakur, the step father of Tupac Shakur.
While their initiative led to what is now known as the NADA protocol, they are often left out of the story.
This film, “Dope is Death” tells the story of these trailblazing healers. It’s a great watch.
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 his early 40’s. He took quite a fall while out for a run. He broke his fall with his hand and it appears jammed his arm all the way up to his cervical vertebrae. He now has numbness and tingling in his forefinger and thumb. He’s seen a chiropractor, but he says it feels mechanical and like it’s not reaching deeply enough. He is a Wood survivor type. Got any suggestions?
A.
Great question! So many issues.
This story is why you hear me say “all clinicians need to know something about managing trauma survivors.” His fall may not have been a capital T trauma, but there is a way that falls can be very disorienting to our kinesthetic and proprioceptive senses. Our world gets turned upside down, we don’t know which way is up and we can feel pretty jumbled inside. Thus, it’s not enough to repair the tissues, or move tissues back into alignment without also paying attention to the autonomic nervous system impact of the fall.
This is also where knowing someone’s survivor type can be so helpful. We know the Wood governs tendons and ligaments – so likely some of his overwhelm is in the tendons, ligaments, and the peripheral diaphragms of his wrist/elbow/shoulder that the ligaments contain.
I would start distally, with a “support/Wood” touch on his wrist. Come underneath with a very slight impulse of support or lifting, barely discernible — and track sensations that emerge in his elbow or shoulder. We’re looking for movements towards re-organization and regulation. I think you’ll see them!
All good wishes to him and you!