Trauma Training Tip
The recent snowfall here in the mid-Atlantic has made it clear – We are in Winter!
Chinese medicine teaches us that health is found in living in harmony with the energy of the seasons. In Winter, we, like the bears in the woods and turtles in the mud, are called to rest and reflect – to charge-up reserves of energy that will be stored in our Kidney and available to be spent all year long.
The Kidney’s partner in the Water Element is the Bladder. Its job is to manage the “spending” of our Qi. In our modern culture, it is easy to over-spend our Qi, dribbling or leaking precious energy resources.
In Chinese medicine, the Fire Element (in particular the Heart), is said to govern the Mind; and the Water Element (the Kidney and Bladder), govern the Brain. My interpretation is that the Heart governs the frontal cortex – and all the social engagement functions of the Ventral Vagus nerve – and the Kidney and its partner, the Bladder, govern the Brain Stem and all the primal regulatory functions managed by the Dorsal Vagus nerve.
The Bladder meridian is the longest meridian in our body. It runs from the inner corner of our eyes, over our head, alongside our brain stem and spinal column and down the back of our legs, ending at the corner of our small toes. We can use touch and/or needles to this meridian to influence regulation and balance of the Dorsal Vagus Nerve and the brain stem.
The brain stem is the location of the structures that help us recognize and interpret fear and signal threat. If we have been unable to experience a sense of closure to arousal in these structures, we may live in constant fear. We will be challenged to distinguish discomfort from fear – and can make tragic mistakes.
Placing your hand under the neck where the brain stem emerges out of the foramen magnum can be a powerful intervention for survivors who experienced profound fear at a very young age or repeated experiences of overwhelming fear as adults. A fear that continues to have a grip on them.
Alaine’s Two Cents
Survivors who manage their experience of threat by holding their body rigidly, engaging in “black and white” thinking and who have trouble distinguishing fear from discomfort can be very challenging to work with. Yet – the necessity to help them soften their experience of terror, and find more congruence and fluidity in their Kidney-Heart axis can mean the world to the safety of their families and communities.
Healers can make such a difference in the creation of safe communities and families by restoring the brain stem to regulation. We have so much to offer our world!
Check This Out!
The thalamus is located just above the brain stem. It is often referred to as a “relay station” for sensory and motor information from the body to the brain. It can play a major role in how we understand or interpret sensations – including pain. It also supports our capacity for attention, focus, and consciousness.
Interested in more on the brain stem and the thalamus? Check out this YouTube video.
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 a “Water type.” She has chronic and debilitating lower back pain. I’ve treated many of her Kidney and Bladder meridian points – both locally and distally. Treatment seems to help temporarily, but doesn’t hold. Do you have suggestions?
A. I’m curious about you doing some touch work with attention on her brain stem – and your intention focused on cultivating spaciousness or ease in and around her thalamus. Every sensation that happens “south” of the brain stem travels through the thalamus for interpretation by the higher brain centers. If this region of the brain is either tight and braced or flaccid and lacking tone, it can give false information about pain to the cerebral cortex.
Whatever injury or experience that gave rise to her back pain may actually be healed – but her brain stem is so dysregulated by consuming fear, that it is not allowing accurate interpretation of sensations to move through her thalamus to her cerebral cortex.
Care needs to be taken with such touch. Titration of the sensations that may wake up with this attention is critical.
Use your attention, intention, and resonance to cultivate an experience of co-regulation. Go slow. Be attentive to their interoceptive/sensate experience and move gently between the arousal that may be stored there and experiences of coherence that will grow out of the movement of Qi that emerges.