Trauma Training Tip
We’ve just passed the summer solstice, the high point of the season of the Fire Element. Our Taoist ancestors encourage us to live in harmony with the energy of each season as the foundation for our health. In the Fire season, we have enhanced access to “all matters of the heart.”
At our conception, Yin (egg) and Yang (sperm) united to form what is called our Ancestral or YuanQi. Our Yuan Qi informs the creation of our connective tissue and brings this information to all of our organs and tissues. It is our essential imprint and is carried by our Triple Burner meridian.
The Triple Burner belongs to the Fire Element, and is thus a close friend of the Heart. When we access our connective tissue with mindful touch or with needles on the Triple Burner meridian, we are connecting with the powerful, unique, and creative impulse of Yuan Qi that arrived at our conception.
This impulse carries the experiences of our parents and their parents – and all our ancestors. Restoring balance and regulation in our patient’s connective tissue can influence both their progeny and perhaps the impulse of their ancestors.
Modern Western science calls this an epigenetic imprint. There has been rich research on the impact of traumatic stress on descendants’ health and wellness. It is one explanation for health disparities in marginalized people. Experiences such as the transatlantic slave trade (1), the Dutch Hunger Winter during WWII (2), the Holocaust (3), and the collapse of the Twin Towers (4) on the children and grandchildren of those who endured these traumas are powerful illustrations of the “inherited” impact of traumatic stress. There is less research on the impact of the love, the resilience, and the survival skills of our ancestors – but I have to believe that’s in there too!
- (1) Christopher Kuzawa and Elizabeth Sweet, “Epigenetics and the Embodiment of Race: Developmental Origins of US Racial Disparities in Cardiovascular Health,” American Journal of Human Biology 21, no. 1 (2009): 2-15.
- (2) Laura C. Schulz, “The Dutch Hunger Winter and the Developmental Origins of Disease,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107, no 39 (2010): 16757-58.
- (3) Natan P. F. Kelerman, “Epigenetic Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: Can Nightmares be inherited?” The Israeli Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences” 50, no. 1 (2013).
- (4) Carey B. Maslow, Kimberly Caramanica, Jie Hui Li, Steven D. Stellman and Robert M. Brackbill, “Reproductive outcomes following maternal exposure to the events of September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center in New York City,” American Journal of Public Health 106, no. 10 (2016): 1796-803, doi: 10.21045/APJPH. 2016. 303303
Trauma is vibrational illness; it requires vibrational medicine. There is a duality between our Triple Heater as essentially the Yang – more etheric and vibrational aspect of the connective tissue, and the Yin – or its more tangible and solid aspect. We access powerful vibrations when we bring mindful, somatic touch to the connective tissue and help to restore balance and regulation in the history that it carries.
We all benefit when any one of us lives into a more coherent, regulated, inner vibration. The Triple Heater helps to ensure that both our inner and our outer connections support the heart of our communities and our world. So important!
Alaine’s Two Cents
Somatic Experiencing International is offering a specialized trauma training for Deaf, Hard of Hearing (DHH), and Signing Professionals this fall. I will be one of the lucky assistants to have their heart expanded by exposure to this special community. Barbara Glenfield, former ToT Clinical Assistant, is the local coordinator.
DHH people suffer traumatic experiences at a nearly twofold higher rate than hearing people. There are very few providers with training and skill in language access and cultural understanding for DHH trauma survivors and few opportunities for procuring CEU’s with adequate interpretation into American Sign Language (ASL) for DHH professionals.
We need to raise $30,000 to pay for ASL interpreters by August; and would like to raise another $70,000 to support scholarships for participants. I would love for the ToT community to come forward in support of this special population. I’ve made my donation and I hope you will too.
Follow this link to make your donation.
Check This Out!
Handin’ Down the Love by Dorie LZ Blesoff – When I heard my friend Dorie sing this song, my heart said “she’s singing about connective tissue and how it speaks to relationship with our ancestors.”
You can hear “Handin’ Down the Love” on Dorie’s album on Spotify.
“Handin’ Down the Love” ©1996 ℗2002. Used by permission.
Here’s the chorus:
I’m handing down the love that was handed down to me
Ain’t no doubt about it
It’s the richest legacy
We all come and go
Help each other on the way
I’m so grateful for the blessing of this love that’s here to stay.
More about Dorie: https://dorielzblesoff.com/
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 Fire survivor type. Her paternal grandparents escaped pogroms in Russia and immigrated to the United States. Her parents blended in with US culture and achieved a middle-class life style. By this I am saying she never wanted for food in her life. Yet, she always worries about adequate food. As a child she used to hide whole salamis in her sock drawer. While she appears to love being in groups, “behind the scenes” she tends towards sadness and melancholy. Do you have advice for my work with her?
A: I have a hunch that you are describing the experience of starvation that her ancestors had in Russia during the pogroms. That imprint informed the Yuan Qi established at her conception through her father’s epigenetic imprint.
While Yuan Qi is the impulse that formed all of her tissues – it is governed by the Triple Burner Official. It is easiest to access in soft, fleshy areas. I recommend the back of the upper arm, where the Triple Burner meridian traverses.
Use a mindful, soft, attentive touch. Since you will be accessing a “Fire” function, put love in your touch. Look for a tingle/pulse/buzz under your hands. Stay with it, and invite her to bring her curiosity and her somatic mindfulness as it moves through her body. Help her track sensations, and move through experiences of activation and de-activation. Her body is designed to embody that wave as an expression of Yin and Yang – and to restore its own regulation.
Since the Yuan Qi is so universal, it has the capacity to carry very high, global states of arousal. You will want to prepare her to do this work by establishing a solid foundation of regulation before you begin, and to go slowly so as not to overwhelm her system.
Thank you for bringing this important work to her system – and to that of her family lineage.