Trauma Training Tip
Photo by Елена Рудакова via Pexels
Benevolence is the spiritual quality of the Wood Element and the Spring season. Consider the gifts trees offer – life-giving oxygen for two leggeds and four leggeds, homes for birds and bugs, and cooling shade for all of life. They offer these functions without effort or cost – they are simply expressions of their essential nature. They also absorb carbon from the air and store it in their tissues, reducing the impact of climate change. They are benevolent, indeed!
Aligning ourselves with the season, and bringing somatic awareness to experiences of either giving or receiving benevolence – especially when these experiences are unexpected, can soften habituated and polarizing inner states of being. Embodied experiences of benevolence can help cultivate our Ventral Vagal capacity to recognize the humanity in people we may think of as “other” or “enemy.” We find our braced, habituated, and often thwarted mobilization response softening, and our capacity to orient to our world and plan our responses (also functions of the Wood Element and pretty desperately needed these days) in more and more nuanced and subtle ways. So important – and it’s good for us!
The job of the Wood Element is to protect and defend ourselves and those we experience as vulnerable. In the absence of benevolence, we can easily find our mobilization efforts to be mis-directed or mis-attuned. We are challenged to mobilize responses that are commensurate with the level of threat we are experiencing right now, in this moment, uninfluenced by thwarted experiences in our past. We can either collapse, or become “blind with rage” – neither is helpful. We may be challenged to keep our mobilization response inside our window of tolerance. Can I experience arousal, success, and de-activation all within my personal capacity for regulation? Or do I “rust my pipes” with stress chemistry – energy that doesn’t really serve our need to protect and defend ourselves and others?
Alaine’s Two Cents
I’ve had the good fortune to cultivate awareness of benevolence emerging in our communities.
- Free personal pizza and a drink for Federal Workers on Mondays at my local Hyattsville, MD pizza shop Pizzeria Paradiso;
- A free drink for fired Federal works at my son’s Chicago nightclub FitzGerald’s;
- Free acupuncture and bodywork for all impacted by Executive Orders in Mt. Rainier, MD with Acupuncturists Without Borders of the National Capital Area (awb.nca@gmail.com).
I heard from a Los Angeles friend that fires created a culture of “How are you doing?” in the lines at the grocery stores.
Everything exists as a duality. These times require strategic thinking and strong responses – and we will find our capacity to use those impulses thoughtfully and powerfully to protect and defend ourselves and those we perceive as vulnerable if we also hold onto experiences of benevolence.
Check This Out!
In Honor of Women’s History Month, I’m raising up Robin Wall Kimmerer. Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. I’ve read Sweetgrass 3 times and been inspired every time!
As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge, and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
This video, GIFTS OF THE LAND | A Guided Nature Tour with Robin Wall Kimmerer, is a delightful exploration of the emergence of Spring in upstate New York. It’s a good listen.
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.
No question to explore this month!