Trauma Training Tip
Here in the mid-Atlantic, most of the leaves are off the trees. Snow has already fallen in Northern states. The stillness of Winter is almost palpable. We are in the death phase of the agrarian calendar, the time of the Water Element.
Winter can be a harsh season. Archetypal questions about our very survival lurk in our unconscious minds – do we have enough food or fuel stored away? How long will it last? Naturally, fear is the emotion associated with Winter. It is that fear that provides the signal for threat in our Self Protective Response. Our Kidneys, governed by the Water Element, provide the power that fuels our threat response.
Like Water, our experience of threat can be as powerful as Niagara Falls, as patient as a mountain stream, or as quiet and reclusive as a frozen pond.
Our Water gives us the ability to freeze when there is too much energy coming in – when we are at risk of “burning to the ground.” It also gives us the capacity to sink and quiet in absence of threat. Its capacity to hear even what we are afraid to hear makes it a source of deep wisdom.
Helping our patients restore their Qi when it has been guided to “freeze” by our Water Element is a great gift for their current and future health and wellness. An even more important contribution to them, their families, and our communities is to help them build capacity to distinguish discomfort from fear, to recognize safety as well as threat, and to build increasing tolerance for states of arousal.
Every experience of domestic or community violence is rooted in a perpetrator’s inability to distinguish their discomfort from their fear. The more capacity for discomfort we have, the more able we are to find an internal locus of control – and a breath of time between experiencing arousal and taking an action.
Our nation needs us practitioners of vibrational medicine to build this capacity in vulnerable people.
Alaine’s Two Cents
This beautiful poem by Donna Ashworth is a great expression of the power of the Kidney, called the Zhi, and often translated as Will in Chinese medicine. The power of the will – to persist and survive in the face of even in the most challenging circumstances – is the gift of the Kidney. The will to survive. The Zhi saves lives. Thanks goodness it is part of our physiology!
UNSTOPPABLE
Unstoppable they called her
but I saw her stop
I saw her stop many times.
Sometimes
I thought she had stopped for good
but no
she always found a way to resurrect.
Rise again.
Not the same
never the same.
Each time a little more determined
and a little less vulnerable.
Unstoppable they said
but I think
it was the in the stopping
that she found her power.
Check This Out!
Check out this rich offering from one of our Tao of Trauma Clinical Assistants.
From Ryan Gallagher — Asheville, North Carolina
Homecoming! A four session-long group rooted in an exploration of the wisdom and practice of Polyvagal theory. Participants will gather to slow down, “come home” to their inner experience, and develop their “felt sense” — that is, their capacity to inhabit their bodies with clarity and tenderness.
You will engage in a variety of embodiment practices, with the aspiration of promoting regulation and resilience in your nervous system. You will do this by developing pathways out of “protection mode” and into “connection mode.
All humans are welcome.
More info and register here.
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 woman in her mid 60’s. She lost her only son to suicide two years ago – and had a very frightening experience with both Covid isolation and illness. She finds it increasingly hard to concentrate, focus, retain information, and feel safe in groups. What do you suggest?
A.
So glad she has you! She has had virtually intolerable stress – and overwhelming fear – in the recent past and perhaps as a small child as well. Our kidney/adrenal system signals stress – and our heart commands our body to respond. They work together in that way. When our fear is overwhelming, our heart goes into very high arousal. Our body may choose to quiet the dangerous arousal in our heart with a freeze response – carried out with the help of our Water Element. Our Water overwhelms our Fire – it overwhelms and quiets our Heart. This saves our cardiac function, and our life – but it comes with a cost. We may not have as much access to our frontal cortex, ruled by our heart, when we repeatedly have to manage high arousal in this dramatic way. Our memory and concentration suffers and it’s hard to feel safe anywhere.
With toxic stress, our whole body gets braced and lifts up. Our Kidney also lifts up, and can become braced and hard. Our adrenal gland gets pressed against our diaphragm and is stimulated to secrete adrenalin. As long as the adrenal gland is braced, hard and lifted up, only fear or terror, anger or rage, intense arousal or profound collapse will be available. Our body interprets a constant state of threat. We are challenged to be in relationship or learn new things.
I suggest you engage in a conversation with her, explaining the role both Eastern and Western science ascribes to the Adrenal gland in terms of toxic stress. Invite her to consider allowing you to “hold” her kidney/adrenal system.
You will slide your hand under her low back – between her lower ribs and her hip crest. Offer your focused, receptive attention on her Kidney/adrenal gland. Look for:
- The Kidney to get heavier, soften, and “settle” into your hand.
- The Kidney to perfuse with blood and its pulse to become softer, more regular, elongated and smooth.
- The breath to deepen as the Kidney lets down from the diaphragm, releasing bracing.
- The whole body-mind-emotions-spirit to find a more regulated neurological platform to operate from.
Help her track her sensations – and harvest this more regulated state manifesting in her tissues and her spirit.
She can get better – this will help.