Trauma Training Tip
The Fall is the season of the Metal Element and the Lung and Colon in Chinese Medicine. The Lung’s job is to receive the inspiration of the heavens – and the Colon’s job is to help us let go of what is no longer needed or useful.
The spirit of the Lung is called the Po – which translates to “Animal Soul.” It gives us the capacity to take the inspiration of the heavens and bring it into our flesh. In the vocabulary of Western neurobiology, it can be thought of as supporting our “felt sense” or “interoception.”
Our capacity for interoception is critical to the “Awaken Arousal” function of the Metal in the Self Protective Response. Our interoception gives us information about our environment – it helps us listen to and respond to signs of new things in our environment. We navigate potholes, storms, feeding and clothing ourselves, and connecting with supportive people with the help of our interoceptive awareness. We need to know when and how to respond to hunger, heat, cold, or rain as well as signals of safety and danger in the presence of new people or circumstances. Our sense organs inform us with signals we perceive in our breath, our guts, our muscles, our skin. These body signals arise from our Po – or our felt sense.
Neuroception is another body-informed signaling function. It is a subconscious system for specifically detecting threat and safety. When our neuroception goes into high tone, telling us we are not safe – our interoception becomes unavailable. All we can think about is survival – and we may lose awareness of the signals our body is sending that would support exactly that. We may make less than desirable choices about feeding ourselves, who we trust, when we need rest or a hat and mittens!
Cultivating interoception in trauma survivors is a critical aspect of our work. Here’s some questions you can ask to help cultivate interoception in your clients:
- Where do you notice that in your body?
- From the outside, I’m noticing (the muscles in your face appear softer, a rhythmic pulse in your kidney, etc), I wonder what you are noticing on the inside?
- I’m noticing a faraway look in your eyes. I wonder – if you brought your attention back to this room and the color blue, how many things you would find that are blue? What do you notice as you look for them?
(taken from Appendix 3 of The Tao of Trauma, page 285)
Alaine’s Two Cents
The Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation promotes and expands reconciliation studies within the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and is the home of the Think Peace Podcast.
I am honored to have been a guest on this episode hosted by peacebuilder, author, trauma resolution practitioner, and former federal prosecutor and public defender, Colette Rausch. The podcast episode explores insights into the link between neuroscience and peacebuilding, as well as approaches to transform societal divisions and cycles of violence.
I couldn’t be more supportive of their mission and role in the international discourse on war and peace.
Check This Out!
The Pacific Symposium is the largest acupuncture conference in the United States – and will occur (virtually) from October 28 – November 1, 2021.
I will be presenting: Trauma Is Vibrational Illness; Acupuncture is Vibrational Medicine in the morning, and The Tao of Trauma: Integrating Polyvagal Theory, The Self Protective Response and the Five Elements in the afternoon of Saturday, October 30, 2021.
All registered attenders can get a 20% discount plus free shipping of The Tao of Trauma from North Atlantic Books. Nice!
You can register here.
Here is a podcast episode I did with the Pacific Center Podcast that may whet your appetite!
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.
I am a massage therapist. My long-time client has had hives – “just under the skin” – ever since her husband died a tragic death due to alcohol poisoning.
She’s made good use of psychotherapy, acupuncture, and massage – and has also been getting allergy shots once a month.
Her symptoms were getting better – until the death of her mother earlier this year due to Covid. She is full of consuming and complex grief – and her skin symptoms are almost unmanageable – it gets pink and VERY sensitive.
She has sort of “dart-y” movements in her physical self, moves quickly, and gets bruised a lot from bumping into things.
A.
So glad she has you!
Sometimes after an experience of threat, we will “store” our hyper- or hypo- arousal in a particular tissue. It can stay tucked away there, allowing us to manage the rest of our lives without showing our dys-regulation to the outside world. Her body made a good choice in storing it in her skin – better than, say, storing it in her heart! The arousal pattern in her skin has now gotten so advanced, that it is no longer hidden away.
So much better to work with the arousal she understandably has than to treat her with medications to simply suppress her inflammation.
It’s very interesting to me that her symptoms arose after these grief-filled life events. The skin is known as the “third lung” in Chinese medicine and is one of the resonant correspondences associated with the Metal Element.
She will likely benefit from mindful, thoughtful, touch on her skin. It will help her move through the arousal/collapse cycle of the Self Protective Response that she has stored there – and will likely mitigate the inflammation that has arisen.
All good wishes to her – and to you!