Trauma Training Tip We commonly think of Fight, Flight, and Freeze as trauma responses. There is one more that is equally helpful in the human response to threat – and that is the Feign response. It’s a lot about the Fire Element – and a little about the Wood. A mouse caught between the jaws of a cat may choose to “feign” death. The cat will be less interested in eating a potentially rotten piece of mouse and may drop the mouse, leaving it to scurry to safety in its mouse hole. Sometimes the best thing we humans can do …

Trauma Training Tip Summer is the time of the Fire Element in Chinese Medicine. It is the most powerful time for healing its many spheres of influence. Have you suffered a breach of relationship? Has an experience of shame paralyzed you? Is intimacy challenging? How’s your blood pressure, vascular system, or sense of whole-body regulation? How about your capacity for a moment of time between impulse and response? Can your one small heart find the one big heart that beats in all of us? The Fire Element manages all matters of the Heart. It carries experiences of traumatic stress in …

Trauma Training Tip Summer time. A very special time of year. Flowers are giving way to fruit. It is a time of fullness and growing maturity. The sun is at its height. The energy of the heart is its most vibrant. The Fire Element mirrors the relational, parasympathetic function of the ventral vagus nerve. The ventral vagus supports us in resolving conflicts in the context of relationship. It provides that relational “brake” on that “fight or flight” sympathetic response to a sense of threat. The ventral vagus is the primary brake on sympathetic arousal in primates. Without healthy ventral vagal function, our “fight …

Trauma Training Tip This month’s News n Views is dedicated to the 8 people, 6 of them Asian women, murdered in Atlanta on March 16, 2021.  My world woke up with my introduction to Chinese medicine in 1985. My goal has been and always will be, to honor the roots of Chinese medicine with my often imperfect, cultural humility and respect. As a white woman, practicing Chinese medicine, I see it as my responsibility to continually increase my awareness of the culture out of which this beautiful medicine arose, and give my Taoist ancestors as well as my blood ancestors the credit …

Trauma Training Tip On February 12th, the Lunar New Year arrived! It signals the movement from Winter to Spring – and marks the beginning of the movement of the sap in the trees. In our East-meets West model, the energy of the Wood Element and the Mobilize A Response phase of the Self-Protective Response are rising. The Wood supports our capacity to “protect and defend” ourselves and those we perceive to be vulnerable. It governs our capacity to mobilize a “fight/flight/feign” response to a perceived threat. 2020 (and into 2021) has been a highly challenging year for our nation’s and …

Trauma Training Tip I want to talk about shame and traumatic stress. We all hate to feel shame – it’s not a popular subject! However, shame is a necessary part of our biology and socialization. Healthy shame helps parents teach their children to inhibit anti-social impulses and learn the norms of behavior for the “tribe” they were born into. This type of shame focuses on the behavior and not the person, it has a repair built into it. “We don’t throw sand into our friends face – this would be a good time for you to apologize to your good …

Trauma Training Tips We are experiencing traumatic contagion in our communities and on our streets. It’s just plain tragically painful to witness. Our primal ancestors survived by virtue of the members of their tribe who could hear a saber-toothed tiger in the bush. Evolution selected for people who had the capacity to experience resonant connection with this special member’s message of fear and alarm and appropriately respond to such threats. We have inherited a proclivity for traumatic contagion. Like everything, there are two aspects to this phenomenon. Such contagion can help communities come together and survive threats. However, when the fear is …

Trauma Training Tip We can’t go through the Winter/Water season without exploring Acupuncture and Asian medicine’s beautiful and unique concept of Jing.  Jing is a substance that we receive from our parents at conception – it is something like our genetic code – or our essential essence. We receive a finite amount of it at conception, spend it through our life and when it is gone, it is our time to become an ancestor. This special substance is stored in our Kidneys – the organ associated with our Water element, and the season of Winter. We can protect our Jing with a healthy lifestyle, good …

Trauma Training Tip So much division. So many opinions. So much anger. So little listening. The ears are the sense organ associated with the Water Element and the Winter-time. Our Water gives us the capacity to hear even what we are afraid to hear. In an archetypal way, Winter is a very silent time of year. We are called to listen deeply and contemplatively. We may hear the crack in the ice – is that the natural popping sound that ice makes as it freezes and thaws? Is it an indication that the ice is giving way under our feet? …

Trauma Training Tip Our nation is a trauma survivor. We are witnessing increasing arousal and dysregulation in our national discourse. The thawing of generations of thwarted urges to protect and defend that we have witnessed in the arousal on our streets this summer has created significantly more space in our national trauma body. Removing the Confederate Flag from flying freely, changing the names of schools and military bases, and taking down statues glorifying treasonous generals from the Civil War are all great examples of more space, more life, more vitality in our nation. The reverse is unfortunately also true. The …