Healing Trauma Through Asana

 

It is as if the instinctual energy comes to a point of cross-over (perhaps at the diaphragm) as it moves through its own skin and then energy of another frequency manifests as it moves through the skin.

Marion Woodman

 

Inspired by Healing Trauma by Peter Levine.

 

Trauma is energy that is locked in the body.  An inciting event where we were harmed, violated, or abandoned automatically triggers a cascade of protective reactions starting in the brain and flowing into the body to keep us safe.  There might be a surge of adrenaline so we can run or shock to shut things down, so we keep us still. Our brain instantaneously creates these bodily conditions to keep us alive.  Trauma develops when the energy webs from the inciting events get stuck in our tissues, blood, bones, and organs rather than flowing out into discharge. The body will naturally try to release them.  But because these energy surges kept us safe it can be hard for us to discharge them.  It is if our brain/body holds on to them in case these responses of flight, fight, or freeze are needed again.

 

To get the discharge, the release that body craves, we may find ourselves reacting to every day safe situations as if we had been violated or harmed. The door slams and our gut seizes in fear.  A boss criticizes our work and we become nauseous.  A partner reaches out to touch us and we become furious.  We may not realize that our reactions are out of proportion to what is happening because the existential threat feels so real in the body.  Because of the painful and difficult bodily and emotional sensations that the latent traumatic stress generates, we may begin to limit our activities so we don’t have to feel them.  We crave a long walk but are afraid to go out alone or don’t feel as if we deserve a break.  We are asked to take on a challenging project but the fear of failing keeps us from trying.  There is someone we would like to get to know better but the discomfort of being rejected outweighs the desire for companionship.  In many small and larger choices, trauma locked in the body can keep us from living more fully. 

 

Healing is facilitated by a discharge of the stuck energy.  It is like opening a fist.  What makes this difficult is that before the discharge and release, there is a necessary build-up of the energy which brings fear and discomfort.  While entering this fear can feel like an existential threat, like we are dying, allowing the rising energy to coalesce and then release is the way through to the other side of the trauma. 

 

Asana can help by giving us a safe and effective way to feel the fear and anxiety, to tolerate it little by little, and then allow it to move out of the body.  By creating space, stability, flexibility, and strength, asana imbues deep physiological benefits in all the systems of the body and this helps the stress, adrenaline, and shame, flow out.  Especially important for the discharge of trauma, the nerves become supple and strong, able to take a heavier load of both the rising fear and the discharge. 

 

Most importantly for healing trauma, in asana we bring our minds/consciousness into the body.  We become embodied.  Since the trauma reaction at its root is a state of disembodiment, the embodiment we experience through asana is deeply healing.  By focusing the consciousness on the softness palms of the hand, the tension in the belly, the firmness of the breastbone, we come into an increased integration and wholeness that calms the anxious mind.  Doing asana with a trusted teacher supports us in this work.  With our teacher, we can come closer to the inner edges where the energy is stuck knowing we are not alone on this journey but with a wise guide to lead our way.

 

The energy of our lives isn’t experienced as an easy steady flow.  If this were the case it might mean we are not challenging ourselves enough to try something that is new and hard but developmental, something that causes our hearts to race and palms to sweat because it expands our horizons. When we face something challenging or exciting, the energy to undertake the challenge naturally rises to give us strength, will, and clarity.  If we have been traumatized, rising energy can cause anxiety because it is what the body felt during the inciting event.  This is the feeling of the fist closing.  Once through the challenge though the rising energy falls and can be discharged, the fist is released.  After the discharge, we are flooded with feelings of well-being and fulfillment. The rising tension is needed to get us going, to move through sloth and lethargy.  It is as much a part of creativity as the feeling of flow and engagement that follows the tension. 

 

Asana helps us to learn how to live with organic rhythm of the fist opening and the fist closing.  Pressing up into a backbend takes enormous effort in the legs, arms, back and spine.  To get up we need that surge of adrenaline that is not unlike the surge that was triggered by the trauma to make the heart pump, the lungs expand, the neurons to fire.  After we come out of backbend, we are able to naturally and safely experience the release and relaxation after the effort, the release of the fist.  Here is where we literally are able to discharge inciting energy of past trauma out of the body. 

 

Off the mat, when we face something that triggers the feelings of annihilation that mimics the trauma, asana prepares us to abide with the inciting adrenaline through to its release.  We can embody the waves coming and the waves pulling out without as much fear.  And will find in this non-static equilibrium access to the energy that was previously locked in the body now made availed to us to serve a greater life purpose.