Releasing Trauma

Trauma can be released slowly and carefully by focusing on its physical dimension. The most current understanding of trauma focuses on the body. Our natural response to danger is flight, fight or freeze. Trauma is often related to the freeze response (or immobility response).

"Trauma in humans can be caused by sexual abuse, violence, the threat of either, or the witnessing of either, particularly in childhood. Catastrophic events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, war or other mass violence can also cause psychological trauma. Long-term exposure to situations such as extreme poverty or milder forms of abuse, such as verbal abuse, can be traumatic."¹ Often these kinds of trauma are classified as post traumatic stress disorder.

Peter Levin in his ground breaking book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences, explains how its built into all animals and in our own physical bodies to become immobile if severely threatened. Animals will than shake after the danger has passed to release the freeze response and reset back to normal. In humans, trauma is often caused by psychological events or situations, but becomes locked in our physical bodies.

Humans, with our large brains, can override the shaking response, holding the freeze in our tissues, nerves, energy and emotions. Cultural and social values play a large role in holding trauma indefinitely. The physical freeze of trauma can keep us stuck at the time of the original danger. Symptoms can include:

•Re-experiencing the original trauma(s), by means of flashbacks or nightmares
•Avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma
•Increased arousal, such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hyper vigilance

Ortho-Bionomy, Lymph Drainage, Chapman's Reflexes and Energy Techniques can all be employed to unfreeze trauma. These methods help to discharge trauma slowly by releasing contraction, gently stimulating the nervous system and freeing blocked energy.

I am effective in helping clients reduce trauma by helping them to shake at very small, manageable levels. Often this requires creating a sense of safety by holding the trauma immobile. I can than carefully support a release into relaxation. Once unfrozen, the client can become more adaptive and respond to challenges without going back into immobility.

One key to helpful trauma work is allowing the traumatized area to begin to be felt again. Going very slowly and steadily is often the best way to sustain the movement back to natural functioning.

¹ "Psychological trauma" in Wikipedia.

Learn more about my practice at: Healing Body Therapeutics

A Natural Approach to Healing

Many of us who practice Alternative Health have a unique way of thinking about healing. In the medical model practiced by doctors, health is a matter of alleviating symptoms. Either drugs or surgical procedures are used to restore the body to a condition minus the symptoms that presented. In the Alternative perspective that I follow, health is a matter of balance.

My goal is to stimulate the natural, self-healing properties of the client. Our focus is towards any variable that interrupts or limits this capacity to self-correct. We believe that hyper contraction of tissues, improper alignment of boney structures, emotional distress, trauma, spiritual despair, poor diet, stress, bad posture as well as social and cultural factors prevent out physical systems from functioning properly. We consider that these factors depress our immune system's responses to our environment and make us vulnerable to bacteria, germs and parasites. The normal function of cells, organs and glands takes place in the absence of these interruptions.

Since balance is our intention, we try to provide the client with the least amount of therapy possible and than see how they respond. Based on the follow-on to our work we can make adjustments that are subtle and careful. Unfortunately many of the health challenges in the medical model are unintended consequences from unknown effects of drugs or unforeseen drug interactions.

Alternative approaches have their limits as do all health systems but the focus on balance lessens unexpected side effects. We also try to leave the client with more resources to maintain their health. Empowering the client is the ultimate goal. When balance is restored the natural vitality of the client improves the quality of their lives.

Bert Hellinger on Balance and Forgiveness

What Hellinger calls the “hidden symmetry of love” concerns the balance of give and take that colors every relationship, especially in couples. The exchange of giving and receiving needs to be balanced, not from a mathematical, but from a soul perspective; the wider the exchange, the deeper the resulting growth and joy. The partner who receives too much will end up feeling oppressed, and therefore unable to give. The same is true in case of a partner causing harm to another. Too quick or superficial forgiveness deprives the need that the offending party has for offering compensation. A magnanimous forgiveness—often a superficial one—deprives the needed outlet for guilt.

http://www.humanspiritcircles.com/images/09updates/Excerpt%20Family%20Constellations.pdf

Successful Relief for Back and Hip Pain

The biggest factor in back and hip pain is the Psoas muscle. Over the years I have become very successful in treating conditions caused by the psoas. Some of the conditions involving the psoas include: low back pain, sacroiliac pain, sciatica, disc problems, spondylolysis, scoliosis and hip degeneration. I have been a Bodywork Therapist and Energy Healer for 26 years.

The psoas (pronounced "so - az") primarily flexes the hip and the spinal column. At about 16 inches long on the average, it is one of the largest and thickest muscles of the body (in animals it's known as the tenderloin). This powerful muscle runs down the lower mid spine beginning at the 12th thoracic vertebrae connecting to all the vertebral bodies, discs and transverse processes of all the lumbar vertebrae down across the pelvis to attach on the inside of the top of the leg.

I've had the most success by using Ortho-Bionomy techniques. To release the psoas we move the legs and hips into the most comfortable position possible. The most comfortable position resets sensors in the muscles and joints known collectively as proprioceptors. Creating the right twist and pressure in the muscles can reset the sensors very quickly.

The psoas can change its tension levels and learn to operate in better balance over time. It often takes 1-3 session to help the psoas retain a new way of functioning. More serious psoas injuries can take longer, particularly if very painful techniques have been used previously. Painful methods can traumatize the psoas.

I like to give clients homework that is designed to keep the Psoas balanced. Clients who do these exercises tend to get better faster and stay pain free over time.

Go to BarryKrost.com for more information and/or appointment in San Antonio, Texas

To Be a Great Poem

~ a reflection by Walt Whitman

(from preface to Leaves of Grass)
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul--and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Family Constellations: The Orders of Love Between Parents, Children and Excluded Members

Family Constellations reveal deeply hidden dynamics within family systems. As we saw in our previous discussion, in Family Constellation theory, psychological states, feelings, and illness are often seen as disturbances in the individual's family system. During the process volunteers are asked to "represent" individuals from a family system. Representatives do not know whom they are representing in the family, yet they manifest them often in great detail and help to reveal what is really happening.

"Bert Hellinger", the founder of this therapy, saw consistent patterns that led to specific disturbances. He eventually called one set of patterns "the Orders of Love." He believes that love requires particular kinds of arrangements and movements to be completely given and received "for a healthy and satisfying life." (1) The following is very brief and condensed overview of some of these patterns.

In the first Order of Love a healthy dynamic occurs when children accept their parents and the gift of life as they are without reservations, with all that goes with it. Our parents and the life they gave us is a fact, it is not negotiable and cannot be altered. When we fight against this notion we don't really accept the whole of life and we can never be complete. Setting up a constellation where clients can choose to accept their parents can be a very important movement.

"Our parents are the only possible ones for us. Imagining anything else to be possible is an illusion." (1)

In the second Order of Love, children need to take what their parents gave, (in addition to life), as being enough. When we believe that we did not get what we needed from our parents, we never really separate from them; we continue to hold-on and cannot stand as unique beings. In accepting what they gave as sufficient we are free to live ours lives without being dependent on them. If not:

"These "children cannot separate from their parents. Their accusations and demands tie them to their parents so that, although they are bound to their parents, the children have no parents. They then feel empty, needy and weak." (1)

In the third Order of Love Hellinger saw that children would often try to carry the guilt of their parents (or parent) out of love. This also creates an unhealthy connection to parents that deprives the child of a full and healthy life. In these cases constellations can be set up that allow the client to give back what belongs to the parent and accept that the parents will take care of their own problems.

The fourth Order of Love is closely related to the third. In this pattern children may feel that are as big as their parents or bigger. They may try to fix something that the parent is unable to address or acknowledge. Only by being smaller than our parents can we receive from them. The flow of love must go forward. In turn we pass along what is given to us.

"Between parents and children, reciprocity in giving and taking is achieved by giving on to others what has been taken. It makes parents very happy when children say, "I take everything you give, and when I'm big, I'll pass it on." (1)

The next Order of Love is about the larger family. Hellinger believes that in this pattern all family members have an equal right to belong. He believes each family has a conscience at a deep level of the system. This conscience does not tolerate a member being excluded, shunned or forgotten. To correct this imbalance younger members of the family system are likely to identify with the missing family member. This is a frequent element in constellations.

"Much serious dysfunction in families-behavioural disturbances in children, but also illnesses, proneness to accidents and suicidal behaviour-occur when children unconsciously represent an excluded person and seek to satisfy that person's need for restitution." (1)

Younger family members can be released from an entanglement with a missing family member by creating a constellation in which the excluded member is recognized and restored to their proper place in the family. At the same time the representative for the younger family member can be encouraged to let go of the identification and the responsibility that is clearly not their own.

My own experience as a constellation representative and future facilitator is that some aspect of these orders are found in most constellations as they unfold. There are variations and some differences based on culture, nationality and the particular fate of each family. Addressing the proper flow of love in family systems is very healing and powerful way of finding our place in the world.

"In our next installment I will continue our discussion of the Orders of Love and additional elements of Family Constellation Therapy.

--Barry Krost, Massage Therapist, Bodyworker, and Energy Healer is training to be a Constellation facilitator.

(1) Bert Hellinger, How Love Works, http://www.hellinger.com/international/english/hellinger_lectures_articles/how_love_works.shtml#order

Quotation

From Tom Waits:

Jim Jarmusch once told me "Fast, Cheap, and Good; pick two. If it's fast and cheap it won’t be good. If it's cheap and good it won't be fast. If it's fast and good it wont be cheap." Fast, cheap and good; pick. (2) words to live by.

Mystery and Awe

Back in my college days at Grinnell, I took courses in philosophy and in Jewish philosophy. One of the authors I studied was Abraham Heschel. He was a Rabbi and scholar who looked at the deeper meaning of our relationship to God (or the mystery).

Following a recent training in Family Constellations I started to remember things from his book God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (1978), particularly at his ideas of having awe in the face of the mystery. So, I have been skimming through and found these considerations so far.

“The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.”

“Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of reality.”

“Awe is a sense of transcendence…”

“Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe.”

“They who sense the wonder share in the wonder.”

“Knowledge is not the same as awareness and expression is not the same as experience. By proceeding from awareness to knowledge we gain in clarity and loose in immediacy. What we gain in distinctiveness by going from experience to expression we lose in genuineness… Concepts, words must not become screens; they must be regarded as windows.”