Healing Trauma 4: Sensation And Energy In Our Body

Trauma is stored in our body as sensations and energy with associated memories and thoughts. When we feel overwhelmed, when something is too much for us, our system tries to protect us by disconnecting and storing it until a time when we have more resources to deal with it.

This session guides you through ways to be present with sensations and energy in the body. Locate and describe - is it moving or still? Why is it here - working with thoughts. Noticing the space around the energy. We maintain awareness of body and breath, aware we are safe in this moment, and this allows stored trauma to come forward and heal.

Transcript

Welcome to the fourth in our healing trauma series about the sensations,

Energy,

And feelings in our body.

Our body tells us what's up.

Trauma is stored in our body as sensations and energy with associated memories and thoughts.

When we feel overwhelmed,

When something is too much for us,

We store it until a time when we might have the resources to deal with it.

Many people have a confrontational relationship with their body.

We're disconnected from our body in many ways,

And we also blame our body,

And we're also not very confident that our body is working for us.

When something is too overwhelming for us to deal with at the time,

It's scary,

It's overwhelming,

Our system jumps in to help protect us,

To avoid feeling powerless and hurt.

Years or perhaps decades later,

We realize that we have disconnected from our body and the cost of that is too high.

It might be an illness,

It might be a series of relationships,

It might be that we have a tight neck and cement shoulders.

Our body bears the brunt of our emotional avoidance.

We repress what we can't afford to feel,

And we avoid uncomfortable,

Scary feelings that are in our body.

One of the reasons that this is the fourth instead of the first in this series is because we need to have some tools before we can actually go in and safely feel what's in our body.

We've talked about the negativity bias and how our nervous system remembers and uses everything that's ever happened to us as evidence in the assessment of safety and danger.

A lot of that happened when we were children and we didn't have the resources,

The agency,

And now we're adults.

It's a different story now.

We can cope and manage and learn how to bring forward into our awareness what we've been repressing.

We have a nervous system that's highly committed to protecting us and we can work with that now in a different way.

When we're working with thoughts,

We might be working with traumatic memories,

We might have explicit memories of things that come in as images or pictures or words,

And we might have implicit where we have a feeling,

A felt sense of that in our body.

Pete Walker calls those emotional flashbacks.

We might not have a detailed explicit memory,

But we have a sense our body carries that.

We might have a feeling of fear,

Of dread,

Of danger.

Sensations in our body,

Because they're associated with thoughts and memories,

Can feel risky,

Can feel like that's too much,

We can't afford to feel them.

And the fact that you're listening to this right now means that you've come to a realization that it's worth the risk,

That you have a strong enough nervous system now and you've learned some tools,

You've worked with the breath,

You're able now to come up out of fight,

Flight,

Or freeze and to notice and find out what is it that I've been storing in my body?

What is it that I couldn't afford to feel then that I can afford to feel now?

We get to the point where we actually truly welcome everything that's here.

This is what we've stored and this is what we can bring forward now to heal.

Let's work with the sensations themselves.

When you scan your body,

You might notice that there's a certain part of your body where you're holding tension,

You might notice that your shoulders are up around your ears,

You clench your teeth,

Your jaw is really tight,

You have a feeling of compression or heaviness in your throat or your chest,

And many people have a tight roiling energy in their gut.

It can feel like a black fist.

When we're looking into sensations,

One of the first things we do,

Just like we did with thought,

We look at it in a way that we acknowledge and recognize this is something that I can witness,

This is something that I don't have to fall right into,

This is something that I can be present with and aware of.

If you were describing the sensations,

Energies,

And feelings in your body to a scientist,

We might ask some questions.

Is that sensation moving or is it still?

Does it hurt?

If it's painful,

Is it a sharp or a fiery or a dull pain?

Is it heavy?

Is it light?

Some people have images of sensations in their body.

It's a big,

Heavy,

Dark shield,

A black hole that's moving in my gut.

If you have an image of your sensation,

Open your eyes,

Put it into a frame on the wall on the other side of the room,

Look at the image as an image,

Colors and shapes,

And then take your eyes around the empty space a couple of times.

Once you've done that though,

Come back into the sensation.

What are the boundaries of the sensation?

Most sensations dissipate gradually.

Some have a sharper boundary.

Mostly they're intense in the middle and then after some point we don't feel them anymore.

The sensation in the gut is often quite compact.

The heaviness in the chest might feel like it's the whole area from your collarbones to your lower ribs.

Sometimes people have a sensation of constriction or tightness in their throat,

Which can cause us to panic because we feel like we can't get a breath.

So in that case,

It would be helpful to notice,

I have this sensation but I'm actually still breathing.

It's not affecting my airway.

First of all,

With sensations and energy,

We look at it like a scientist.

Is it hot or cold?

Does it have a color?

Is it moving or still?

Is it painful?

What are the outside edges of that?

And then once we have that perspective,

We're witnessing,

We're noticing,

This is the sensation right now in my body.

Then we can start to work with why is it here.

Sometimes with a sensation,

We can go right into the center.

We almost can experience the world from the inside of that sensation.

I know it's a little weird to talk about sensations like this,

And it's one way that we can work with it with some perspective.

Other times we might want to notice the space around the outside of the sensation.

If you have a sensation of dread across the back of your neck and the top of your back,

The shoulders,

Notice if you feel that down into your stomach.

Do you feel it in your arms and legs?

Sometimes the sensation seems to fill up our whole body.

Often they're more localized.

We could tune into that sensation and sit with that question,

Why are you here?

What's going on with this?

I want to know why is this sensation here?

And then we listen.

Sensations sometimes will bring forward associated thoughts or memories.

Sometimes there will be a sensation that feels very familiar,

Like,

Oh,

You know,

I've had this sensation since I was a kid.

Sometimes when we're sitting with a sensation and being present with it,

A sense of an age will come up or a memory of us at a certain age.

The key to healing trauma,

To working with and releasing stored trauma in our body,

Is to stay present in this moment in time.

Right now,

What we're working with is a sensation or an energy in our body.

There might be associated thoughts or memories,

Or maybe it's more of a generalized feeling.

We might have an image come up of somebody.

Maybe it's a memory we've forgotten about,

Or that thing that happened when we were in grade two.

When we're working with this,

We have to stay present.

We use all of the tools that we've learned so far.

You might go into cyclic sighing.

If you get quite intensely pulled into something,

You might take a step back,

Do the five senses practice.

Keep yourself aware that you're here in this moment in time.

You're working with a sensation and perhaps with thoughts and memories.

As we're witnessing them,

Then some of these we can work with on our own.

Some of them,

It might be very helpful to have someone there with us,

A therapist,

A friend.

What we're doing right now is we're interested.

We're curious.

What is it that's going on?

Why was this energy stored?

What is unresolved that I could work with now?

One of the ways that we sometimes do that is we bring our adult self into connection with the younger part of ourself that wasn't aware and that couldn't manage things at the time.

We'll work with connecting with our younger self in the next segment.

For this one,

What we're really doing is remaining aware.

I have sensation in my body.

I might have a explicit memory or I have a general feeling of something.

We work with remaining aware as a witness,

Aware that in this moment,

We're not in danger.

In this moment,

We're noticing,

We're witnessing,

And perhaps even welcoming sensation,

Energy,

And feelings in our body.

If we get too carried into something,

We can come back.

We can hold our own hand.

We can stand up and shake it out.

We can do some cyclic sighing.

We're not at the mercy of the feelings,

The sensations,

The energy in our body.

That is what gives us confidence that we're going to be okay with this.

We might notice that there's space around the energy.

One question that's really good to ask is,

Is this energy here to hurt me?

It might feel like it if it's painful or if it's heavy or scary.

In my experience,

That is never the case.

Energy and sensation in our body is stored trauma,

And it's always here to protect us or warn us somehow it's trying to help.

Something has been repressed or pushed aside because we couldn't handle it,

And now it's time.

It's coming forward,

And we can build the resilience and strength to work with it.

You might put your hand on your heart and let the energy know that it's okay for it to be here.

You could talk directly to the energy.

I am so glad you're here.

I'm listening.

Work with building the confidence and the direct experience that you can dip into this a little bit.

You can notice feelings,

Sensations.

You can locate and describe like you would to a scientist.

You can open your eyes,

Move around the room,

Go for a walk,

Have a cup of hot tea,

Hug someone,

Pet your dog.

Whatever it is that's going to help you to come back into regulation.

These sensations are here,

And we can work with them from the safety of the present moment.