Working With Trauma In The Body
Trauma lives in the body — often in the places where we once couldn’t feel. Through gentle and compassionate awareness, we can begin to meet these parts of ourselves and restore the natural flow of our energy. In this article, I share how working with trauma in the body can become a path of deep healing and deep transformation.
Understanding Trauma As Energy In The Body
Thankfully there is a lot more awareness in our society about the prevalence of trauma, and its impact.
It does bring up the question of ‘‘how can I work with my own trauma’’?
To begin, it’s important to understand that trauma is energy that is stuck in the body. Often, it happened at a moment when we were unable to feel what was happening.
Usually, feeling is a process that moves through us, like a river flowing. But when we are unable to feel, because our nervous system doesn’t have capacity for it, the pain gets stuck. We are unable to feel it, and let it move through.
So often it has a layer of protection - a trauma response, to make sure we don’t revisit those experiences. The body associates it with something dangerous.
Why The Body Protects Us
And the body is wired to be more interested in our survival, then our spiritual wellbeing in these contexts. So it creates a layer of protection to make sure we don’t go back to this pain.
Now, the issue is that we do and we will feel this pain at any moment in our life when that pain gets triggered. Immediately, our body moves back into that protection mechanism to brace for it.
Often, when we are in a trauma response like that, we are deeply disconnected from our felt senses, our capacity to be present. That response is designed to have our awareness leave our body to survive.
So it creates repetitive painful situations that makes us feel out of control.
So how can we bring a deep meaningful transformation through the body?
Reconnecting Through Feminine Somatic Work
When I work with women with my approach, Feminine Somatic Work I always invite them to approach their own trauma very gently.
This is not something that we can fix quickly, this is an experience to approach slowly, and with a lot of compassion for yourself. The impacts of trauma may be very uncomfortable and maybe something you want to transform with a lot of passion.
It’s only important to remember there is most likely a terrified part of you that is in pain, and it won’t open with anything like intensity or force.
Feminine Somatic Work is about embodying this transformation. It’s not about reaching a particular goal, but rather about experiencing this transformation in the body.
Creating Safety And Building Capacity
What I invite my clients to begin with is to connect with the sensations in their body, and to grow into a deep connection to the energy in themselves. Feeling the lifeforce moving through them.
In doing so we create an anchor in the body, a space that feels safe.
From there, we can slowly begin to bring back a memory when we had that trauma response, for example, when our mother gets angry, when our partner disconnects, when our child goes into a tantrum, etc.
As we consciously feel the sensations in our body, we can begin to connect with the experience of the trauma response. Meet it, be with it.
Opening The Door To Healing
In that connection there is a realisation that it doesn’t have to take us out of control, that we can build our capacity to be with it, to feel it.
As I guide my clients to feel an internal sense of safety, we can begin to slowly open the door to their painful experience.
Doing so allows them to have a chance to release the emotions that are stuck there. To meet these parts of themselves that have been hurt, so they can finally heal.
