32: Embodied Trauma Healing: From Science to Soul and Spirit

 

“The body keeps an accurate journal, regardless of what you write down.” —Anonymous

We can’t talk our way out of trauma, anxiety, or depression. It requires the body and heart to move through what it wanted to do that it didn’t get to, and the body will remind (in both subtle and loud ways) us until it happens.

The body is the vessel for all of our experiences and holds the energy of what was overwhelming or incomplete in the past, in our ancestry, and our soul history. What involved the body to begin with requires the body to heal.

Learn about the key components that give way to healing your nervous system and coming through with more resilience and expansiveness, whether or not you think or believe you have trauma.

This episode is about the science, soul, and spirit behind trauma and trauma healing, how our instinctual animal body responds to threat, how the whole body’s function and our experience are impacted by the nervous system’s fight and flight responses, and the connection of the body to spiritual aspects of trauma.

This episode will be followed by a body-centered trauma healing experiential that supports you in unfolding body memory and organic healing.

 

Links, Article, and Resources

All Show Notes for This Episode

📝 https://candicewu.com/trauma

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Newsletter & Embody Community

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Show Notes & Timestamps 

 

00:00 Intro

00:56 Sponsored by You

01:47 Update on My Travels: Michigan

04:58 Opening of the Episode

05:16 When I First Started Therapy

06:23 Opening to Embodiment

07:07 I Couldn’t Just “Calm Down” or “Let Go”

07:46 Nervous System - Duality of Protection & Growth

09:22 Shifting the Trauma / Compassion for Myself

10:33 Trauma Healing From a Body-Centered Perspective

11:20 What Is Trauma?

12:12 the Spectrum of Trauma (Large T Trauma, Small T Trauma)

14:47 Empowering Trauma by Defining It as a Response That Could Not Be Had

15:44 Referencing Family Constellations and Ancestry With Trauma Passed Down the Line

17:31 Working With the Body, We Don’t Necessarily Need to Know the Details

18:13 Trauma by History

18:34 Something New Can Happen

19:08 Science and Soul Around Embodied Trauma Healing

19:28 Difference From Talk Therapy

20:15 “Time Will Heal All Wounds” - (Myth or Reality)

Part 1: Science Behind Trauma

21:27 Science Behind Trauma

21:39 Mention of Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine

22:09 Animals and Trauma - How Animals Respond to Threat

23:39 Example Video - the Impala Playing Dead

24:14 Humans Response to Traumatic Experiences / Avoid, Skip, or Ignore

25:38 Sometimes “I’m Fine” Is Also Numbness

26:40 What Peter Levine Created

27:25 Techniques I Use in My Work / Combining Somatic Experiencing With Family Constellations

28:07 A Healthy Nervous System

29:37 Fight, Flight, and Freeze Are Supposed to Only Last a Few Minutes

30:06 We Are Not Exactly the Same as Animals (We Need a Lot of Love and Care Before We Can Handle the World)

30:50 Donald Winnicott : Good Enough Mother

31:30 Our Expansive & Rational Self - Placed in a Body That Needs Co-Regulation

32:01 More Science: The Polyvagus Nerve

32:08 Mention Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges

33:27 The Vagus Nerve and All the Organ Systems

35:07 Why Look at Trauma?

35:54 The Body Knows Even if the Mind Doesn't!

36:22 An Example of This Showing Up in Family Constellations

36:57 Empowered by Knowing That There Is a Way to Heal

37:32 How Are We Affected if We Have Trauma?

Part 2: Soul & Spirit

39:37 Soul & Spirit

40:29 Asking Questions / What the Soul Asks Us to Learn About This Situation?

41:34 From Soul to Spirit / the Part That Is Untouched & Unwounded

42:51 Clear the Soul Level Trauma

43:21 There Are Endless Tools to Heal Trauma (Or Quick Summary: Healing Trauma Through Completion and Embodiment)

45:53 Who to Work With?

46:45 Getting on the Grid on the Embody podcast/episode on Energy

46:54 Body Like Mountain on the Embody Podcast / Nature

47:02 Resource Safety & Emotional Capacity With Pendulation on the Embody Podcast / Emotions

47:19 Being in the Body With Love on the Embody Podcast / Embody

47:39 Following the Body to Organically Heal / the Meditation That Comes With This Podcast / Trauma

48:17 Why I Am So Excited About Trauma Work

49:57 Contact Me

50:16 Outro

 

Intro Music by Nick Werber (instagram.com/nwerber)

Cover Photo by psychoballerina photography on Unsplash