the question I get is so Irene how do I start and you'll probably have that question today as I talk about how trauma is really released um we'll Define what trauma is we'll Define what release actually means um it's not what we often think it is um and I just wanted to start off with that I am a somatic experiencing practitioner I'm also a Fel Christ practitioner and I'm trained in something called somatic practice um and I have two met two Science degrees one in um exercise physi biology and won a masters of research in biomedical and health science um so this is my world this is my expertise I've been doing this work since I graduated from high school in 1993 um so wanted to just give that little overview for those who are new to me so this concept of um how do we like what first of all what is trauma what is release and how do we really release Trauma from the body and um to get into this I first need to Define trauma from this we would call it new traumatology point of view so the new traumatology point of view or way of looking at the human system is really been birthed and born out of my predecessors most of which are still alive um namely Peter LaVine um Robert Scare um Bessel vanderock Kathy Kain um people that have really understood and have worked in clinical practice and teaching others like me how to work in their practices that trauma isn't something that is within the event it's not the car accident it's not the attack it's not the Injustice it is what happens in the physiology and and I'm also going to make one distinction I am open to all sorts of different ways of talking and using verbiage if you were to go to the hospital because you got into a com a car accident again for example you would most like if and if you needed surgery you might see a trauma surgeon so those surgeons or those places in hospitals the trauma Wing if you think of shows like Gray's Anatomy yes that is they treating the body and the body had a hurt or an accident due to an event and therefore they are helping with those traumas that's one way in the medical world of defining a trauma in this world of nervous system health and working with things like complex PTSD various forms of mental illness which we are knowing now are actually a form of physiological illness that show up in the psyche um chronic illness heart disease can certain cancers um autoimmune addiction trouble connecting with people trouble being able to sense our own bodies all of these are connected to some form of what we would call disregulation in the nervous system so again coming back Trauma from my point of view is not the event per say it is in the actual physiological body so atic systems the nervous system so that's number one that we have to understand number two what is the nervous system what is the body and I know that you know you all have a body and some of you are going to be more Adept and more skilled at being and masterful at being with this physical body of ours some of us are very good in the in say Athletics and physical Sports some are really good with more Mind Body techniques some of us are um not well in our body but the nervous system the autonomic nervous system the ANS this is responsible for our automatic pieces so I have to lay these foundations the autonomic nervous system is comprised of two main nervous systems one is the sympathetic nervous system one is the parasympathetic nervous system I'm not going to get into all the details I'll mention where you can learn more of that in a second but the sympathetic nervous system is more of the get up and go fight flight protect attack defend get the heart rate and blood pressure up so that we can climb a flight of stairs so that we can run down the street all these sorts of things it gives us more blood to our muscles and to our system so that we can act and move and be engaged and stimulated and activated the parasympathetic nervous system is often dubbed the more slow going down rest digest system but it's actually way more complicated than that and this is where something called the poly vagal Theory or the understanding I should say of how the Vegas nerve works and how it relates with the parasympathetic nervous system comes into into play I've done an entire lecture on the these Vegas connections um Vlogs on it so we can pop in um one where I talk about what the poly vagel theory is and I did a special top lecture just on this the poly vagal theory is not just about the vagus nerve this is the other thing it is about how we as humans interact with our physiology and the environment in a hierarchical fashion depending on the stress and situation at hand if I'm having a nice chill moment with you guys or group around a campire one would hope that I'm in a more Slow Down Easy chill rest digest socially engaged mode if I am under threat or under attack I'm going to come out of that chill mode and I'm going to go into more sympathetic fight flight mode if I can't fight or flee and I'm like I give up I can't get out of this sticky tricky situation my system goes into what we might call a freeze or a shutdown or a collapse which is part of the parasympathetic so the parasympathetics complex is this concept of poly vagal and it is nothing nothing more I mean it's a big deal but it's this concept of these different spectrums and different systems that our neurophysiology and our neurochemistry have to Cascade through to when we are safe and feeling good and warm and fuzzy or when we are not and we are needing to go into protection mode so the parasympathetic is got it has more Nuance I'll leave it at at that when we have stored trauma stored I like to call it survival stress this impacts the ability for our autonomic nervous system to function properly the other thing that I didn't mention about the autonomic nervous system is it not only governs the fight flight freeze it also is in charge of how we digest things so like if I drink a bit of water here if you got to drink next to you you can do the same and imagine this I don't have to teach myself how to swallow I don't have to teach my body how to bring that um uh water and that liquid through my stomach through my intestine small intestine um I don't need to it just happens automatically thank goodness right that is automatic so this the the autonomic nervous system is responsible for that stuff that goes on in our system it's responsible for hormone release how our immune system keeps us safe and protects us from whatever um is within and around us it is responsible for our um for our heart rate shifting and changing our blood pressure our respirator our respiration right if we start to climb up a flight of stairs we need to start our increase right increase in our respiration inhale exhale blood pressure goes up to meet the demands of the ACT movement task that we are doing so automatic nervous system autonomic nervous system is just what we need the thing that's interesting is that when we have got things that occur to us we typically call them traumas right I had an emotional trauma I had a physical trauma I had a sexual trauma I had a medical trauma all these things that's fine fine I think it's fine to say that but I'm trying to be a little more accurate in defining is it a trauma or is it the system is disregulated as a result of that event or that series of event or the generational past or the abuse I prefer the word abuse to trauma because someone may have a certain type of abuse and then another person has the exact same type and how they deal with those different hardships shocks to their system abuses scary bad thing it is determined by how their internal physiology and how their autonomic nervous system was originally wired when they were young so now I'm going to funnel into um how this all starts and how we often fail to know how to process these hurts and harms and bad scary things because of what occurred to us when we were young in utero to our parents before we were even born which sets them up to either know or not know how to work with us and help teach us as little human animals when we're young um so again I'm going to go back this idea of trauma again in my um Suite of words and and how I describe this it's not not something it's that's in the event it's how it ends up in the system whether it is um what we would call disregulation somatic stress and also know that when trauma and trapped stress these fight flight freeze responses get trapped within us for some people it impacts the cardiovascular system for some people it impacts the gut for some people as I mentioned it impacts how we think how our psyche works for others it affects the immune system for others it affects their need to have external coping and soothing mechanisms to bring them self down this would be addiction for some it is going into really toxic environments and or relationships over and over again for some it is none of the above but it's constantly self-sabotaging ourselves and feeling like we're no good or we have no purpose in life etc etc so just to wrap that one up before I get to the release part trauma is something that is not necessarily in my opinion and from my experience in the event it is how an individual acts responds feels processes the outside bad scary thing that happened and then whether or not that gets stuck and embedded in the system now if we think about something really simple so let's just say you and this is like my common go-to example you're walking in your home and you stub your toe on a coffee table or something on the ground and it hurts like hell in that moment that very benign but you know I've broken a toe doing that so it can really hurt the system goes into a stress response it goes into a sense of something's not right oh gosh there's a piece of bone that got broken or maybe there's a ligament that got torn or maybe you've cut the skin again you don't have to think send out the Army to protect and send the blood cells so that it starts to stitch up the bone or the tendon or the cut you don't think about it it happens but then there's this after effect we could call it a Ricochet or the Fallout of that acute shock to the system the sympathetic nervous system will often have a release of adrenaline we might feel pain we might feel emotion we might get angry at the coffee table or at ourselves for not seeing it or someone who moved the coffee table and didn't tell us and so our awareness wasn't on point our system goes into a reaction and our body wants us in that moment to pause and wait for that high stress to come down now you might be saying well Irene how do you know that the system wants us to wait all I can say is trust me the system human system does not want to live spiked up in a chronic survival response it wants to come out of the intense pain the discomfort the emotional uh flush that comes up and so here's your number one so so I'm embedding these howtos from this day forward and I say this to my students all the time and it's probably one of the more under more underestimated things that you can do to Foster greater capacity in your body system so that you can release and you can let go of the old abuses hurts harms troubles Etc that have occurred to you by in that moment in that moment of stress acute stress by really really feeling and even just giving yourself maybe 30 seconds a minute might be better depending on how severe it is and to really sense feel connect feel the pain don't ignore the pain if there's a scream that needs to come out granted of course you don't have children around around you you do not want to harm them or scare them if they're around so this is where my example then takes a a Choose Your Own Adventure so we talk about that in a second but let's just say it's safe for you to let all this stuff out um feel it let it out process it now I have an ebook if you haven't picked up this ebook it's called seven steps to d-stress we'll pop it in the comments or it'll be in the show more section if you're watching this afterwards that ebook explains the stress response and why we want to really not just for the sake of pausing and resetting in our day when we have an acute stress we want to we want to work with it in the moment and the reason why is because if we don't it traps inside of us it sticks to us we stay in a chronic state of activation fight flight or shutdown because we have shut shut off feeling that pain because it's just not convenient so make it such that again like I said from this day forward make it almost a good thing that you are pausing when these things occur now this could be stubbing your toe it could be almost getting into an accident on the road it could be um almost slipping when you're in the shower it could be hearing someone um scream not to you but something that startles you it could be a stressful conversation etc etc etc it could be an actual true real abuse attack that kind of thing the thing I said about the kiddos again I know I'm sure there are people here who are parents and a lot of times people get confused because they say well shouldn't we show our children emotional processing so that they learn it from us and the answer to that is yes and no it depends how old they are if they they are young and fully un unaware of how to self soothe their own body and they are still relying on you the care um Giver to teach them self-regulation no you need to actually find a way to feel that hurt and pain and process it later so we'll talk about that too in a second because if they see that Mom or Dad or or whoever isn't able to keep it together and freaks out the child will inevitably default to something wrong is happening I have to change myself to take care of Mom Dad Grandma Grandpa Nanny whatever it might be older sibling even if that child is an infant and can't make sense of what's going on they will shift their physiology to protect themselves from the Outburst that their caregiver has has put out so this is kind of one of those caveats where depending on the age of the child to help them not take the stress of our trauma traumas events bad scary things hurts harms Etc we have to then maybe process that later and that is as simple as having a moment later that day or the next day where we conjure up the memory of that accident harm hurt and we work with our physiology to track the things that we might have trapped inside now this is more advanced and this is of course what we work with and we teach our students in our programs but I just wanted to give you that concept that sometimes we can't work on something in the moment it might not be safe to do so maybe it's a more serious accident we have to go immediately to emergency and we've passed out and we have to get something fixed but then after the fact that's when we want to then work with our physiology track it see what's stored what is suppressed what is depressed in the system okay so just F following me here I started with defining what trauma is I gave you a very brief introduction to the autonomic nervous system um I gave you this example of stubbing our toe as a little minor we would call this Shock Trauma and how being able to process and feel what is going on will allow us to come out of that high intensity shock State now the next question might be well you know do I have to shake do I need to do this and this is where this gets really interesting and there's so much misinformation out there releasing something that's trapped in the system is not cut and dry releasing something in the system is not just shaking for some it might be for others it might need to be emotions that come out it might need to be words that need to be spoken it might need to be movement patterns that weren't allowed to come out that have nothing to do with shaking and so this is where it gets really tricky to say release is like this because each of us is unique in our history each of us is unique in our capacity and each of us will be unique in how we process I prefer the word integrate to release how we bring up and sense and feel and then integrate what is coming up so then it can settle and dissipate and come out for some feeling tingles in the body feeling heat feeling cold rush through the body feeling a um a bubbling up of an emotion and then being with that emotion and expressing whatever might need to come out is what is the release it might have nothing to do with physical body parts moving so I just wanted to kind of set that tone as well as we go a little deeper into this um one of the classic knowings that we are trapped in survival stress and have lots of tra traumatic stress inside of us in our organs in our systems is that we aren't able to be in the here and now so even as I say that um just take a second you there's 151 people here as you've been listening to me talk talk talk have you been connected to your body have you been connected to feeling your breath have you been connected to feeling the ground under you how are you connected to your somatic body self while you're engaged in this learning um mode here and one of the things that is um most difficult for humans to get is that we have animal physiology right other mammals in the world have those autonomic stress survival parasympathetic systems for many animals our internal viscera our organs are the same with maybe some tweaks but mostly the same and so we have this animal somatic Mamon body but then we have this higher brain and this is where knowing how to release trauma is not as cut and dry as an animal in the wild who might defend their territory might shake after a real scary event you know if you've ever seen dogs they'll shiver and they'll Shake um they'll release tension by doing a shake by doing a stretch and it's not like that cat is thinking okay I'm going to get up and do some downward cat or downward dog when if you see a cat or a dog and they get up and they do those stretches it is an automatic response in their body to reset the tone in their muscles so that they can act and walk and be Lim you know um agile and Nimble and and be there for threat if it comes so another little nugget here of how we gain more capacity to release stuff that's stored inside is we start to follow impulse in our body we start to follow the things that occur internally that we often don't think of this concept of um how we follow our impulse so the first thing I started with again a little bit of Education right we always want to start with education the second piece is dealing with stressors and troubles in the moment in the now moment so they don't stick and that takes practice as humans we have overridden we have overrided our stress responses because we have this higher brain so this is why I was doing that little Preamble of we're human we have animal physiology and we have this higher brain that is so darn smart and so darn complex that it can actually shut down and disconnect from what's happening in our physiology this is a problem it's okay when we're in a moment of absolute abuse perhaps we will maybe have to dissociate to handle what's happening to us this is what occurs with folks who have had severe abuse torture that kind of thing they will really disconnect from their physiology because it's too much to sense and feel you know we see this in private practice we hear about this in in stories movies all sorts of things that depict atrocities and then the person is protecting this is what we would see in and say dissociative identity disorder used to be called multiple multiple personality disorder it is a way to cope with all of the stuff that's happening so our higher brain can protect us and that's a good thing but if we are no longer in the traumatic stress if we're no longer in the the event that occurred 20 years ago 30 years ago 40 years ago or even generationally to our ancestors if we're not in that anymore but we still have the wiring in our Noggin up here to protect us um we are we need to do some work to help bring back more qualities of sensation to the body so I'll pose this question I'll pose this question if you have a broken bone or say a cut you know I'll use my stub toe example the system can't heal it in one moment it takes time right and if your system is overstressed if your system isn't getting good nutrients if you're chronically dehydrated if you're living in a in a toxic environment if just the situation around you and the past and the past is still on your back like a backpack the ability for the system to deal with that cut or that broken bone or or that Shock Trauma let's just say is less able it can still do it but it's going to take a lot of time for that cut let's just say to heal and I know this from speaking with people who have autoimmune conditions who are chronically stressed who are living in what we would call chronic PTSD which is the the fight flight and the parasympathetic freeze just on all the time their autonomic healing repair mechanisms are dampened they are under stress because the system is trying to just keep them safe even though there's no danger around them there is a message saying danger danger danger and so let's just say you get that cut it's going to take a lot longer for that cut to heal when the system is under stress the other example I'm going to give if we think about a goldfish in a in a bowl of water which is how you often see them there's this concept in science um in biology where if the fish is sick do we help the fish or do we make sure its environment is healthier the water is healthy the water isn't filled with toxins right do we just give the fish medicine and then plop it back into the environment that's toxic or do we clean up the environment and then let the fish respond to a cleaner environment and over time it starts to heal so I'm sort of laying that that idea that would be called terrain theory for example where we change the terrain we change what we're offering the fish for its nutrients and its its goodness its home so for humans when we have a cut for example I'm going to pull this back together don't worry guys when we have a cut on our hand and our system is already under stress it's going to take a lot longer for that cut to heal because the system is trying to figure out what it should fight next who should I attack today you know what should I forget what should I disconnect from today and it doesn't know how to address just that that thing and go into healing mode so all of that let that settle for us here today I will make the assumption that many of you are here because you know you have old tra traumas old survival stress your sister is living in some form of fight flight freeze some form of maybe dissociation which is also called D realization depersonalization disconnection from the environment we aren't able to even see what's around us we're kind of like a Walkin zombie in a sense or the flip side we are hyperaroused we are hyper Vigilant we are always looking for the next thing to attack Us in this state we will actually create drama we will create drama to perpet uate the old traumatic expressions and wires in our body because that's our Mo we know how to be that way we don't know how to be calm and soothed and engaged with the world it's foreign territory so our system will keep looking for ways to keep us trapped and I see this in students that I work with and in clients I saw when I was in private practice we would be doing a lot of good work or they'd be doing a lot of good work on their their own and they're feeling something shift and it's so foreign that they second guess that that's even possible or they're like well this just seems too boring I got to find a little bit more intensity to bring my system back up to what it's used to so again let's just say you're here because you want to understand how this trauma stuff works how it is supposed to be released how it is really released as I said in the title there's two situations that often people live in again this sense of disconnection dissociation and then this sense of um hyperaroused looking for danger all the time the interesting thing is these kind of they kind of play together because someone who has more of that dissociative tendency can is often like that because the high alert needing to look for danger all the time just became too exhausting this is how someone ends up in what we would call adrenal fatigue fa um adrenal burnout where the system is just collapsed it has spent its whole life looking for danger and it's maybe not there but they're expecting it so the system stays ramped so again hypothetically you've got all this chronic stuff in your system due to the past that was scary bad and wasn't good what do we do about it first thing education you're doing that right now so promise me that after this you will do more education with me through my resources through my programs Etc the second thing is we have to learn how to follow our impulses and by that I mean tracking our physiology so the reason I talked about that cut and I talked about um these trapped things inside of us if we are unable to notice small things like when we are thirsty for example or when we are hungry or if we negate listening to our bladder when it is um full and needing to void when we are not allowing um gas to pass up or down now for those of you who have been around a long time this is old news to you but for those of you who are new this is actually the Holy Grail of learning how to release are trapped traumatic stress it's not some fancy technique where you tap it out it's not some fancy breath thing where you breathe it's not some fancy pushing of the muscles to get a shaking it's starting with listening to these basic autonomic biological functions that are in our system because if we cannot hear them and sense them if we can't notice when we have a tight muscle somewhere or there's a pain or there's a heat or there's a tear or an anger or a sense of disgust or a sense of sadness or this desire to say something if we're not tuned to these internal automatic responses a we're not connected to ourselves and B it will be very difficult to track the trapped traumatic stress and where they are in the body and we will go into the approach in a kind of one-size fits all and just be like oh well they've said that this is going to help me release trauma so I'm going to go through these steps but we're doing it from a cognitive external locus Focus as opposed to what is my system needing to bring up and out so I'm going to pause on that so again education and then understanding our physiology and then being able to listen to our physiology if I go back to my example of stubbing my toe breaking my toe in the coffee table that is an opportunity to teach myself how to feel in the moment because it hurt in the moment there's no denying it it's there sometimes we need to understand that if a system has had not a lot of capacity one question I saw float through is so how do I heal early trauma you you know you've been talking about this Shock Trauma accidents but let's say there was no actual accident it was just this General nothing was ever safe I didn't get connection that was healthy and secure for my primary caregiver usually it's the mother but sometimes it's a father sometimes it's a grandparent or a nanny does doesn't matter whoever that responsible older human was for us when we were young if they didn't have solid regulation on board they won't know how to attune to us and then we will learn faulty Attunement to ourselves that's really important let me say that again if our primary caregiver doesn't know how to listen to their own physiology because of their own trapped stuff and then they can't listen to their own so they can't understand us and they're not helping us co-regulate and soothe we then get faulty information about how to soothe our own autonomic system this is what we would call one portion of early developmental preverbal trauma so in that case there's no actual one event there isn't that one car accident there isn't that one attack there isn't that one natural disaster that obliterated the village that I was growing up in for example it's this lowlevel Insidious always feeding the little one what it needs but not in a way that's healthy so the question is or I should say that is an instance where there might not be a shaking release there might not be an actual memory of processing that horrific thing we saw and this is where many people who have tried to do these cookie cutter approaches to getting the stress out by shaking by breathing for example by getting hooked up to machines sometimes it works sometimes but often there's rebound maybe they feel a little bit better because there's been some capacity and flow given to the system right but the core level of wiring has not been impacted and so if you know that your early stuff was more like what I just said and someone just said this was both my parents um this is where I'm going to sound like a broken record education following your impulses getting into your body and then further to that learning how to really Orient to the Here and Now as boring as it might sound can you feel the pressure of your body against whatever you're sitting on can you have your eyes and attention see and explore the space around you and let that come into you or you go to it when we again like I said if we've had these scary things happen to us consider an infant who's not being attuned to they're crying and crying and crying and the cry is the Cry of I'm too hot I see this all the time in grocery stores baby is crying and you look and they're beat red and they're still all bundled up in their winter clothes and it's hot in that store these are true stories I've seen this and the the mother doesn't know or the caregiver doesn't know what to do and I've seen mothers scream at their babies in stores and it's like look at the face they're hot I've already stripped my jacket off you know um if that isn't attuned to if that little one doesn't get what it needs if that cry can't be listened to the Cry of that is very different than a cry of hunger than a cry of a belly being a little distended and gas being held they the baby starts to not learn how to self-regulate they are in a state of stress and so why was I saying that um so we have to understand that if that was us and even if we don't remember it but I'm saying this to you now and if something is landing and if you're starting to feel maybe a little bit of anxiousness or maybe you're going beat red in the face then it's possible that that scenario I just gave you is triggering a procedural memory a body somatic memory of something like that where our needs weren't being tended to so in a case like that there ain't no shaking response to heal that trauma it is you learning how to take care of your body now and listen to it now see this is why this isn't very glamorous it really is some of these gentle lifestyle self-care nurturing practices that we didn't get when we were young and we essentially have to reparent ourselves it's not really inner child work necessarily you could imagine that little one that was left to cry and cry and be over heated or be hungry or be overfed this is something that I've seen kids being overfed not wanting to eat everything and they're being forced to eat stuff um that is a perfect way for someone to disconnect from their body and then we wonder why so many people have trouble with eating cues and hunger cues and I'm full cues right it's been messed with in some way so again how do we release trauma it depends on what the situation was what I have learned in my practice and in my programs and working with people is that whether you have had a early trauma like what I just talked about maybe it's a medical trauma this is a common thing um babies are born and they need something fixed right and they need to get it fixed or else they'll die they have to go into a little bit of survival physiology to handle that stuff and up until this day pediatricians doctors they still don't know that they should be sending that baby to a somatic practitioner to help it get its life force back because it's been dampened by that surgery um so that's one example so sometimes it isn't just neglect and abuse it's these real life events um maybe there was a death in the family the day that we were born and mom was distraught there are so many instances where this early stuff imprints on us and then we wonder why doing these step bystep things aren't working it's because it's actually a lot simpler but the simple is complex because if we are now saying our I'm 45 so let's say you're 45 let's say you knew you were that baby that was not attuned to wasn't securely attached to parents hated each other there was never any space for play and goodness and there were conditions on love and that's just how we were brought up and then maybe along that lifetime um you had a car accident or something like that and now you're 45 and you're like well where do I start I start when I work with people all at the same level we start with education following impulse learning how to connect to the environment Orient and then a little further is being able to notice when our stress responses go up more and again I don't start teach teaching people that on day one because it might be confusing it's like you're learning Greek and you can't decipher the language the writing it doesn't make sense because you haven't done the ABCs and one two 3s which are the things I've already mentioned so again if you're new here get into more of my videos I highly recommend um watching the three-part healing trauma series it's on my site 100% complimentary because I don't want to go into all the and crannies of the science and the research it's in there in that video the first video I talk about growing capacity I talk about an analogy I use a swimming pool and beach ball analogy if you don't know that analogy you need to know that analogy um so make sure that you do your homework after this and watch that but in essence if we have been disconnected from our system our capacity to feel our organic biological physiological neurochemical processes will be very very stunted or non-existent doesn't mean that it can't grow doesn't mean that the system is dead it's not dead you're obviously here you're alive that means there's potential for it to grow but you got to understand that this capacity building when we build up this capacity to listen it then allows us to process the old old old stuff that is TR within our system within our physiology within our heart this is why I've seen a few things pop through where people are asking is this what anxiety is is this what Panic is yes some people go through life feeling just fine and they don't oh I don't know what anxiety is I don't know what Panic is and then they start to learn about this stuff they start to unfreeze their bodies from the traumas and they're like wow yeah that was me I was that kid that wasn't listened to etc etc and then all of a sudden they start to feel anxiety they've never felt it before they start to feel Panic they're waking up in the night in a cold sweat they can't go to sleep at night all these things this is a sign of that so this is I'm going to go back to what I talked about at the very beginning that sympathetic nervous system the fight flight it's that system finally starting to be felt again so often someone gets into this word and they start to feel more of this heart rate they're like my I can't figure this out and then they try to Cal it down with breath they try to calm it down with something to to shake it out to get it out but really what needs to be felt is that intensity and it needs to be felt and listened to and then the question is is that heart rate intensity what is it and I can't tell you what it is I can't it might be the precursor to needing to scream it might be the precursor to needing to cry cuz you weren't allowed to cry when you fell off your bike when you were a kiddo it might be the precursor to just this absolute where are you no one is here I'm scared I'm a baby I'm hungry I'm hot you're not making sense you're not listening to me and of course an infant isn't thinking that it's all in their physiology and if we don't understand what these signs are we might just get rid of it by some kind of management strategy that is labeled to heal trauma and release and get that out and this is why I see people come back over and over again with the same symptoms and the same troubles because they haven't gotten to this kind of more root boring mundane element of learning how to listen to their body do not underestimate what I've been talking about about listening to your hunger your digestion your bowels your urination your heat your cold your need to rest your need to speak up cry stomp your feet be angry those are all in service to helping the old traumas the old survival stressors come up organically I can't stress that enough it's like if you Garden if you plant things when you put that seed into the Earth or you put it in a in a in a glass of water to help propagate you can't force it to do it faster I I'm sure there's some Weird Science out there that might be able to but let's just pretend organically you you plant your garden and you've got to wait and you got to make sure that the soil is healthy and filled with minerals and it's getting water and it's getting sun and there's not toxicity in the groundwater and all the things that go into growing a really healthy garden I'm not an agriculturist but you know we now know that monocrops are not good nor are the pesticides that we're putting on them so if we think of the human system it's the same way if all I do is one practice and I hate to always poo poo breath work but I'm gonna it's like if our only goto to is to breathe and change our breath when we're feeling intensity it's like that monocrop in farming sure you're going to produce a lot of grain a lot of soy but it's lacking the diversity it's it's lacking the microbiome of the earth of the bugs and all the other weeds and plants and things that give it that life right if you know anything about farming you know what I'm talking about um we might be able to get away with that for a while but if I use that analogy now we're seeing the the the trouble with these these crops and people are getting back into biodynamic farming and putting all sorts of things in one plot of of Earth the system is like that our human system is like that so I'm going to get to some questions so again quick review this concept of how do we release trauma how does it really happen there's no secret there's no one thing and if you came here wanting to know my secret sauce of steps the steps that I have on that ebook I mentioned the seven steps to de-stress I have another ebook audio called the four simple STS steps to deal with overwhelming emotions if you listen and or sorry read and listen to those there's another one four steps to beat resistance you will see that they're very much the same thing but if you repeat that over and over again and you learn more education you get better at listening to your physiology you will grow the the biodiversity within your sensation within your emotions within your intention within how you connect to the outside world to people to your kids to your plants to your animals to the sky to whatever Gods you pray to all of it becomes more alive when you can have that multitasking of awareness and this this um this this internal regeneration of what should have been there in the first place and this is my friends the Crux that we're at right now the real predicament in humanity is that for most of us we have had generations and generations of not organically connecting to the biodiversity of the human system and how it is meant to relate to the environment it's just hasn't happened yet we have so many different parenting practices so many different books this kind of parenting that kind of parenting I am going to be very clear in saying there should only only be one kind of parenting and that is the parenting that animals in the wild do which is nurture protection unconditional love teaching that little one self-regulation through co-regulation and then as you start to grow adding more diversity more positive stress and teaching them how to be in the world and listening to their bodies and so we've gotten so far away from that natural organic quality that we're chasing a quick fix we're trying to biohack if you will ways to heal this stuff and I get a lot of questions Irene what do you think about neuro feedback Irene what do you think about bio feedback Irene what do you think about this type of releasing exercise what do you think about this kind of therapy and I say it depends on so many things but if you can go back to the basics and learn how to listen to your system and all the intricacies and complexities then you're golden you might choose something like and I've got a question here that blends beautifully into this um you can choose methodologies that will help the organic process to become more alive but I often say don't start with those external things it's better to go the other way around so one of the questions we got was from our Facebook group healthy nervous system Revolution um from Katherine and she writes I have a question about trauma release I experienced big shaking responses body movements Sensations and waves of emotion after having some form of body work so just for the the sake of um definition body work would be uh massage osteopathic Chiropractic reflexology cranos sacral etc etc ET tissue you know shiatsu that kind of thing so does Body Work Force the trauma out of the body or does it just guide your body on how to release the trauma or does it depend on how the body work is carried out well it depends on how the body work is carried out but what's more important is the person getting the body work and the person giving the body work if they are not connected to their physiology they might miss some very important stress responses that pop up while that person is say working with their lower back or their leg or whatever or their up here you know it doesn't matter where the other one is acupuncture that was another thing I still I consider acupuncture to be like body work because you're shifting things in the body through pressure points needles meridians Etc um I have a story about acupuncture that I'll share but it depends on the person it depends on you I know from my experience when I did more body work type of stuff when I was doing felden Christ practice with my folks like my my clients um there were some people that did really well with it and then there were other people that you would work on them and then the next week it'd be back to the same way it was before and this is actually what led me in to learn more about the nervous system and somatic experiencing and this new traumatology that I mentioned at the top of the show about what trauma actually is it's not in the event it's in the physiological system um if the system if you the person can't track it might feel good you might push things around there might be more opening there might be some scar tissue that breaks up because sometimes some bodyw work is very directed to getting things broken up and and released but let's just say we're getting the body work because of these old injuries and um traumas and abuses and all those things we have to know how to track our body and then the person who's giving the session who's doing the work if they aren't attuned to this level of detail they're going to miss the change in the the color of color of our skin they might miss that we've just held our breath they might miss that they're holding their breath some of the worst massages I've gotten you guys and it's so terrible because the moment someone puts their hands on me I can tell whether or not they're in their bodies the person that's in their body it's like you feel they're connected to the Earth the person who's not in their body it's like their hands even though they're on you it's like they're hovering they're not Tethered to the goodness of like solidity and no matter how hard they press and how no matter how hard they they they get in there you feel tension in their hands you never want to have a body worker that feels like they have stress and tension in their hands it it's like this Force that's coming not through them but it's coming through the ether it's coming through Mama Earth it's coming from up and through the ground and so you know in those moments do you say sorry this sucks I can't you know do you make a lie I don't know you got to you got to navigate that yourself but to come back to Katherine your element here about shaking it body work doesn't necessarily Force the trauma out it's like trying to force that Garden to grow faster it can but both parties and the person's physiology have to be on board and tuned to it now the other thing is that because you say here I had a big shaking response body movement sensation waves of emotion if your system is primed and you've done the work and you have the intention in this session I really want to work with this accident or this thing a you should always let your person know and B that might bring stuff up so again this is where there's no cut and dry yes I can't just say yes body workk is going to release trauma because it might not right it might not if I think back to the first time I ever had acupuncture I was not connected to my body at all I was very young I felt the Pricks if anything they were painful I didn't know how to connect to the the energies I didn't know how to track the sensations in my body and it really did virtually nothing having done some acupuncture over the C last couple of years it is fascinating because I can tell even before she puts the needle in the person that I've worked with what is about to open up and I can track the movement through the meridians through the organs I can feel the heat I can feel where I'm holding I can then feel it and I can release so again there is a whole industry where a lot of people are getting body work to help release things and it might be providing a solution that's temporary but often it's not getting to the root of the problem so I hope that um answers that question oh the other thing I wanted to mention there Shak so sometimes I get questions where people say I went and I did these trauma release exercises and now whenever I lay down to track my body I just start shaking if our body so here's the thing if the system has a response a procedural muscular need to shake out some kind of old event where we weren't allowed to shake out or to protect what's called a um incomplete or sorry a procedural memory so I'll lay the example if um I was attacked when I was a teenager and um I couldn't run and get away and then I was abused my system still has the procedure in it to run to kick to scream to like strangle my as salent but I couldn't because I had to go into shutdown mode because I could telli am not going to get out of this I can't fight that'll be more harmful so no matter what if that was 20 years ago 10 years ago or a 100 years ago and I haven't gone through the organic tracking of that memory if I just go to a class and I don't connect to that emotionality that fear that Terror that this is where I was but now I'm here on April 8th 2021 we need to connect to the here and now but we also have to connect to the memory and not let the memory dissociate us or put us into more fear this is why broken record Irene you've got to do your education you have to do your groundwork you have to learn how to listen to your physiology build that capacity which is what I talk about in video number one of the healing trauma series we have to learn how to orient and we have to keep practicing being in the here and now without even trying to process our old heart hurts and harms because when we do process that we can't just go into a generic shaking thing to get rid of that fight flight energy from the attack uh it's like the puzzle pieces don't come together they need to come together in in the essence of that of that attack when I was 16 it's it has to match up the languages have to talk to each other because this is what happens guys and gals if the languages don't talk to each other we might feel better after that release after that big cathartic cry because there's more blood flow there's more endorphins it opens up our joints we feel less tension we feel a little more powerful but if those things didn't match up that imprint of how we wanted to fight the essence the smell of the of the cigarette smoke the cologne the alcohol if we don't have that come up we're not fully resolving that event hope that makes sense I would not ask anyone to try to process an event like that before they've done weeks and weeks of groundwork in my programs we never ask anyone what are your traumas we never ask them how were you attacked what did you not get to fight off what occurred we don't go into the injustices it's not important when we're laying the groundwork they know what happened to them we don't need to bring it back up but they know what happened to them we know that we're teaching them the language of their nervous system so that when that old event finally feels safe this is a key word I haven't mentioned yet today when that old event finally knows that the system has enough capacity to come up and up and up it does and the system knows oh yeah this person has done their groundwork they can handle the terrible memory the smell of the cologne the big fight energy that has to come out the sobs that are going to come out when they finally feel safe because they've protected themselves right and these these elements I think when we not I think I know when my students get to the that level it is liberating and it is triumphant to finally process that stuff on your own or maybe with the help of a body worker or a therapist but many of our students I have never met them and they do this on their own but we're not asking them to do it on the first day we're building up resource we're building up containment we're building up capacity we're building up that smartness with the body right we're literally taking advantage of What I Call neuroplastic Healing SE sequencing if you haven't checked out that piece of content I talk about how we have to sequence our healing we can't just go to the Big Cahuna at the very beginning right someone said how do we find the patience for this healing Journey you just find it just don't overthink it I say this work is mundane this work is just like waking up and feeding yourself and cleaning and continually dusting your home and putting fuel in your your car and I know that's not the best idea but example but maintenance if we treat this like something that is like this big blowout wow we won't get very far on this journey because the amount of traumatic stress that us humans hold to this day I don't know if it ever ends I have been doing this work since 204 really intently intensively and really intensively since 2008 this year has been the biggest year for me releasing traumatic stress from my physical system I have a video coming out on Monday that talks about that so be sure to check it out so the patience that we have is just we just have to do it you know and and sometimes the patience is a little bit of tough love it's like the research shows if we don't heal this stuff we will get sick most likely even with all the healthy lifestyle practices the ace study the adverse childhood experiences study is too conclusive to to not pay attention to this and not find the patience so you said the the question is from Mil milica from Belgrade you asked I've heard that certain body parts can be in freeze while other body parts aren't and to me that's just fascinating yes it is so how do we unfreeze those frozen body parts by feeling them fully and seeing what's there and letting whatever wants to come up and out as Irene says um for me for example it's the lower abdomen and my feet so here's yes so yes sometimes if we have an accident one area will be more dissociated sometimes um when we grow up in that kind of environment that's really unsafe our immune system will freeze right these are real stories like this is where we see kiddos that have allergies and immune related problems and troubles thinking and learning some of them sometimes stress goes to the immune system sometimes it goes to the skin sometimes it goes to how we're thinking sometimes it goes to our emotions and but here's the thing there's no one um okay we're going to do trauma work that's just related to this body part so mil comes back to working with the whole system and then when you become more tuned to how to listen to your system and you know for instance that the freeze is more in your abdomen you might use more intention more touch more movement maybe you will get some body work around the abdomen once you know how to track the physiology same with the feet maybe there is a need to um work with the feet to massage the feet but with an intention of talking to them bringing aliveness back to them um but this doesn't work if we can't track internal sensation because sometimes there might be something more Global that's actually keeping that body part Frozen there might just be this cellular sense of unsafety all throughout the body which is how it often is and then that one specific body part is holding you know it's it's holding on for the whole system but there's actually a global part of the body that is UNS safe that is keeping you from feeling fully that um that foot that abdomen that body part so I know that this is true I've worked with it myself I've seen it in people and it's kind of the same thing the more you can track and get really good at organically noticing your system um you then know what to do how to do it and you start to bring aliveness back to those tissues I'm going to wrap up shortly here um and just to quick review right guys like again how how is trauma released it's kind of a trick question in a weird way because there isn't one way but there's this way of nurturing sparking back up getting our biological awareness back our awareness with the world back our capacity to be with our Sensations is key our body is key our emotions are important but they're actually less important than the physicality and the viscera because it's the viscer in the body that creates the emotions so when we become really good biologically noticing ourselves that's when we start to really get these um emotions more in check someone ask what about personality disorders or bipolar can you release trauma that leads to these things and actually resolve them or they lifelong I believe that they can be healed I've seen it um of course some things are more severe than others it depends on the circumstance how how bad the neglect was um Bruce Perry actually has some beautiful stories of some pretty heinous things that kids grow up with you know like kids literally being put in cages and not engaged with he's the guy that goes in he's a psychiatrist psychologist doctor that goes in when these kinds of things are found and the children are they're okay but they're never going to be functional members of society so I want to just bookmark that by saying there are some cases where it isn't that the person won't be able to live but they'll never be able to live solo and without a lot of support because there is a need to have some form of ATT attachment even if the attachment is faulty and not good even faulty attachment allows a human to have a little bit a little bit of something so if you're here asking these questions then this doesn't this usually would not be the case but bipolar um for example and these these various what we would call mental illnesses are a result of Trapped survival stress it's the system looking for answers when they were young and if the the parents if the caregivers whomever was around them was sending off really really faulty toxic signals and not attuning to the little one then the system flips between high intensity activation and shut down so this bipolar quality is that it's literally this bifurcation of polarity of of intense hyper and then shut down and the physiology behaves that way because that's how the imprint was when we were young and so it's similar and it's the same with all these other elements that I've been mentioning is how can we get the person to ReDiscover being in the present moment and tracking these intensities or these shutdowns and working with them now of course there needs to be more for that person than just what I'm saying today but yes I've seen it shift I've seen it work I've seen it help and heal things that people were often um never never thought that could ever heal um and I just think it's not you know the fault of the community the medical community the psychiatric Community necessarily it's just that um we're just learning the potential and why these why these things pop up they're very rarely genetic the genetics are expressed based on the in environment around us um but you know a person can have a genetic predisposition to something and never get that disease or illness or addiction and so that's where we know that a lot of what occurs in a system is due to its environment due to its exposure or lack of exposure to goodness and connection and love and unconditional positive regard someone says can you simultaneously be in shutdown while being really highly functioning 100% Stephanie I actually did a video on this called um functional freeze explained so maybe check that out but most there's a pretty strong preponderance in western civilization our productivity and all of the glory of industry and tech and and and all of it has been created due to a lot of folks being shut down down in a functional way right the way that um we work typically is through survival especially when we're not connected to the physiology and the body right so yes 100% yes this is from Carrie I just realized only today that I finally managed to listen to my body's impulses and let it and let it rest with a long nap sounds simple but it's huge for me 100% And that comment goes really nicely with what the last person asked about being in a functional state but really shut down many of our kids were raised pushing them past their comfort zone and overriding the structure in which they go to school they're not allowed to often sleep till they're rested um the structure is important to some degree but it's also not allowing their systems to organically find what they need we need discipline we need structure and containment but there's also this other element of allowing the human system to experience what it needs based on its needs based on its preferences based on um the level of Regulation Etc so one of the things that my students find really difficult to do is to honor their systems need for rest because the moment we try to rest there's a little bell that goes off in the physiology that says don't do that you're not supposed to do that you're supposed to keep going you're supposed to keep working because if you pause and stop you might you might get attacked you might get in trouble right and so these are the things that we really have to be um aware to I can't stress enough get into my resources on my site this has been a lecture to give you ideas and spark up your your psyche and your body to understand how this is this trauma stuff this release stuff there is not a one-size fits-all there is a one-size fits-all when it comes to getting the basics on board and just reconnecting with the body and your somatic self that is very much um that but how you experience it and how you go into that is going to be unique to you based on your previous experience some of us have more shutdown and we need to kind of invigorate and wake up stuff some of us are too hyper aware and alert to the world and we need to find ways to contain and bring in the intensity and for some of us it's a bit of both right so this is why um you've got to do your homework you do your research do your practice um thank you everyone for being here thanks to Crystal for putting in all the links thank you everyone um you're welcome thank you for all your comments and emojis we will talk to you next [Music] time [Music]