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When you’re working with trauma, this picture is a beautiful reminder of three essential goals: the first one is right there in the center - your client, or to be specific, the state your client is in. Thanks to your shiatsu sessions, and the various mindfulness practices you have shown him, he has learned that even when the tidal wave of trauma threatens, he can stay focused, present, and calm.
That’s a great improvement on how he was in those first sessions with you. Remember when he seemed stuck in a rigid groove, talking non-stop or unable to talk at all, silently sizzling with anger or frozen in fear? Remember how when he lay on the mat his eyes would stay wide open staring at the ceiling? And remember how after each session you felt oddly jangled and unusually tired?
Now he knows that just feeling one of his hands touching the other can slow his breathing down. And slowing his breathing can lower his heart rate. Instead of hunching protectively, he feels safe enough to straighten his spine and open his chest. It feels vulnerable and new and it may need practice, but session by session, week by week, he has learned that his body is not the terrifying minefield it felt like before, ready to explode at the slightest trigger.
He’s learned that in the face of that awful but familiar sense of physical or emotional overwhelm, his body is actually the safest place to be. And with that has come a calmness of mind that is also new. It may be fragile, and prone to slipping back into old patterns of shame and blame, but at least he feels confident enough now to start on that second goal of trauma therapy: staying present with and curious about those old traumatic patterns, however, they show up.
And there they are the snakes, the elephants, the demons, and interestingly, the sharp and deadly objects laid out in front of him like instruments of torture or self-harm. This picture is a great reminder that being able to see and be curious about the way each part of the trauma manifests, is potentially a big step in itself. Instead of feeling all his energy being sucked back into the vortex of the trauma pattern, he is
able to channel more and more of that energy into focusing on how that pattern starts, how to stay calm when it does, and how to separate it into smaller, more manageable parts.
This is a core skill in working with trauma – our own or a client’s – staying present enough to discern some detail, to separate things out, to begin to build some relationship with these different parts of the pattern and to be able to name them.
That naming is another important part of this second goal of trauma
work. Trauma shuts down the verbal part of the brain. We are ‘speechless’
both at the moment of the trauma itself and every time it flashes back
into consciousness. That’s why trauma specialists say, ‘To name it is to
tame it’.
Trauma is seldom simple and identifying different strands or layers and giving names to what previously seemed unnameable is an important step towards helping clients towards the third goal in trauma therapy: realizing that behind the symptoms there can also be resources.
Coming back to the picture, what happens when you lift your eyes from the demons with all their fangs and weapons to the tree trunk with its beautiful branches and bright green leaves? Maybe like me, you experience a micro-shift in your nervous system, like a switch being flicked from negative to positive.
This tree is a perfect example of the third essential goal in trauma work, helping the client to find the resources they need, whether they come as metaphors, memories,
images, or movement. In shiatsu, we work with energy and so our aim is not to erase traumatic memories completely (which is rarely possible) but to reduce the amount of energy that goes into maintaining them, and at the same time increase the energy available to respond to them resourcefully.
In the picture, the tree seems like a resource in itself. It also leads our
eye up from the demons to those more benevolent beings above: another
kind of resource and a reminder that whenever we do shiatsu there is
always more going on than just two people connecting through touch.
Of course, the client in this picture isn’t just any client. This is the real historical prince-turned-seeker Siddhartha Gautama, about to become the Buddha, and his own story is a reminder of those three key goals in working with trauma.
Growing up in the protected and luxurious world of his father’s palace, he had his own experience of trauma when, as a young man, he first discovered that the real world outside the palace walls was full of poverty, suffering and death.
Overwhelmed, he took his first step towards ‘post-traumatic growth’. He began his search for some kind of meaning in that traumatic experience and, as trauma survivors often do, he threw himself into this search, overdoing it by studying for years with gurus whose harsh, ascetic practices taught him much about that first goal of calming the mind but left him seriously weakened and malnourished, and without any sense that he had actually found the meaning he was looking for. In a final effort, he sat down under a bodhi tree and vowed not to get up until he had either achieved enlightenment or died in the attempt.
As he sat, a local woman appeared and offered him a meal of rice and milk. After years of treating his body in harsh, unhealthy ways – a common symptom of post-traumatic stress – he realized that he had to let go of that old self-harming pattern and accept the nourishment she offered. For me, that woman’s kindness symbolizes the essence of shiatsu and all good therapy: helping a person to discover what they didn’t know they needed. Her presence in the story is also a reminder of another essential ingredient in recovering from trauma: realizing that you need help. Trauma often lures people into the exhausting delusion of total self-sufficiency. People who have recovered from life-changing traumas always have some story to tell about how they learned to ask for help or to accept help when it was offered.
Nourished and restored, Siddhartha was able to achieve that second goal with ease – staying calm and grounded enough to face all the demons that emerge when we commit ourselves to unravel the tangled patterns that trauma holds us in. And when the vast amounts of energy that those old patterns consume are gradually released, resources begin to appear. In Siddhartha’s case, as he meditated, a boyhood memory came back to him of a time when he sat under a tree and spontaneously experienced a powerful sense of peace and serenity. Accessing this state again, a whole series of profound insights came to him as he sat through the night, and as the sun rose, he experienced the enlightenment he had been searching for.
And enlightenment itself, by all accounts, is a kind of trauma, in the sense that it temporarily obliterates the self, overwhelming it not with fear but with joy. Clients who have experienced this in psychosis or in mismanaged psychedelic encounters can need a lot of help reassembling that sense of self. There is no way back to ‘normal’ after trauma but the path of recovery can offer many possibilities for growth. Psychologists who study how people successfully recover after trauma identify six ways this growth can manifest. The search for meaning that set Siddhartha on his path is one of them. Realizing the value of relationships and the healing power of self-compassion are two more. And as the old post-traumatic patterns loosen their grip on a client’s life energy, often people notice a more mindful appreciation of the little things in life, an openness to creativity or spirituality, and a powerful sense of purpose that gives their life new meaning.
In her wonderful memoir, ‘Let Your Heart Be Broken’, the American composer Tina Davidson explores the many ways in which her own trauma and her search for its meaning have shaped her as a creative artist. ‘Your heart breaks,’ she says, ’and in its two halves, rocking on the table is revealed rich earth. Moist, dark soil, ready for new life to begin’.
About the Author:
Links:
Website: www.nickpole.com
Instagram: @nickpole.wordsthattouch
Nick Pole has over 30 years’ experience in integrating eastern and western forms of mind-body therapy and has also trained in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. He integrates Shiatsu, Clean Language and various mindfulness-based approaches in his one-to-one work and teaches workshops internationally online and in-person on how to use Clean Language in mindbody therapy.
His book, ‘Words That Touch - How to ask questions your body can answer’ (Singing Dragon, 2017), is a comprehensive guide to using Clean Language in any kind of mindbody practice. His current research is on what bodywork therapists can learn from the disciplines of the performing and creative arts.
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