Status Updates From Transforming Trauma with Ji...

On Warrior Archetype: “If the fire is dead and down to embers, it’s not useful to us…If it’s uncontrolled, it can destroy and burn down everything. A raging fire we don’t control is reckless aggression that does harm w/o a clear goal in mind. If it’s contained/harnessed in the right way, it can heat a home & it can cook food. Fire within our control can be employed for a specific and directed purpose.”

“You have to find comfort in uncomfortable situations. You have to be able to live your worst nightmare.”

“…the majority of this world is neither good nor bad; rather, beauty and reality exist in the shades of gray. Our job, as humans, is to find the good intent and hold boundaries with the rest.”

Horseback riding, mindfulness/breath, body awareness

Peter Levine - memories need to experience a completion or resolution, and shaking is an innate way for this process to run its course. Trauma survivors need to feel activation and energy in the muscles in order to move the stuck material (i.e., memories) through to an adaptive resolution.

Horses to this to release - shake head/body, rub face on leg, blow out through nostrils.

“It’s not sufficient to just talk about the trauma—you must get into the body where the maladaptive or negative effects of it are stored.”

“Because jiu-jitsu is such a physically dynamic process, it can also offer people chances to shake off and move through stress at the level of the body.”

“The goal of regulating emotions is not to make feelings go away. Rather, the aim is to…build the capacity to ride the waves of big emotions and sensations. In time, this process helps us learn that temporary experiences of contraction can resolve into a natural expansion of positive emotions such as relief, gratitude, empowerment, or joy.”

Coregulation - all mammals are in the best position to stay regulated and balanced when they have consistently engaged in this behavior with others. We, as people and as mammals, attune to each other’s nervous systems. This is why you can have a very meaningful relationship with your pet—without ever having to exchange any words…Such a presence can be a healing intervention in itself [due to coregulation].

Neuroception - the body can work below the level of awareness to provide information at an implicit level. “Your body will alert you to what’s going on ten steps before you even realize anything is the matter.”

This is intuition/fear response - non-logical (Gavin DeBecker)

“The healing that our animals can bring us is through the power of connection.”

“The English word ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘wound.’ Keeping it simple, we can define trauma as ‘any unhealed human wound.’”

“Because of the way that unhealed trauma impacts the brain, simply talking through the trauma over and over again will bring about little lasting help…survivors must find ways to safely acquaint/reacquaint themselves with the body. This process may be [difficult] because of the disconnection [they] feel from their body, due to dissociation/fear of feeling things fully in the body bc it may just hurt too much.”

“…jiu-jitsu proved to be the missing link that took our healing to the next level…[it] provided an element of direct exposure to the triggers that we most feared.”

Absolutely agree.

“…the jiu-jitsu techniques that emerged [from Helio Gracie] were the result of humans’ instinct toward survival. In jj, the principle of body leverage, or how you learn to use your body, is the imperative. Making different shapes in the body, in the context of a rich environment to work out mental blocks that may arise, is a major reason why training in jj can be particularly transformative for survivors.”