Sasha’s Reviews > Transforming Trauma with Jiu-Jitsu: A Guide for Survivors, Therapists, and Jiu-Jitsu Practitioners to Facilitate Embodied Recovery > Status Update

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].