Somatic Trauma Therapy & Sound Healing 2-in-1 Value Collection: The No-Nonsense Beginner’s Guide to Clearing What No Longer Serves You Via Jaw-Dropping Techniques You Can Start Today

By Astral Shadow Publishing

Have you been suffering in mind & body, & can't seem to get to the bottom of it? It could be that you need somatic and sound healing techniques.

 

Talk therapies can be great for working out painful memories, traumas, & feelings, but they often forget to acknowledge a major component: the mind is only part of what makes up the body. In many cases, our society has separated symptoms of chronic illness from the root cause: trauma. This means that we are often only putting bandaids on surface symptoms.

 

You'll encounter the truth to:

• Why something as small as insults can compound & affect you as much as a monstrous traumatic event
• The exact frequencies you must know to target specific organs, & therefore, specific emotions & conditions
• The tiny tool you can use to alleviate chronic pain, hypersensitivity of the nervous system, insomnia, chronic stress, headaches and migraines, digestive issues, & joint pain.
• The forgotten element that could be subtracting decades from your life expectancy
• The endless benefits to understanding the connection between emotions & organs
• Why everyone else is getting mindfulness wrong & the more potent way to approach it
• The amazing anatomical breathing centers that no one seems to be paying attention to
• The secret message neuroplasticity approach to rewire your brain & attract your dreams

& a whole lot more.

 

Imagine how your body, mind, & spirit will feel once you cleanse yourself of energetic baggage that no longer serves you, & unblock your chakras & meridians. What would you do with your life if you had unlimited access to this incredible healing power?

 

So if you want to know how to skyrocket your well-being in a new, easy, & exciting way, then turn the first page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Astral Shadow Publishing
• Release date: Apr 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224678488

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The discussion of mental health has been making its presence known in recent years—a good thing, as many people are using this awareness to bolster the confidence to ask for the help that they need. Unfortunately, because the open discussion on mental health is so new, there is very little that is being said about the treatment options for mental health disorders or help coping with difficult life circumstances such as a death in the family, a difficult divorce, or even the toll a chronic illness may take on one’s well-being.

The most commonly known treatment options are talk therapies, where you sit with a professional, discuss the feelings that you have, and work through them by way of behavior correction, situational dialogues, and even medication where necessary. This is known as psychotherapy, which focuses on the use of psychological methods and modalities in the hopes of changing one's behavior to improve their situation, outcome, and overall emotional status. Generally, with psychotherapy, there is a relationship that is built between the person seeking treatment and the professional providing the service, usually a psychologist or psychiatrist. The goal is for that professional to provide a safe and open space for the client to discuss their situation and for them to create a productive dialogue to improve their quality of life.

The most well-known version of psychotherapy is cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. CBT takes a very practical approach by focusing on the actions that lead to a situation and determining how one might be able to change them in order to improve quality of life. The goal is to change behavior and develop coping skills by way of behavioral analysis and homework assignments that are meant to make the client more self-aware of their contribution to the situations that feel completely out of their control. For a lot of people, it works—though it can be time-consuming and often take years of commitment to get results. There can also be a medicinal component to it, where a combination of medicine and counseling help the patient get back up on their feet. It’s a tried and true approach, with countless testimonials from family, friends, and internet folks discussing its benefits.

If not CBT, another version of talk therapy is acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), which is newer to the field and takes a more humanistic approach. Psychoanalytical approaches such as ACT turn the focus more on feelings and the roots of situations in order to try to figure out where feelings and reactions may stem from rather than trying to change reactions and behaviors due to external stimuli. It takes us one step closer to where we’d like to be—a holistic, accepting approach to the way things are—while still sitting back on the behavioral focus of most talk therapies. ACT’s goal is to allow you to see that there is good and bad in the world and to be okay with that. Rather than trying to change the meaning of something or redirect the outcome as CBT might, ACT may have you confront the uncomfortable feeling—similar to exposure therapy—until the worst possible thing no longer feels like an impending disaster. It’s confrontational, a little more real-world, and aims to be far more authentic than its older, more deep-rooted counterpart.

Still, while both aim at bettering an individual’s mental health, both of them also leave out a major component of their patients: the entire body that the minds they’re working with are contained within. Talk therapies can be great for working out all of those painful memories, traumas, and feelings, but they forget to acknowledge that minds are only part of what makes up the human body.

That’s where somatic therapies come in.

One of the lesser talked about treatment options for mental health and part of the homeopathic healing remedies; somatic psychotherapy is a type of therapy that works to integrate the discussion of the body back into the talk therapy that’s been so centered around the mind. Somatic psychotherapy is meant to be the middle ground of these two, where talk therapy and bodywork meet to help work through trauma and experiences, as well as acknowledge where that may be stored in the body to let it go. Where CBT may ask the well-known, ...and how did that make you feel?, somatic psychotherapy will ask instead, ...and where did you feel that in your body? The goal is to bring the focus back to the entirety of the self rather than the external factors.

Somatic psychotherapy is the psychological branch of the science of somatology. Somatology, rooted in the Greek word soma, or the body experienced from within, is the holistic science of human experience and behavior, as defined by Thomas Hanna in his book Bodies in Revolt (Palo Alto University, 2014, 00:01:22). The focus of somatology is to show that there is a distinct connection between the human nervous system, the physical sensations of the body, and the experiences of the mind.

Peter Levine, a leading name in the somatic therapy field, discusses this notion in one of his talks regarding the self-to-trauma ratio. He believes that the higher sense of self a person has, the more likely they are to be able to handle and overcome trauma. The lower someone’s sense of self is, the more likely that trauma is to stick. Somatic therapy’s goal is to help bring a person to a place of self-awareness where they are able to acknowledge and handle that trauma in their own right. Talk therapy can sometimes fail to do this, as it focuses on the situations less than it focuses on the person, and it focuses even less on the body.

There is also scientific evidence of the way that the body holds onto trauma. Our nervous systems are broken down into two main parts: the autonomic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is what is responsible for our reaction to stressful stimuli, that flight-or-fight reaction that we feel when we feel scared or threatened. The parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) is responsible for what comes after that threat is no longer present, when the body starts to regulate itself back to a state of calm. It controls when we cry, when we drool, and when we need to use the bathroom—which explains why the feeling of fear is so closely connected to all of these things. In a normal body, the SNS and PSNS work together constantly to help keep us all at a happy medium so that we don’t always feel incredibly high or incredibly low.

When we’re exposed to stress consistently, however, that’s when our body starts to short-circuit, to put it simply. When our body is constantly stressed out and doesn’t have time to calm down, as the SNS reaction is quick, but the PSNS reaction takes time, then we can get stuck in our stress-reaction states. If we’re up, then we can be jumpy, reactive, irritable, or constantly waiting for the worst possible thing to happen. If we’re down, then we believe everything that happens is the worst thing, we feel lethargic, and we can’t get ourselves going again. That’s because the consistent stress has turned into trauma for the body, pushing it outside of its ability to regulate itself and breaking down that regulation period.

Somatology focuses on breathing and body-focused therapies that share many of the same practices that are recommended for recalibrating the PSNS when it’s been thrown into a state of dysregulation by repetitive stress. Somatology and the therapies that stem from it have roots in most world cultures with ancient healing techniques, using methods of meditation, stretching, and shamanic practices, such as spirit work, to help the body and mind work as one unit.

It was defined as a therapy in the context we understand it first in the 16th century and then again in the 19th. Wilhelm Reich, a student of Sigmund Freud, was noted for his work in somatic therapies in the 1900s when he discussed his belief that many human feelings and emotions were translated into physical symptoms that he called body armor (Bell, 2017). Even Freud believed that there was a physical component to the psychological when he proposed his own concept of conversion disorder. Though both received backlash for these ideas and Freud’s conversion disorder concept was generally disregarded in later years, Reich’s notion that there was a physical manifestation to psychological issues became the backbone for what is today known as somatology.

There is one downside to somatic therapies as a whole, however, and it is that many holistic practices are not recognized as medical necessities by insurance. It can get expensive to see holistic practitioners. Because even as the mental health discourse comes into the mainstream, the holistic medicine discussion remains on the back burner. There are many people who still feel that traditional medicine is going to be far more helpful than the homeopathic method rather than considering the middle ground where the two might overlap and work together. Modern-day medicine and homeopathic medicine can and should exist in tandem so that the entire body, rather than just certain parts, is considered in the healing process. That means that even when it may be most beneficial to you, it can be hard to find an affordable holistic option.

The goal of Somatic Trauma Healing is to start that process. The upside to somatic therapies is that a lot of the work is personal, meaning that you can do a lot of it on your own if you know how. This book aims to outline the basics to get you started without the assistance of a trained professional or guide. It’s meant to be digestible and easily implementable so that you can work at your own pace to take your first steps toward whole-body healing.

This book will focus on what somatic healing is, which techniques may be most beneficial for you to use, and what types of somatic therapies are going to help you in certain areas. We will also briefly discuss the different types of trauma, how they may have manifested, and what ways are best to go about addressing them. Though the process of somatic therapy is focused on trauma healing, the book will remain relatively mild in regard to in-depth traumatic experiences. Still, a warning remains in place to proceed with caution and keep yourself in a safe, loving, and comforting environment, as any trauma work can be difficult.

1

UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF TRAUMA

DEFINING TRAUMA

When we hear the word trauma, it usually conjures thoughts associated with overtly distressing, devastating, or painful events. People have also talked a lot about childhood trauma in recent years and the effects that this can have on our adult lives, a topic we’ll come back to later in the book. However, trauma can just as easily come from our adult years and be subtle or barely perceptible to our conscious minds. Anything that keeps our minds or bodies locked in a repetitive, self-preserving habit can be considered a trauma. Even when it’s not specifically registering as something obviously traumatic, there is still a pressure of sorts that builds, constricting the health of the mind, body, and spirit and causing complications for the individual mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Small, repetitive events can build on each other until they amass the same impact that a large traumatic event might have. We talked about this in the introduction, but the PSNS is responsible for calming us down following a stressful event. When we are exposed to repetitive stress, there is no time for our body to calm down. That stress will continue to build until what is akin to a traumatic event is registered in the body—even if we were never in a perceptible traumatic event, like a car accident. It can be as simple as one bad thing after another happening to us without giving us a minute to breathe, which can wind up causing these same feelings in the mind and the body.

Regardless of the source, whether that’s a debilitating accident or seemingly minimal daily encounters like insults, we interact with trauma on a daily basis. Due to the holistic way in which trauma affects us, this has far-reaching effects that are both clearly distinguishable as well as imperceptible.

Many of us may not be aware of it in the beginning. In our society—especially in the way that talk therapies are constructed—there is a lot of pressure to suppress or ignore emotional responses to certain situations. Though talk therapy means for us to address what we experience, it spends more time with us reliving those experiences and retraumatizing ourselves than addressing the fact that it’s already happened and we need to let it go.

When going through trauma, we can feel incredibly overwhelmed and as if we may never feel safe, no matter what we do. This is part of getting stuck in that state of constant stress. The more stress we experience without the ability to calm down, the more our body recognizes that state as our new normal. We become more anxious and more in tune to perceived threats. It’s harder for us to experience a sense of calm or safety. It can also make us feel like we lack power or agency over our lives because we cannot control our thoughts and feelings. We recognize something is off but can’t quite pinpoint what it is or why we’re reacting in a particular way.

The other part of this that many people don’t talk about, though, is the physical effects of constantly being in fight-or-flight mode. When we enter this stage, it’s as if our brain disconnects from our body in an attempt to save us from the perceived threats around us. We’re more likely to ignore our body’s signals of distress to us until it comes back in the form of physical illness. It might be years before we understand the physical and mental connection between what our body is telling us and what traumas our brain has stored there. Once we become privy to it, however, we can start to feel like strangers in our own bodies because we’re numb—physically, emotionally, mentally—to what the various parts of the self are experiencing.

It’s incredibly important to recognize that our minds are not singularly harboring trauma. Although thoughts and emotions can feel ethereal, existing within the confines of our mind, we are physically connected to our brains and endure symptoms within the body connected with trauma. This can manifest in ailments that are seemingly unconnected to a mental state, such as muscle cramps and tension, fatigue, nausea, and dizziness. Additionally, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) (2014) lists the following as possible side effects of trauma:

confusion

sadness

exhaustion and persistent fatigue

constant stimulation

sleep disruptions and complications like nightmares

anxiety

depression

guilt

disorientation

gastrointestinal issues

cardiovascular problems

skin conditions

sexual dysfunction

urological issues

respiratory complications

As we encounter trauma in our everyday lives, the effects build up in our system, which is why it is important to take the time and do the work to clear it. Even when our brains are on autopilot, contributing to the physical buildup in our bodies, we can still work on addressing the body while we retrain our minds.

PTSD and C-PTSD

We often hear the terms trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) used interchangeably; however, they are not quite one and the same. Trauma itself comes in a variety of forms and can be endured acutely or chronically and be singular or ongoing, while PTSD is a condition directly resulting from a specific traumatic encounter. Trauma is also one of those things that feels exclusive and is usually reserved for the most severe of events, as I mentioned, but it isn’t. Many people have trauma without even realizing that they have it. This generally falls under isolated incidents, but in other cases, repeated, long-term exposure to the same traumatic events can lead to a different form of PTSD known as C-PTSD.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) results when someone has either been repeatedly exposed to trauma over an extended period of time or has experienced multiple traumatic events without the ability to recover from them. There is a misconception that C-PTSD is only caused by abusive family situations, but this isn’t the case. C-PTSD can develop from years of experiencing bullying, domestic violence, and other repetitive assaults. As many as 20% of people suffer from C-PTSD without even realizing it (The School of Life, n.d.).

Sometimes when we’re experiencing trauma responses, we brush them off to try to blend in with what everyone else perceives as normal behavior. Other times, we may not even know that what we are experiencing is a trauma response due to any number of reasons, from years of living in a fight-or-flight, stuck state or even from the fact that we might not remember what we were traumatized by in the first place. This makes it incredibly difficult to revisit the event or critically examine continued trauma inputs because of how our body and brain will automatically respond.

When we have these severe reactions to trauma—such as repressed memories, stuck responses, or even dissociative disorders in extreme cases—it's generally because our minds are trying to protect us from pain but have gone overboard. Because we may not even be aware of the trauma that we experienced, we may not be looking for the signs and may write off some of the symptoms of trauma as a different ailment. However, there are some signs and symptoms you can use to determine if your general feeling bad could be related to trauma versus an underlying medical condition.

Signs You May Be Suffering From Trauma

You feel as though you can never fully relax, mentally or physically. This can cause excess tension in the body, a lack of ability to sit still, and even issues with digestion.

You may have difficulty concentrating, meaning that work or productivity can suffer. Coupled with a fidgety nature due to the inability to relax, this can make it hard to do things like yoga or meditation that are often encouraged to help with both of the above.

You have an incredibly negative self-image. This one can be a little challenging to discern because it doesn’t seem overblown; it feels like an accurate assessment of self. It’s usually coupled with feelings of guilt, self-blame, shame, or even a predatory self-assessment, as if you see yourself as the perpetrator in most of these traumatic scenarios. It can often lead to this sense that you deserved the treatment or the ramifications.

You always feel like you’re on high alert. This is also called hypervigilance. When you’re in this state, you feel like nothing around you is safe, and danger lurks around every corner. You can be highly paranoid, especially about other people, and you worry that everyone is somehow out to get you. Depending on the trauma you’re experiencing or have experienced, this could also manifest as constant monitoring, like obsessing over the weather or possible natural disasters. The result is high anxiety levels, jumpiness, high stress, and tension levels in the body, and can often lead to poor sleep, sleep issues in general, or withdrawal from others out of self-preservation, as others are dangerous.

The act of sleep is elusive. You may easily fall asleep but wake up in the middle of the night or extremely early and be unable to fall back asleep. Conversely, you may feel incredibly tired, but when you lie down for bedtime, your mind won’t let you fall all the way asleep. You may also experience nightmares, fatigue, or falling asleep at inappropriate times in order to make up for the lost hours.

You resist closeness with others, shy away from physical coziness, and actively dislike those who seem like they always want to hug or hold hands. Physical touch can be a deterrent, especially to those who may have been physically assaulted or experienced other physical traumas. In this vein, you may be drawn to people who are emotionally unavailable and disengaged from the relationship.

You lose your temper often and are constantly angry with other people but feel most of the rage toward yourself. You feel you have a very short fuse; this could be in specific situations that persist in your life where you just know you will end up angry or randomly and unexpectedly. This may also come with general edginess and agitation.

You are a workaholic, putting all your time and energy into your job as it feels predictable and safe. Even if you achieve high accolades, one critique or negative remark can completely derail you into feeling like a failure or feed into a negative self-image, as detailed above.

You feel like merely existing is overly challenging and envision a sense of relief if you just didn’t have to do it anymore (passive suicidal ideation).

DIFFERENT TYPES OF TRAUMA

Trauma can enter our lives via many different avenues. The way in which we encounter it and the motives behind the occurrences shape the way we respond as well as try to understand what we’ve been through.

Nature Inflicted Trauma

Life has a tendency to be unpredictable and drop random events into our laps that are an act of nature and cannot be attributed to a reason. However, such events can also introduce trauma. Devastating, naturally occurring events such as wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods, volcanic eruptions, and, poignantly, global health crises such as epidemics and pandemics all create trauma for a community.

These types of events can cause severe disruptions to our daily lives, causing everything from minor inconveniences, like a little more traffic, to major ramifications, such as losing a home, job, family member, or community. Additionally, when there is a large-scale event, those living in the surrounding communities of the target area can experience repercussions that affect their daily lives as well.

Even when something happens on a smaller scale involving only a few people, such as something confined to your own yard or personal property, it can be traumatic for those involved.

Human-Inflicted Trauma

This type of trauma can be accidental as well as intentional. Under the accidental umbrella, technical malfunctions include events like equipment and machinery failure, transportation breakdown and collisions, chemical exposures, electrocution, and oil spills. These items can cause debilitating injuries as well as traumatic experiences.

Intentional human-inflicted traumas are direct violations between persons like domestic violence, robberies, sexual assault, arson, and rioting. These can be incredibly difficult to understand because although these instances are traumatic, they don’t necessarily always feel directly personal—barring instances of sexual assault when the victim many times does know the assailant. Realizing it was a wrong place, wrong time scenario doesn’t change the impact of the trauma, however.

Group Trauma

Some trauma can occur within specific groups other than a community at large, like a family unit or a type of profession, such as the military. Within a family, a singular event that affects one individual can have consequences for the whole family, changing their dynamic and how they go about daily life. It can also be something that is ongoing and daily, like domestic violence or physical assault.

Professions that focus on helping or protecting others regularly interact with traumatic events, as well as individuals already dealing with trauma. This includes medical professionals, therapists, social workers, first responders, teachers, and so on. The family members of these people can also experience trauma due to the demands and hazards of the jobs.

Additionally, some professions are more prone to experiencing life-changing injuries that not only affect an individual directly but can also impact their families as well as coworkers, such as first responders and military personnel who are consistently put in life-threatening situations.

Communities and Cultures

Communities and cultures can experience trauma through violence, oppression, political upheaval, war, and the erasing of cultural practices and identities. These events and situations can then persist generationally, lasting for hundreds of years and without an end in sight. Traumas of this degree leave a generational impact, as there is widespread understanding in psychological circles that anxiety genes are passed from generation to generation, especially when mass community and cultural traumas occur, such as the Holocaust.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Felitti et al. (1998) determined that there is a strong correlation between childhood trauma and developing health conditions as adults. They conducted a survey, asking participants to identify adverse childhood experiences relating to abuse (psychological, physical), domestic violence, neglect, and living with family members who had mental disorders, substance abuse issues, or who were absent (due to death, imprisonment, or some other permanent removal from the home).

Researchers then compared responses to health outcomes, looking at high-risk behaviors, conditions, ailments, diseases, and death. Felitti et al. (1998) found that over half of the participants had at least one ACE score, while 25% reported a score of two or more ACE categories. Additionally, they determined:

Persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experience none, had 4- to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt; a 2- to 4-fold increase in smoking, poor self-rated health, greater than or equal to 50 intimate partners, and sexually transmitted disease; and a 1.4- to 1.6-fold increase in physical inactivity and severe obesity. (para. 3)

Early childhood exposure to adverse conditions and household dysfunction has been linked with developing chronic health problems later in life. Nadine Burke Harris argues that individuals with higher ACE scores have a shorter life span by about 20 years than those who have had no adverse experiences. These individuals may experience issues related to brain development, the immune system, hormonal systems, and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed (TED, 2015, 0:00:30).

The amount of people who have exposure to ACEs is incredibly high, but it also helps explain so much about the nature, extent, and prevalence of trauma in our lives. Even though it feels like it persistently, we are not as alone with our trauma as we might think.

Attachment Trauma

Attachment trauma is related to the relationships in our lives, specifically those associated with our care, safety, nurturing, and development. Trauma from an attachment perspective can start as early as when a child is developing in the womb, and about one-third of the population live with attachment trauma (Palo Alto University, 2014, 00:09:25).

This type of trauma is directly related to our caregivers, but it should be noted that this is not always an intentional act designed to inflict suffering and pain. Somatologists believe that the human brain is influenced even before birth, as the brain is developing and beginning to receive signals from the mother and how she reacts to her environment. These influences then determine more of how our brain will develop once the baby is born. If the mother is in a nurturing and safe environment, the baby is more likely to develop healthily and securely, which will lead to a more secure self-image, resulting in less receptivity to traumatic events. If the mother is in a less safe, less nurturing environment, the opposite will happen.

When considering the challenges of the world, such as poverty, war, strife, oppression, violence, stress, and many other fearful situations, mothers may be trying to merely stay alive and inadvertently create hormones that are transferable to the placenta. These can signal to the developing baby that the conditions of the world are unsafe and can begin the trauma response very early on.

As babies, we’re unable to determine much besides when our needs are being met versus when our needs are not being met. This means that when we cry and our mother or father comes