So why do we get stuck with our negative emotional states, habitually wearing them like our only set of shirt and trousers? Many people (like the young samurai) use their rage to intimidate. Others indulge habitual sadness and remain helpless victims. For Bob and Jane (in the initial scenario), their emotions served to separate them.
In 1978, after completing my doctoral work, I took a paid vacation as a teacher in residence at the Esalen Institute, nestled above the roiling sea of the breathtakingly serrated Big Sur coast. As part of my duties, I conducted what was called the open-seat forum. In this group setting, members of the Esalen community could come in and receive free therapy. My duties were executed on Monday and Thursday afternoons. After several weeks I became perplexed by an intriguing phenomenon. Thursdays were quite calm, and the impromptu clients were generally working productively. However, Mondays were quite a different story. It was as if there were firecrackers going off on the Fourth of July. One person after another would come to see me and, without prompting, would either break down in jagged sobs or pummel pillows with undirected (and impotent) rage.
A possible explanation for this weekly divergence came to me unexpectedly. One day as I walked past the bulletin board outside the office, I noticed a note announcing that a particular group, which encouraged hyperventilation and strong emotional catharsis, had been canceled for that Wednesday evening. It was set to resume the following week. Hmm, I wondered, would this ordinarily calm Thursday be like the chaotic Mondays? And it was.
Earlier that same year, my brother Jon had published a landmark study in the medical journal Lancet.164 In this research, he had given a group of patients recovering from jaw surgery either an IV drip of morphine or a placebo that consisted of physiological saline. Both groups were told that they were being given a powerful painkiller. Fully two-thirds of the patients who received the saline placebo had as profound an effect of pain relief as did the group of patients who received a solid dose of morphine, pain abatement’s gold standard.a
Jon’s findings, amazing in their own right, were surpassed by the next phase of the research. When patients were given the placebo plus Naloxone, the placebo response was completely negated. Naloxone is a drug that has absolutely no effect whatsoever when administered to a sober individual (not unlike the effect of Viagra on an individual whose dosage is followed by a leisurely walk with the dog). However, when administered in the emergency room to addicts who have overdosed on heroin, it makes them stone sober in seconds. The mode of action of Naloxone is as an opiate antagonist. This means that Naloxone attaches to opioid receptors throughout the brain, thereby blocking the attachment and action of both the exogenous opiate drugs, including morphine and heroin, as well as the body’s own endogenous (internally self-generated) opiates, called endorphins. What Jon and his colleagues had demonstrated with these experiments was that the brain possesses its own pain mediating system. The analgesic effect of these endogenous endorphins can be just as powerful as the strongest known opioid drugs like morphine!
What occurred to me at Esalen was the possibility that I had witnessed the effects of opiate withdrawal during our Monday sessions. This was in stark contrast to Thursdays, when the previous night’s opiate orgy, stimulated by the hyperventilating catharsis, produced a “stoned,” spaced-out group of participants. These Thursday groups were populated by community members who had recently gotten their drug fix on Wednesday and did not crave another one. In particular, I wondered if the intense emotional abreactions I observed on Mondays were a method by which participants released their own internal opiates (endorphins), essentially giving themselves a fix, not unlike a shot of morphine.
Excited about my hypothesis, I telephoned my brother. Since it was not yet known that the brain regions and neural pathways responsible for physical and emotional pain were nearly identical, Jon’s response was not encouraging. “Peter,” he said, pitying my naïveté, “don’t be silly,” while managing to get in a well-deserved jab at his older sibling—a rivalry reasserted. However, a few years later, Bessel van der Kolk replicated Jon’s experiment.165 This time the focus was on Naloxone’s blocking the endorphins released by emotional, rather than physical, pain. He studied a common treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) administered, at that time, to Vietnam vets in the nation’s VA hospitals. These unfortunate soldiers were repeatedly provoked into “reliving” their horrific battlefield experiences. In this “therapy,” they were forced, for example, to watch gory war movies like Platoon with their arms tied to a chair. These exposures frequently catapulted the veterans into intense emotional abreactions. However, when Naloxone was administered before these cathartic sessions (depriving them of their self-induced endorphin rush) they soon lost interest in taking part in further “therapeutic” sessions.
As I observed many workshop attendees over the years (returning time and time again), I couldn’t help but wonder if they were also inducing their own chemical highs. Their repeated and cathartic dramatizations, screaming at their parents or pounding pillows in endless anger, seemed to be rewarding, bringing them back for further fixes. In my own life, I also wondered whether there was an addictive quality to some of my earlier painful and turbulent relationships that I appeared to be creating and re-creating.
While cathartic expressions of emotion in therapy sessions can be of value, reliance on emotional release stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about the very nature of feelings and emotions. The work of Nina Bull provides us with insight, both into the nature of habitual emotions and into why feelings accessed through body awareness, rather than emotional release, bring us the kind of lasting change that we so desire.
* A chick or small mammal would respond by scurrying to hide or escape.
† This is analogous to the blind sight phenomenon.
‡ See episode 74 of A&E’s Intervention (season 6, episode 2), in which a girl named Nicole had been forced to perform fellatio by her next-door neighbor (and father’s best friend) for several years. Once her family found out, they tried to cover it up, and Nicole was forced to live next door to the man for years after. Later, Nicole developed an overactive gag reflex, leaving her unable to swallow anything, including her own saliva. She was placed on a feeding tube.
§ Many of Alexander’s principles inspired the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and Ida Rolf.
‖ In a study of 150 couples, mostly in their sixties, researchers found that women who behaved in a hostile manner during marital disputes were more likely to have atherosclerosis, especially if their husbands were also hostile. In men, hostility—their own or their wives—was not related to atherosclerosis. However, men who behaved in a dominating or controlling manner—or whose wives behaved in that way—were more likely to have clogged coronary arteries. “The only group of men that had very little atherosclerosis were those where both they and their wives were able to talk about a disagreement without being controlling at all,” Smith said. “So the absence of a power play in the conversation seemed to be heart protective for men,” he concluded (Dr. Timothy Smith, University of Utah, Reuters, March 3, 2006).
a In the cases where the placebo did not work, the patients were quickly given the real morphine so that their unnecessary suffering was short-lived.
CHAPTER 14
Trauma and Spirituality
If you bring forth that which is within you,
Then that which is within you
Will be your salvation.
If you do not bring forth that which is within you,
Then that which is within you
Will destroy you.
—The Gnostic Gospels
In a lifetime of working with traumatized individuals, I have been struck by the intrinsic and wedded relationship between trauma and spirituality. From my earliest experiences with clients suffering from a daunting array of crippling symptoms, I have been privileged to witness profound and authentic transformations. Seemingly out of nowhere, as with Nancy from Chapter 2, who was
“held in warm tingling waves,” such unexpected “side effects” appeared as these individuals mastered the monstrous trauma symptoms that had haunted them—emotionally, physically and psychologically. These surprises included ecstatic joy, exquisite clarity, effortless focus and an all-embracing sense of oneness. In addition, many of my clients described deep and abiding experiences of compassion, peace and wholeness. In fact, it was not unusual after that profound internal shift of feeling the “goodness of self,” perhaps for the first time, to refer to their therapeutic work as “a holy experience.” While these individuals realized the classic goals of enduring personality and behavioral changes, these transcendent side effects were simply too potent and robust to overlook. I have been compelled to follow these exciting and elusive enigmas with wonder and curiosity for many decades.
Because the formal diagnosis of trauma, as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III, was still over a decade away when my newfound odyssey was in its infancy, I didn’t have a formulated set of pathological criteria to unduly distract me. I was freer to observe in the tradition of the ethologists. From this vantage point, and without a premeditated list of symptoms, I was able to monitor my clients’ bodily reactions and self-reports as I participated in their transformative process of healing. The highly charged physiological reactions described in the earlier chapters, including shaking and trembling (when experienced as a safe discharge) together with dramatic spontaneous changes in temperature, heart rate and respiration, helped to restore their equilibrium. These reactions also promoted a relaxed readiness, an aptitude similar to that cultivated in Zen and in the martial arts such as aikido.
In sorting through these types of involuntary, energetic and deeply moving experiences, I realized that my clients’ reactions manifested what was right and normal—rather than what was wrong and pathological. In other words, they exhibited innate self-regulating and self-healing processes. And as the animals went on about their daily business after such discharge reactions, so too did my clients reengage into life with renewed passion, appreciation and acceptance.
At the same time, they frequently touched into a variety of experiences that I learned to appreciate as spiritual encounters such as Nancy’s feelings of aliveness, warmth, joy and wholeness. In moving toward an understanding of this intrinsic relationship between trauma (“raw, latent survival energy”) and spirituality, I was excited to come across a formative article by Roland Fischer published in the prestigious journal Science. A surprising and unexpected tenet emerged: that spiritual experience is welded with our most primitive animal instincts.
Transcendental States
Roland Fischer’s article, titled “A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States,”166 described a schema for showing the association of various parasympathetic and sympathetic (autonomic-instinctual) activities with mystical and meditative experiences. While the details of his work are well beyond the scope of this short chapter, suffice it to say, I suspected that his view of the psychophysiological underpinning of various mystical states paralleled the range of “transpersonal” experiences that my clients were encountering as they unwound and released their traumas.
Trauma represents a profound compression of “survival” energy, energy that has not been able to complete its meaningful course of action. When in the therapeutic session, this energy is gradually released or titrated (Step 4 in Chapter 5) and then redirected from its symptomatic detour onto its natural course, one observes (in a softer and less frightening form) the kinds of reactions I observed with Nancy. At the same time, the numinous qualities of these experiences gracefully, automatically and consistently became integrated into the personality structure. The ability to access the rhythmic release of this bound energy makes all the difference as to whether it will destroy or vitalize us.
Primitive survival responses engage extraordinary feats of focused attention and effective action. The mother who lifts the car off of her trapped child mobilizes vast (almost superhuman) survival energy. These same energies, when experienced through titrated body sensing, can also open to feelings of heightened focus, ecstasy and bliss. The ownership of these primordial “oceanic” energy sensations promotes embodied transformation and (as suggested in Fischer’s cartography) the experience of “timelessness” and “presence” known in meditation as “the eternal now.” In addition, it appears that the very brain structures that are central to the resolution of trauma are also pivotal in various “mystical” and “spiritual” states.167
In the East, the awakening of Kundalini at the first (or survival) chakra center has long been known to be a vehicle for initiating ecstatic transformation. In trauma, a similar activation is provoked, but with such intensity and rapidity that it overwhelms the organism. If we can gradually access and reintegrate this energy into our nervous system and psychic structures, then the survival response embedded within trauma can also catalyze authentic spiritual transformation.
As I began to explore the relationship between trauma transformation and the Kundalini experience, I searched for confirmation of this connection. Around that time (the mid-1970s) I met a physician named Lee Sannella in Berkeley, California. He shared with me a large compilation of notes he had taken about individuals who were experiencing spontaneous Kundalini awakenings. I was intrigued by how similar many of these reactions were to those of my early clients. Sannella’s notes formed the basis for his valuable book, The Kundalini Experience, Psychosis or Transcendence?168 This phenomenon has been described by great contemporary adepts such as Gopi Krishna.169 In addition, C. G. Jung’s book The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga170 (based on a 1932 seminar) gives an erudite exposition but concludes, ironically, that Kundalini is unlikely to ever be experienced in the West. However, Jung goes on to say, “The life of feeling is that primordial region of the psyche that is most sensitive to the religious encounter. Belief or reason alone does nothing to move the soul: without feeling, religious meaning becomes a vacant intellectual exercise. This is why the most exuberant spiritual moments are emotively laden.” The essence of religious experience is an act of feeling the animating force—the spiritus within the lived encounter. When my clients experienced this élan vital surging forth from within them, it was not surprising that they also encountered aspects of religious awe.
Over the years I had the opportunity to show some videos of my clients’ sessions to Kundalini teachers from India. These were wonderful exchanges. The yoga masters, with genuine and disarming humility, seemed as interested in my observations as I was in their vast knowledge and intrinsic knowing.
“Symptoms” frequently described in Kundalini awakenings may involve any of the following: involuntary and spasmodic body movements, pain, tickling, itching, vibrations, trembling, alternations of hot and cold, changed breathing patterns, temporary paralysis, crushing pressure, insomnia, hypersensitivity to light and sound, synesthesia, unusual or extremes of emotions, intensified sex drive, sensations of physical expansion, dissociation and out-of-body experiences, as well as hearing “inner sounds,” such as roaring, whistling and chirping. These sensations associated with Kundalini awakenings are often more forceful and explosive than those I observed with my clients. As I developed my methodology, I learned to help clients gradually touch into their bodily-energy sensations so that they were rarely overwhelmed. In general, focusing inward and becoming curious about one’s inner sensations allows people to experience a subtle inner shift, a slight contraction, vibration, tingling, relaxation and sense of openness. I have named this shift from the feelings of dread, rage or whatever one likes to avoid toward “befriending” one’s internal sensations pendulation, the intrinsic rhythm pulsing between the experienced polarities of contraction and expansion/openness (Step 3 in Chapter 5). Once people learn to access this rhythmic flow within, “infinite” emotional pain begins to feel manageable and finite. This allows their attitude to shift from dread and helplessness to curiosit
y and exploration.
The mystical text Hermetic Kybalion says, “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” The application of this perennial philosophy to trauma is the very principle that allows sensations and feelings that had previously been overwhelming to be processed and transformed in present time. In this way, trauma, when transformed, parallels Kabalistic philosophy.
Trauma, Death and Suffering
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.
—Psalm 23
It would be an error to equate trauma with suffering and suffering, in turn, with transformation. At the same time, however, in virtually every spiritual tradition suffering is understood as a doorway to awakening. In the West, this connection can be seen in the biblical story of Job and, powerfully, in Psalm 23. It is found as the dark night of the soul in medieval mysticism—and, of course, in the passion of Christ. In Buddhism an important distinction is made between suffering and unnecessary suffering. According to the Buddha, “When touched with a feeling of pain, the ordinary person laments … becomes distraught … contracts … so he feels two pains … just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another … so that he would feel the pains of two arrows …” Trauma sufferers are so frightened of their bodily sensations that they recoil from feeling them. It is as though they believe that by feeling them they will be destroyed or, at the very least, make things worse. Hence they remain stuck. In this way, they shoot themselves with the second arrow—FDR’s “fear of fear itself.” With support and guidance, however, they are able to gradually learn to befriend and transform their trauma-based sensations.
In an Unspoken Voice Page 38
