In both the Buddhist and Taoist traditions, four pathways are said to lead to spiritual awakening.171 The first is death. A second route to freedom from unnecessary human suffering can come from many years of austere meditative contemplation. The third gateway to liberation is through special forms of (tantric) sexual ecstasy. And the fourth portal is said, by these traditions, to be trauma. Death, meditation, sex and trauma, in serving as great portals, share a common element. They are all potential catalysts for profound surrender.
The ability to feel the physical sensations of paralysis (without becoming overwhelmed) and surrender to them is the key in transforming trauma. When we are able to touch into that deathlike void even briefly, rather than recoil from it, the immobilization releases. In this way the second arrow of unnecessary suffering is eliminated. The “standing back” from fear allows the individual to emerge from the strangulation of trauma. As people “experience into” the time-limited paralysis sensations (in the absence of fear), they contact the “mini-deaths” that lie at the eye of the hurricane, at the very heart of trauma. This visitation is an opportunity to enter the rich portal of death. It is well known that many people who have had near death experiences (NDEs) undergo positive personality transformations. At the right time, traumatized individuals are encouraged and supported to feel and surrender into the immobility/NDE states, liberating these primordial archetypal energies while integrating them into consciousness.
In addition, the “awe-full” states of horror and terror appear to be connected to the transformative states such as awe, presence, timelessness and ecstasy. They share essential psychophysiological and phenomenological roots. For example, stimulation of the amygdala (the brain’s smoke detector for danger and rage) can also evoke the experience of ecstasy and bliss.172 This seems to support an approach that guides individuals through their awe-full feelings of fear and horror toward those of joy, goodness and awe.
Andrew Newberg and his colleagues have, in their seminal book Why God Won’t Go Away,173 brought together a vast amount of research on the brain substrates underlying a variety of different spiritual experiences. The application of this type of brain research to trauma transformation is a rich area worthy of further research and exploration.
Regulation and the Self
As below, so above.
—Kybalion
In review: The autonomic nervous system (ANS) gets its name from being a relatively autonomous branch of the nervous system. Its basic, yet highly integrated function has to do with the regulation of energy states and the maintenance of homeostasis. The ANS is composed of two distinctly different branches.* Its sympathetic branch supports overall energy mobilization. If you are physically cold, perceive threat, or are sexually aroused, the sympathetic nervous system increases the metabolic rate and prepares you for action. The parasympathetic branch, on the other hand, promotes rest, relaxation, gestation, nurturance and restitution of tissue and cellular function.
When the level of activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is very low, we are apt to be feeling somewhat lethargic. At moderate levels of sympathetic activity, we are generally doing or preparing to do something active.174 This level of arousal is usually experienced as being alert, as well as pleasurably excited. In this realm there is typically a smooth back-and-forth shifting between moderate levels of sympathetic and parasympathetic activity serving a balanced physiological state called homeostasis. I call this flexible, seesawing, shifting range of arousal dynamic equilibrium and relaxed alertness along with energy, passion and focus.
In mammals, this capacity for self-regulation is essential. It endows the animal with the capability to make fluid shifts in internal bodily states to meet changes in the external environment. Animals with developed orbitofrontal systems have evolved the capacity to switch between different emotional states. This ability (known as affect regulation) allows animals to vary their emotions to appropriately match environmental demands. In humans, this highly evolved adaptive function, according to Schore and others, is the basis for the core sense of self.175 These same circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex receive inputs from the muscles, joints and viscera. The sensations that form the inner landscape of the body are mapped in the orbitofrontal portions of the brain.176 Hence, as we are able to change our body sensations, we change the highest function of our brains. Emotional regulation, our rudder through life, comes about through embodiment.
Embodiment and Refinement
For in my flesh I shall see God.
—Book of Job
Curse the mind that mounts the clouds in search of
mythical kings and only mystical things, mystical things cry for the soul
that will not face the body as an equal place and I never learned to touch for real
down, down, down where the iguanas feel.
—Dory Previn song
Traumatized people are fragmented and disembodied. The constriction of feeling obliterates shade and texture, turning everything into good or bad, black or white, for us or against us. It is the unspoken hell of traumatization. In order to know who and where we are in space and to feel that we are vital, alive beings, subtleties are essential. Furthermore, it is not just acutely traumatized individuals who are disembodied; most Westerners share a less dramatic but still impairing disconnection from their inner sensate compasses. Given the magnitude of the primordial and raw power of our instincts, the historical role of the church and other cultural institutions in subjugating the body is hardly surprising.
In contrast, various (embodied) spiritual traditions have acknowledged the “baser instincts” not as something to be eliminated, but rather as a force in need of, and available for, transformation. In Vipassana meditation and various traditions of tantric Buddhism (such as Kum Nye), the goal is “to manifest the truly human spiritual qualities of universal goodwill, kindness, humility, love, equanimity and so on.”177 These traditions, rather than renouncing the body, utilize it as a way to “refine” the instincts. The essence of embodiment is not in repudiation, but in living the instincts fully as they dance in the “body electric,” while at the same time harnessing their primordial raw energies to promote increasingly subtle qualities of experience.178
As the song by Dory Previn suggests, mystical experiences that are not experienced in the body just don’t “stick”; they are not grounded. Trauma sufferers live in a world of chronic dissociation. This perpetual state of disembodiment keeps them disoriented and unable to engage in the here and now. As mentioned earlier, trauma survivors, however, are not alone in being disembodied; a lower level of separation between body/mind is widespread in modern culture, affecting all of us to a greater or lesser degree.
Recall the distinction made in the German language between the word Körper, meaning a physical body, and Leib, which translates to English as the “lived (or living) body.” The term Leib reveals a much deeper generative meaning than does the purely physical Körper, which is not unlike “corpse.” A gift of trauma recovery is the rediscovery of the living, sensing, knowing body. The poet and writer D. H. Lawrence inspires us all with this reflection on the living, knowing body:
My belief is in the blood and flesh as being wiser than the intellect. The body-unconscious is where life bubbles up in us. It is how we know that we are alive, alive to the depths of our souls and in touch somewhere with the vivid reaches of the cosmos.
Trauma sufferers, in their healing journeys, learn to dissolve their rigid defenses. In this surrender they move from frozen fixity to gently thawing and, finally, free flow. In healing the divided self from its habitual mode of dissociation, they move from fragmentation to wholeness. In becoming embodied they return from their long exile. They come home to their bodies and know embodied life, as though for the first time. While trauma is hell on earth, its resolution may be a gift from the gods.
Finally, Jack London describes the enlightenment afforded by meeting and transforming trauma. He writes,
in The Call of the Wild, “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.” This awakening of our life force, transmuted from survival to ecstatic aliveness, is truly the intrinsic gift laid at our feet and waiting to be opened through this journey of sweet surrender to the sensate world within, whether we are survivors of trauma or simply casualties of Western culture.
* Recall from Chapter 6 that the parasympathetic branch is divided into a primitive (nonmyelinated) and an evolutionarily recent (myelinated) branch.
Epilogue
Too much or too little? This question has quietly dogged me in the writing of In an Unspoken Voice. As one chapter was completed, two more suggested themselves; and so on. Finally, basta! At least for now. My solution to this hydra-like dilemma takes the form of gestating two more books. I am, perhaps, a little like the mother who, after experiencing the agonizing labor pains of birth, some months later, blithely thinks that it might be a good idea to have another child. I fear that I have fallen into that tender trap. After I have adequately recovered from the postpartum letdown of publishing this book, I have two subsequent projects in mind.
Two areas that I felt were not sufficiently addressed in this book concern traumatic memory and the intimate relationship between trauma and spirituality. The first book planned is tentatively titled Memory, Trauma and the Body; the second will be called Trauma and Spirituality.
Of the many misconceptions and misunderstandings about trauma, confusion about so-called traumatic memory ranks among the greatest and potentially most problematic. Fundamentally, traumatic memories differ from other memories in crucial ways. This first book will methodically explore both the various types of memory as well as the role of these distinct memory systems in the formation and treatment of trauma. Unfortunately, however, rather than exploring these differences in an open and informed scientific forum, two opposing camps of extremists in the “trauma wars” have developed: one that believes that all trauma memories are false (i.e., are confabulated) and another that contends that they are all true, accurate recordings of events exactly as they occurred. In this book we will open this discourse toward balancing the truth about “false memories” and the inherent falsity of “true memories.” It is only by understanding the role of the body in registering traumatic experience that we come to a coherent understanding of “traumatic memory,” as well as its clinical role in the therapeutic process. This exploration takes us beyond the two unbalanced polarities (of memories being either false or true) to a deeper understanding of the nature and healing of trauma.
The second book (written with Marianne Bentzen) will explore, in depth, the intrinsic relationship between spirituality and trauma. In the course of working with trauma for over forty years, it has become clear to me that there exists a welded, parallel and interwoven relationship between the transformation of trauma and various aspects of spiritual experiences. In this book we will show how both effective trauma healing and authentic spirituality are part of an embodied developmental process and discipline that draw humans toward greater presence and put us in touch with the numinous experiences that are often attributed to a god, soul or spirit.
In the meantime, for more information on trauma healing, including our training programs, please visit the following websites:
www.traumahealing.com
www.somaticexperiencing.com
A companion DVD session of Dr. Levine’s poignant work with a Marine serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffering from severe PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) can be purchased from www.psychotherapy.net.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. Starr, A., et al. (2004). Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after Orthopaedic Trauma. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 86, 1115–1121. Ponsford, J., Hill, B., Karamitsios, M., & Bahar-Fuchs, A. P. (2008). Factors Influencing Outcome after Orthopedic Trauma. Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, 64 (4), 1001–1009. Sanders, M. B., Starr, A. J., Frawley, W. H., McNulty, M. J., & Niacaris, T. R. Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Children Recovering From Minor Orthopaedic Injury and Treatment. (2005). Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, 19 (9), 623–628.
2. Shalev, A. Y., et al. (1998). A Prospective Study of Heart Rate Response Following Trauma and the Subsequent Development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 55, 553–559.
3. von Franz, M.-L. (1970, 1992). The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man. Boston & London: Shambhala Publications.
4. I Ching, Hexagram #51, The Arousing (Shock, Thunder) Six in the third place. Wilhelm, R., & Baynes, C. (1967). The I Ching or Book of Changes, with foreword by Carl Jung, Bollingen Series XIX. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (1st ed. 1950).
5. Ibid., 10.
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6. Ratner, S. C. (1967). Comparative Aspects of Hypnosis. In J. E. Gordon (Ed.), Handbook of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (pp. 550–587). New York: Macmillan.
7. Gallup, G. and Maser, J. (1977). Tonic Immobility: Evolutionary Underpinnings of Human Catalepsy and Catatonia. In J. D. Maser and M. F. P. Seligman (Eds.), Psychopathology: Experimental Models. San Francisco: Freeman.
8. Maser, J. and Bracha, S. (2008). Anxiety and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the Context of Human Brain Evolution: A Role for Theory in DSM-V? Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 15 (1), 91–97.
9. Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley: North Atlantic Press.
CHAPTER 3
10. Rubel, A., O’Nell, C., & Collado-Ardon, R. (1984). Susto: A Folk Illness. Berkeley: University of California Press.
11. Kraepelin, E. (2009). Lectures on Clinical Psychiatry. General Books LLC (Original work published 1904).
CHAPTER 4
12. E. Marais (1922). The Soul of the Ape. London: Penguin Press.
13. James, W. (1884), What is an Emotion? Mind, 9, 188–205. Bull, N. (1946). Attitudes: Conscious and Unconscious. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 103 (4), 337–345. Bull, N. (1962). The Body and Its Mind: An Introduction to Attitude Psychology. New York: Las Americas. 1962. Ekman, P. (1980). Biological and Cultural Contributions to Body and Facial Movement in the Expression of Emotions. In A. O. Rorty (Ed.), Explaining Emotions (pp. 73–101). Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press.
14. Havens, L. (1979). Explorations in the Uses of Language in Psychotherapy: Complex Empathic Statements. Psychiatry, 42, 40–48.
15. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov, 2004 (Reported in the New York Times, Science section, November 16, 2004).
16. Rizzolatti, R., & Sinigaglia, C. (2008). Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
17. Steven Burnett quoted in Carey, B. (July 28, 2009). In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable, New York Times, Science section.
18. Gallup, G., and Maser, J. (1977). Tonic Immobility: Evolutionary Underpinnings of Human Catalepsy and Catatonia. In J. Maser & M. F. P. Seligman (Eds.), Psychopathology: Experimental Models. San Francisco: Freeman.
19. Cannon, W. B. (1929). Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Research Into the Function of Emotional Excitement. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Bracha, H. et al. (2004). Does “Fight or Flight” Need Updating? Psychosomatics 45, 448–449.
20. Levine, P. A. (1991). Revisioning Anxiety and Trauma. In M. Sheets (Ed.), Giving the Body Its Due. Albany: SUNY Press. Levine, P. A. (1978). Stress and Vegetotherapy. Journal of Energy and Character (Fall 1978). Levine, P. A. (1996). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. Moskowitz, A. K. (2004). “Scared Stiff”: Catatonia as an Evolutionary-Based Fear Response. Psychological Review, 111 (4), 984–1002. Marx, B. P., Forsyth, J. P., Gallup, G. G., Fuse, T., Lexington, J. (2008). Tonic Immobility as an Evolved Predator
Defense: Implications for Sexual Assault Survivors. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 15, 74–94. Zohler, L. A. (2008). Translational Challenges with Tonic Immobility. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 15, 98–101.
21. Levine, J. D., Gordon, N. C., Bornstein, J. C., & Fields, H. L. (1979). Role of pain in placebo analgesia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 76 (7), 3528–3531. Also see van der Kolk, B., Greenberg, M., Boyd, H., & Krystal, J. (1985). Inescapable Shock, Neurotransmitters, and Addiction to Trauma. Biological Psychiatry, 20 (3), 314–25.
22. Suarez, S. D., & Gallup, G. G. (1979). Tonic Immobility as a Response to Rape in Humans: a Theoretical Note. The Psychological Record, 2 315–320. Finn, R. (2003, January 1). Paralysis Common Among Victims of Sexual Assault. Clinical Psychiatry News.
23. Livingstone, D. (1857). Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. London: John Murray Press.
24. Murchie, G. (1978). The Seven Mysteries of Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
25. Scaer, R. (2001). The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease. Binghamton: Haworth Medical Press.
26. Gallup, G. G. (1977). Tonic Immobility: The Role of Fear and Predation. Psychological Record, 27, 41–61.
27. Ibid. Gallup, G., & Maser, J. (1977). Tonic Immobility: Evolutionary Underpinnings of Human Catalepsy and Catatonia. In J. D. Maser & M. F. P. Seligman (Eds.), Psychopathology: Experimental Models. San Francisco: Freeman.
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