complex trauma Archives - Spiritual Bish

Trauma Healing Yoga: release trauma from your body

May 8, 2024

The original yoga for trauma Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) is very different than the yoga you may have seen online or experienced in a typical yoga studio. TCTSY is a somatic therapy for folkx living with traumatic body memories, in the presence of someone who understands what it’s like and supports them in coming home to themselves and befriending their body without judgement or shame. There are no hidden agendas, goals, pressure to perform, should’s, must’s, can’ts, or dogma, and it centres around the knowing that: YOU ARE THE EXPERT OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. Which means that your choosing is more important that doing (or not doing), and that the only teacher here is the experience of what it feels like to be in YOUR body. My only purpose is to support and accompany you in your process by facilitating TCTSY. Who is TCTSY for? TCTSY was initially developed for individuals with complex trauma (C-PTSD) and PTSD, but you do not require a formal diagnosis to participate. It is designed for anyone who has difficulties in the relationship they have with their body or identifies as having experienced trauma, whether it be physical, verbal, or sexual abuse, neglect, intergenerational or historical trauma, systemic oppression (like racism, misoginy, homophobia, transphobia), accumulated chronic stress, or any other extreme event that you feel overwhelmed your living body, mind, and nervous system. You do not have to have any prior yoga experience. TCTSY is accessible to everyone and the practice is always tailored to your individual needs. Fill out this questionnaire to set up your free consultation Wypełnij ten formularz aby umówić się na bezpłatną konsultacje You don’t have to have any experience with yoga, or be strong, flexible or able-bodied. Every body is welcome here. What happens during a TCTSY offering? Opportunities to be in your body, to notice your breath, and/or pause in stillness in the present moment. There are no physical adjustments or assists. I won’t be looking at you. I will be sitting in my chair or on my mat practicing along with you. Invitational Language -I will never tell you what to do with your body. You are in charge and the expert of how you decide to move or not move your body. Chasing not to do something is just as important as choosing to do it. Choice Making- Opportunities to make choices based on what you’re noticing or feeling(or not) in your body. I will offer different accessible options and you are welcome to choose and explore whatever works for you. Interoception – Opportunities to notice and experience your felt sense, meaning awareness of what you feel inside your body, as you are still, moving, and/or transition between shapes. Opportunities to explore the survival stress (trauma responses) that may still be alive within your body, in a safe enough environment. This may provide insight to what you might be experiencing in your body, how you you might engage your body in the process of healing, and making empowered choices that move beyond surviving towards thriving. We will not be talking about your past or making meaning of emotions, or sensations. This might be a nice change if you feel talk therapy hasn’t been bringing you the relief you are looking for. trauma-sensitive yoga is NOT psychotherapy Trauma Healing Yoga TCTSY is not psychotherapy nor does it substitute it. It is a somatic therapy which works in a completely different way- bottom-up- meaning it involves befriending the language of the body: the sensations, feelings, and stored survival stress and implicit body memory. As a trauma-sensitive yoga facilitator, I don’t diagnose mental health disorders, we don’t talk about or process past trauma. TCTSY does not require you to be in psychotherapy as it’s a stand alone treatment. It is encouraged however to have some sort of support system – like a friend, partner, therapist, coach, spiritual guide etc- as working with the body in this way can bring up to surface implicit memories, so things like sensations, images, memories or emotions may emerge. TCTSY is an approach that creates a safe and non-judgmental atmosphere and by focusing on sensations originating from the body (interoception) as a source of information for making one’s own decisions, it also allows participants to restore the connection between the mind and the body and nurture a sense of agency, which is often weakened as a result of experiencing trauma. “The constant reminders to go at your own pace and to listen to your body for what it needs and when it’s ready to turn or how far it wants to turn that was super helpful and has extended in so many other places in my life. Yoga classes I have taken other places, I have heard people say, “You can push yourself; you don’t realize what your body can do. Just push it.” I feel like that’s the kind of thing I have been doing my whole life. What is so valuable about this yoga class is that it was not about pushing yourself. It was about letting yourself get there in your own time.” Core Principles How does TCTSY have potential to be healing? The 5 core principles of TCTSY support parts of the body-mind that may have been affected by trauma. Interception invites a titrated and deliberate contact with the felt sense, choice making and invitational language support autonomy and encourage self-exploration and agency, non-coersion and shared authentic experience create a safe enough space that’s the opposite of trauma, and create relational safety and attunement, TCTSY encourages making safe and deliberate contact with the body, which supports the natural process of nervous system regulation. The vagus nerves acts as a communication system between the brain and the body and vice versa. A whopping 80% of the nerve fibres send information from the body to the brain! ( only about 20% send info from the body to the brain). When the body starts to feel safer, so does the mind. Trauma often impacts the interoceptive regions…
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What is Complex Trauma?

December 4, 2023

This text is about complex trauma, also known as developmental trauma or C-PTSD, it’s relational aspect and how it differers from the diagnosis of PTSD. I’ll also share a bit about my own process of healing and how I personally view it. what is trauma anyway? Depending on where you are in the world and who you ask, the definitions will vary. The view that I follow is the one that many of the world’s leading body-mind and trauma specialists have, which is that trauma is not in the event, but it’s what happens inside the body as a result, and if there wasn’t a caring empathetic other to help support us through it. I particularly like the way Dr. Albert Wong describes trauma in this article here in Psychology Today saying, “Trauma impacts much more than just our thoughts and actions. Trauma is far-reaching and systemic—it cuts us to our bones. It can dissolve our sense of identity, diminish our capacity to locate ourselves accurately in time and space, inhibit our tolerance for interpersonal relatedness, disrupt the coherence of our experience, impair our capacity for emotional regulation, and so much more.Trauma impacts much more than just our prefrontal cortex or our behavioral activation system. It impacts our whole being—and it must be treated from a whole being perspective. Importantly, any legitimate trauma treatment must consider all of our being—the entirety of our body-mind—not just our thoughts and behaviors, alone… A tidal change in our zeitgeist is slowly emerging. The importance of the body—and the felt experience therein, once again, is starting to rise.” Things that can cause trauma are big horrific events like war, accidents, natural disasters, operations, the death or loss of a loved one, assault, or sexual, physical and emotional abuse- it can be traumatic to go through it personally and we can also be impacted by trauma if it happens to someone we love. The truth is we are all complex, multi-layered, living beings and since we are all different, trauma and its impacts will also vary and depend on many factors. Two people can live through the same catastrophe and be effected differenty, one will bounce back quckly, and the other may suffer debilitating symptoms. Why, you may be wondering? IT’s not just the event, but our nervous system’s internal reaction to it. When something is too much, too fast too soon, or too little too late, is another way that trauma is often described. This will drastically vary from individual to individual, and according to the CDC ( Center for Disease Control and Prevention from the US) here’s some added layers that might contribute: generational embodiment/ historical trauma, social conditions/local context, and adverse childhood experiences which lead to disrupted neurodevelopment and social, emotional & cognitive impairment to name a few). Confusion of different names and diagnosis of trauma PTSD was the first official diagnosis of trauma and came about from American war Veterans. Before that, it was thought that it was a kind of mental weakness and that it just something made up, the said “it’s all in your head”. The diagnosis of PTSD ( post traumatic stress disorder) consists of 3 main symptom clusters: re-experiencing of the trauma (for example nightmares, flashbacks), avoidance of reminders of trauma-related stimuli (for example places that reminded the person of the event, talking about the experience) and hypervigilance (for example easy startle, excessive attention to potential threat). In the US, the DSM has since that first 1980 diagnosis expanded the symptom profile to include 20 symptoms, 4 clusters and dissociation. According to Cambridge, “One consequence of this expansion has been that the possible symptom combinations allow for 636 120 ways to be diagnosed with DSM-5 PTSD, leading to potential complications in assessment and treatment planning.” In the US there have been efforts to make trauma less about symptoms and more about encompassing the totality of the pain and suffering of the human experience by creating new diagnosis like “developmental trauma” and complex post traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), but at least in the US its complicated because of how the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) functions – if you don’t know what the problem is, follow the money and who is funding what, cough big Pharma cough. Besides the diagnosis of PTSD since 2018, the eleventh revision of the IDC-11 ( International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) that is used here in Europe where I live, has added a new diagnosis of C-PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder). Well actually it may seem new, but decades ago Judith Herman was talking about the impact of chronic relational power dynamics and trauma in her research and her 1992 book Trauma and Recovery. Herman worked with mostly child and women survivors of abuse and atrocities that were relational and chronic in nature, before her trauma was mostly a diagnosis reserved for male Veterans. In The British Journal of Psychiatry Marylène Cloitre explains, “a long history of clinical observation that individuals who experienced chronic, repeated and prolonged traumas, such as childhood sexual abuse or domestic violence, tended to experience more complex reactions extending beyond those typically observed in PTSD”. According to the IDC-11 C-PTSD “ includes the three core elements of PTSD as well as three additional elements called disturbances in self-organisation that are pervasive and occur across various contexts: emotion regulation difficulties (for example problems calming down), negative self-concept (for example beliefs about self as worthless or a failure) and relationship difficulties (for example avoidance of relationships).” Some examples of complex trauma (C-PTSD) could include: • Childhood abuse or neglect • Domestic violence/sexual assault • Human trafficking • War or political conflict • Being chronically misgendered Recognising this is a step forward, at least in Europe, however there is still a big elephant in the room. Mainly, these diagnosis are mostly focused on “getting rid of the symptoms”, not on looking at and understanding the whole person- are the symptoms the problem or…
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