Breathwork & Trauma

I would like to talk about Trauma. Trauma is something we all suffer from, though most people would verify there is nothing wrong with them or they don’t have any trauma. Most people would look at trauma that was caused by a Major event such as:

• Acts of violence such as an armed robbery, war or terrorism ·

• Natural disasters such as bushfire, earthquake or floods ·

• Interpersonal violence such as physical abuse, rape, child abuse, or suicide of a family member or friend

• Involvement in a serious motor vehicle or workplace accident.

But there is something that all people suffer from and that is subtle trauma. Subtle trauma can come in various disguises and degrees. Unlike the above trauma which is quite obvious, subtle trauma can be hard to accept as trauma or to have any impact at all. Subtle trauma can come from someone who you love or care about.

Subtle trauma can occur in many ways. Here are a few examples:

• Domination

• Verbal Assaults

• Abusive Expectations

• Emotional Blackmail

• Unpredictable Responses

• Being teased or bullied at school.

• Not being accepted in a social group.

• Not having your love needs met as a child - In this example this could well be that your parents didn’t provide the love that you needed. That might be not being listened to when you needed to be listened to. You could be a child who needed to be hugged but had parents who didn’t touch their children and this could be experienced by you as not being loved. This becomes subtle trauma.

• First born child feeling rejected - When a sibling is born as the new sibling is getting all the attention. Feels like their parents no longer love them.

• Youngest child not feeling worthy or unloved due to constantly getting hand me downs from older siblings.

• Fear of disappointing one or both parents

These are only a few out of many possibilities for subtle trauma. Subtle trauma can affect someone for the rest of their lives without the person realising it. However compared to normal trauma, subtle trauma can hard to find and hard to admit to. An example how subtle trauma can be affecting the adult life.

An acquaintance of mine who is a brilliant artist came to a stage in their life where they got Artist block i.e. they could no longer paint. After using Breathwork she uncovered where when she was a child her mother used to put her down about her art as her mother was an accomplished singer and told her she would never be successful. After releasing the trauma from these events she was able to start painting again. Subtle trauma will cause one to form core beliefs about ourselves. These are formed during childhood.

Core Beliefs that can be formed are:

• I am Bad / Evil

• I am stupid/ ignorant

• I am unworthy

• I am not good enough

• I am the wrong sex (formed due to a parent wanting the opposite sex child. i.e. Father wanted a boy but got a girl instead)

• Women are stupid

Why does Trauma affect us so much?

In the wild, a wild animal can experience trauma yet can recover quite quickly from it and not have it affecting it for the rest of its life. This happens because when experiences trauma, as soon as it can it will allow its body to release the trauma. When a human experiences trauma it does not have the ability to release the trauma like a wild animal does. This is for a couple of reasons.

1. Humans have a higher mind. The mind not wanting to experience the trauma again blocks the trauma from releasing and keeps it trapped in the body. It does this thinking it is going to protect itself. Also the higher mind keeps us more disconnected from the body compared to a wild animal. The wild animal is totally in the body and can act without thinking. While the human all we do is think and this keeps us away from a natural body response.

2. Human social conditioning does not allow one to dispel trauma in a way that is natural to the body. If a parent smacks us and our natural instinct is to react in anger, social conditioning prevents us from getting angry at the parent as the parent might smack us harder or punish us in a different way. Also we as a society do not allow a person’s body to just shake on its own accord as it is not something society accepts as a natural response.

So how can Breathwork help with trauma; both overt and subtle?

Breathwork gets to the core of the wounding (see newsletter # 1) to where the trauma is held. For overt trauma this can be easily accessed, allow you to expel the trauma through emotional release. With subtle trauma, by accessing the subconscious in the limbic system of the brain, you can re-experience the subtle trauma and also the core beliefs that were formed from that trauma. Breathwork also allows you to connect to your body where our cellular memory stores past events. Breathwork allows you expel these traumatic events from your body’s cellular memory. Also we know that trauma has a great impact on our nervous system, especially when it comes to trauma such as PTSD. Breathwork stimulates the nervous system allowing the nervous system to expel any trauma stuck in there, meaning we are holding less stress and less prone to anxiety as our nervous system is calmer. The more we can expel from or nervous system, the more we can respond to crises in a more calm and rationale manner.

Trauma and Health

As Trauma is held in our body, over time the energy becomes stagnate leading us to feel older, slower, and prone to diseases, lack of energy. It also has an effect on our mental health, as the energy stored drives us to behaviors in order to avoid dealing with our trauma. As trauma is released from the body it frees up our energy system giving us more energy, feeling younger, able to be in touch with ourselves more, less prone to mental illness as we no longer have to behave in ways that avoid our stored trauma.

#Breathwork #Beliefs #Trauma #Abuse #CoreBeliefs