Revealing Trauma in Body. My own Process

Finding  damage in a ribcage

1. Trauma raises in bodywork experiencing bone damage.

During bodywork for ribcage and experiencing their structure I found out that there is a hole between ribs in my right side. It was calm sensation and then I realised it happened during car accident: as the car was rolling I had the belt this belt was exactly there and my ribs were powerfully resisting and protecting lungs.

2. Emotions come and flashback memories.

After this bodywork I went into panic into traumatic flashback, where all the space and people around me started to be blurred, I was pale and touching inside ribcage hole realising that I cannot change anything, it was shocking expierence. I started to shake and shake again and it started to be cold in body from fear and contraction.

3. Receiving ground and support

Receiving support and assitance in my process really helped me: such commands as to breathe, to walk ,to jump, to sense feet and to calm all down. Nerve system had a high tension at that moment.

4. Realising something as danger.

I realised that somehow my right lung is fragile and it made me fear more. Coming to feet and feeling the space and support helped me to come back from shock and flashback of accident .

5. Body shows stronger symptoms

When working in workshop with trauma in body there was moment that triggered me and I started to tell story of my car accident. Again I was shaking and now half of my face in the right side froze and the right eye started to tikle.

6. Completion of the reflexes that were not completed during accident.

Therapist asked me to move slowly head from one side to the other and repeat it very slowly. Later she explained that I didn’t have opportunity for natural reflex to complete during car accident and my neck and half face was stuck.

7. Finding place of safety in body. Remembering pleasant moments of life.

After she asked me to come back to body posture that reminded me something pleasant – it was posture of my dance in authentic movement in nature by the river, the sense of connectedness, I stood again in this posture but hardly resisting and still shaky inside. Then again I could not resist in body to shake and tell again the story of car accident and tell the storry how it was shocking for me to find the whole in my ribs.

8. Nerve system tiredness and body tiredness. Saving nerve system not to be retraumatised during session.

After all when the story was cut by promissing to come back later to it I sat calmly in body and my right eye stopped tickles and body relaxed feeling tired.

9. Fear to experience the same sensations of flashback space.

After the the third session on my ribcage while exploring muscles between them I was very much considered and securing myself not to collapse or come back again into shock state. I touched my ribs very gently and at that moment I was just stuck, body was in alert state but psyche was calm.

10. Admiting. Looking into real situation. Real body as it is now.

Now after admiting that I have hole in ribcage I came into sense that my right ribcage is lower than left and that the right lung has less space to breathe than the left lung. Also when breathing deeply I sensed that the floating rib is pressing a little of my liver. With this sensation I got used to during four years thinking that nothing happened to my body. And now body showed all , opened and I realise that now my psyche is safe and ready to heal.

11. Healing moment. Admiting the truth as it is, but not falling into collapse emotion.

After this exploration by my surprise I was not falling into past but more admiting the present moment and situation in my body and asking myself : how can I help my ribcage to lift up for liver to feel free and lung to have more space? How can I help myself to bend back the ribs? Is there any possibility. I let my body be as it is and my psyche was ready to meet it on a different level already. Here I sensed the healing moment or the moment that I crossed some crucial point and admited the present situation with adequate emotion.

12. Trauma is still there. Different pain sygnals.

Going through this expierence and writing it also I have sense of right hip being in tension and right leg muscle tensed. While driving there are no flashbacks of cars rolling there is a release in psyche and body relaxes.

Implementing my inner process into bodywork with trauma or damaged bone strucures

After experienscing this process on myself I can get the idea and empathy of what person is going through during the flashback moments and how to deal with ones’ nerve system not to be traumatized again during telling about trauma.

The expierence of ribcage was the key during my studies in IBMT, I realised a lot and received a glimple of how to heal trauma. Also there was a sensation of my readiness to do so, to reveal, unfold and heal. There was enough strengh in me to admit different body changes.

During bodywork session for the client who experienced damage in bones I would suggest to go slowly into safe place and to re-experience how was the body feeling in safe place. We would start with inner meditation finding safe grounded place in body on the Earth . Then I would gently go through bone structure that is related to the traumatised place. After watching emotional level of a client and finding safe to continue I would do bodywork on traumatised place with healing and attentive touch going deeper into bone marrow, connective tissue and come back again to outer tissues. While sharing moment of talk I would watch the client reactions and raised nerve system and if it is safe I would bring this process more to the edge then again slowly back to the place of safety and security. I would also go through steps and after the admission stage I would work more on fixing and finding supportive ways for bone to heal and to reveal back it’s power.

As I realised from my own bodily experience trauma needs space and time to come out and heal when the nerve system is ready to heal and psyche is ready to support. When there is too much of body symptoms like vomiting, crying, dizziness or other extremes I would suggest to continue healing and bodywork other time and to let the sensations calm down by grounding into present moment and more pleasurable experience.

There is a promissing moment in healing bone damage that “The whole skeleton is in fact entirely renewed over a period of about two years. Its degree of strengh, “ (Hartley , 1995, 138) And bones can really find their place together with the help of joints “Together they articulate the balance and alignment of the body;s weight with the force of gravity. This allows for both mobility and support , enabling us to rise up from the earth and balance on two feet; this would ofcourse be impossible without a skeleton” (Hartley, 1995, 139)

It is truly not easy to admit misalignemnt or some forgoten protected “sleeping”damage and to know that : “ Clearly any misalignment of the joints of the skull, spine, pelvis, legs or feet will affect the alignment and balance of the whole skeleton. “

As I experience now the question how to heal damaged bone, I find answers in some books that give me guidelines as Deane Juhan writes :

“Due to their mineral hardness bones are not often considered as subjects for most kinds of bodywork. There is not, after all, much there to soften, or leghthen or relax “ (Juhan, 2003 , 92.93)

Also when there is some misalignment in movement or some body pain symptoms, body adopts to not feel them in certain way muscles and the structure around these muscles change. Joints adopt the different pressure/ The starting point on bodywork would be to trace bones, to check them. “If we wish to change human movement, we must be clever enough to stimulate change in structures that aren’t designed to be changed casually. If a movement strategy was very mutable, what good would it be when your life depended on it? Adaptability in movement is good , but random and easily shifted structure would quickly lead to accidents and misfortune..” (McHose and Frank, 2006, 3)

“Tactile stimulation, diet, exercise, trauma, the relative strenghts and balances of various muscle sets, postural habits, proper use or abuse, or disuse, and all kinds of psychological factors enter into the conditions under which the bones are formed througout infancy, youth, and adulthood. These things are knit into our bony frames as surely as the genetic code. And many of these patterning influences are very susceptible to the positive effects of bodywork. “

Bones are living beings, chaning minerals and it’s like Earth slowly shifting so in any case the bone is the one that is the attention object from where the softer tissues unite and form all the system of movement together with joints and muscles.

“Bodywork can constructively intervene in the proccess of bone formation, and can help the individual avoid many skeletal aberrations. In this respect, bodywork may be just as beneficial to bones as it is to the softer tissues,

“As the bones are an integral part of these relationships (internal) , their formation will certainly benefit from any overall positive shifts in the body’s processes”   (Juhan 2003, 92,93)

“ The role of bodywork is not to eliminate stress, but rather to educate individual to recognize the right kinds and the right amounts. “

“ But the change is slow, and there is sufficient moment-to- moment constancy to result in an impression of permanence. And as my bones from the core of my body, around which the rest is structured, so my sense of self forms the core of my life and the backdrop against which all my feelings and expierences happen. “

“Hopefully, as I mature and gain more realistic view of myself and the world, that resides in my bones will increasingly be the characteristics that do not easily get lost. At the same time, I can hope for the grace that what remains in my bones will be and identity that I can feel comfortable and at peace with.”

(Stauffer 2010, 73)

Healthy support in movement

“When our sense of self is being challenged, we need our joints to help us be swayed by the winds of change. Joints not only move but also join the bones curves of the spine and its ability to bend and strech as necessary contribute a great deal to our ability to adapt to changing circumstances, even if we have to bear a lot of weight at the same time. “ (McHose and Frank, 2006, 3)

The first what we develop in uterus is the spine , the line of spine where all starts the last what is remained is our skeletal structure that can be clearly explored and seen as dancing “ La Muerta” …

 

Everytime during bodywork I come deeply into myself I experience images, memories that were and arise as bodymind. Authentic movement practise helps me to embody myself into this moment , to understand the mind and architecture of this body.

This body is the tool to bring me to the clear presence of here and now. This body has limits and boundaries it has stories to tell and movements to dance. Entering constant movement in body and feeling how beautifully joints unite the flow I start to worship all what is changing. Every single cell in body every single moment that is shifting without my mind interruption. This power of Nature of all existence is there in this present moment, bringing us to the ocean of the life force by itself. We are this Nature, we are this force whatever shape we take and however body is shifting it is all together the dance of being human.