Turning the Wound into Wisdom
How Movement, Breath and Sound can Positively Influence Trauma
Trauma
Essentially, everyone we come into contact with is traumatized in some way or another; thankfully people are becoming more aware of trauma and are open to talking about it & how it affects people’s daily lives. Trauma exists on a spectrum and therefore no one’s trauma is better or worse than anyone else’s, because it doesn’t matter what happened- what matters is how your system experienced it. Unprocessed trauma shows up in everyday life by overreacting to small things, feeling numb or disconnected to life, your friends or even your own body; it manifests as chronic tension, self sabotage, perfectionism, trouble with trust, and of course the big two: anxiety and depression. Trauma lays the groundwork for a fractured identity, addiction, self harm, can cause attachment issues, affect development (especially if the trauma happened in childhood,) lead to C-PTSD, the list goes on. If you don’t suffer from these things, I’m sure you know at least 10 people who do, and if you don’t it's because they’re better at hiding it than you are at perceiving it.
Trauma is not only physically stored in our body, it actually changes our brain. Neuroscience shows in a traumatic event the parts of our brain involved in memory formation and time are affected, and as a result perception is distorted. Talk therapy is great (as sometimes our ability to communicate shuts down to trauma) but we know now that isn’t enough because of how it affects the brain AND body. When healing, we have to re-integrate both hemispheres - left (logic analytical) and right (emotional or creative) and we can do this through movement, breath and sound therapy. Walking with arms swinging to create a cross body movement, binaural beats, alternating nostril breathing, chanting and humming, drawing, and dancing can all help integrate the brain and body.
Somatic therapies are necessary for trauma recovery and trauma-informed yoga, breathwork and sound + energy healing can be fantastic when it comes to healing the body and integrating the hemispheres. Yoga helps reconnect the body-mind in a safe way, breathwork calms the nervous system, dancing can discharge trapped energy, and safe consensual touch can heal attachment wounds. Being in nature and meditation can restore a safe connection to your body and visualization can help with trauma healing due to its potential to create new internal experiences and regulate the nervous system. Listening to sound frequencies that oscillate left and right, humming, toning and chanting can all stimulate the vagus nerve.
The Vagus Nerve
Let’s talk about the Vagus (latin for wandering) Nerve for a bit, as it plays a key role in trauma recovery. The vagus nerve is your only cranial nerve that winds all the way down to your lower torso. I like to think of it like a magical thread inside our body. Vagal tone is measured from the health of the Vagus Nerve: high vagal tone means your body can relax quickly after stress, low vagal tone means it can’t. There are 3 options for Vagal tone: Safe (ventral), Activated (sympathetic) and Freeze (Dorsal Vagal.) When we are safe our magic thread (aka Vagus Nerve) glows white, when it is activated it becomes anxious and red, and when it’s in a freeze response it’s slow and frozen, like the color blue.
Increasing Vagal tone matters because it helps you bounce back quicker from stress, it helps you sleep and digest better, you feel more balanced and connected, and lastly your immune system becomes strong. So how do you build vagal tone?
Movement
Yoga Twists
Cold exposure
Massage
Dancing
Breathwork
Deep slow breathing with exhales > inhales
Meditation and mindfulness
Laughter
Sound
Humming
Chanting
Singing
Therapeutic Sound Healing Sessions
Not surprisingly, all the things we can do to build Vagal Tone are all things we can do to regulate our nervous system - which is the foundation for integrating and healing trauma. If you’re reading this and you’re like ‘Jess I’ve had a pretty blessed life,” then I would be delighted for you, however, some of the trauma that we store in our body comes from a pre-verbal time. What do I mean by that? Maybe we were left for 5 minutes as a newborn, because our parents had to run to the bathroom… but 5 minutes to a baby is eternity. As a newborn we can’t be mad (we don’t even know what that is yet) at our parents. But as we age into childhood and pre-teen years we remember the feeling of abandonment, but we still can’t be angry with our primary caregivers because without them means certain death. So as we get older we internalize the abandonment and anger we felt towards them and we feel shame: the core emotion in trauma. These Samskaras (impressions from the past) “leave subtle impressions and unconsciously affect our habits, self perceptions, expectations or disposition.”
Creating a Safe Place Through Movement, Breath + Sound
In the safe space created by practicing yoga, doing breathwork and having crystal bowl meditation sessions or tuning fork therapy we often feel emotions unexpectedly arise to the surface - I have lost count the amount of times I have cried on my yoga mat or in crystal bowl sessions. Yoga, Breathwork + Sound and Vibrational medicine is a sacred invitation to re-establish the safe, connected relationship you have with your body and meet yourself exactly where you are at.
Yoga, breathwork and sound gives an opportunity to rebuild the trust that was broken especially when working with a proficient practitioner. The moment a bad* emotion visits you (like shame or anger) they can gently hold space or even mirror while you process what that emotion is teaching you. With yoga, interoceptive awareness opens up pathways for these Samskaras (secret underlying memories) to be received and processed and released by the mind. With breathwork, we create spaciousness in the nervous system allowing life force to move through and dissolve patterns of tension. With sound healing + vibrational frequencies, we bypass the logic brain and speak directly to the body’s innate intelligence, restoring harmony where dysregulation once took root.
In yoga, we know the hips hide fear, anxiety, sadness, and a lot of sexual trauma; shoulders carry burdens and the weight of the world, and can become rigid when we are unable to let go. The lower back and hamstrings hold guilt, repressed feelings and pain of the past - typically regarding relationships. The knees are joints of ego and pride holding the inability to bend and be flexible. Neck pain is stubbornness and refusing to see the other side of the story. In sound healing we know the feet carry you through life and carry the cadence of your step (is it a trudge or a dance?). The throat is your truth and communication and connecting or bridge to your divinity. Working with the chakras is what helps us understand this world of relationships. Memory can be felt through a pain in the body which can be seen in a chakra and is an indicator to release through movement and intentional breath. Take a breath.
“and i said to my body.
softly.
‘i want to be your friend.’
it took a long breath.
and replied
‘i have been waiting my whole life for this.”
― Nayyirah Waheed
Remember, healing is not about getting rid of the shadow or “getting over it,” or pretending there is no trauma, or trying to escape our reality. We heal the body by integrating all of our experiences and coming home to it. Loving all parts of ourselves and turning the Wound into Wisdom.
As a trauma-informed yoga teacher, breathwork coach and master sound healing practitioner, holding space for you on your healing journey is a most sacred blessing to me. I would love to help guide you turn your Wounds into Wisdom. Please Contact me and let me know how i can best serve you.
Xoxo
Jess
