Understanding Yourself {with a video}

Around the holidays this past year, I realized I pretty much hadn't stopped since the beginning of the pandemic with work. Burnout was coming like an avalanche and I knew I needed to slow down: I eased my schedule by cutting sessions and resting more. And within that slow down, I also realized this might be the opportunity to work with a therapist in a more meaningful way.

I had read about how somatic therapies help around hard topics and trauma to release pain that is stuck in the body - in addition to talk therapy. I started working with someone online who is trained with the Brainspotting technique and we've been slowly delving into things that have been intense. With somatic therapy, you are tapping into the feelings of your body around topics that you are discussing and then staying in those feelings to release.

No repressing which can be harmful and is what we all do.

The subject of trauma is not new to me. In 2019 I received both a trauma-informed yoga training by Zabie Yamasaki and a yoga nidra certification. Both of these after a reading a book called, The Body Keeps the Score, in 2018.

That book by Bessel van der Kolk was a hard one to read and it took me months as it needed deep attention, journaling and processing. But it woke me up to a lot of things I hadn't really let myself think about: my own life and upbringing and all of the things I was avoiding. And after some internal inquiry, I knew that this kind of suffering must be happening in all of the spaces I taught in, that I worked in, and in homeless people I came across in the street.

Every circumstance became a place for inquiry for me into why people were operating as they were. How they might be operating under the thumb of their past. And with each conversation with friends, family, students and random people, I saw how much they were still affected by something that happened long ago.

I saw it in others because I saw it in myself.

In my own processing I came across Dr. Gabor Mate and his teachings particularly, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" which is one of his best pieces of work that I believe led to the film I'm sharing with you.

The film I share about in the video below, The Wisdom of Trauma, is a very enlightening film that gives insight into Dr. Mate's life work:

that addiction is a trauma response.

That labeling people as having something wrong with them is not right and instead we should try to see what happened to them. In that way, we can help rehabilitate them into a more peaceful life with tools to heal rather than just medications.

I'd encourage you to watch this film if you can - I found it very revealing and inspiring. And if you know someone who would benefit from it, please share the link to it. The producers of the film are offering it for a donation but also free if you can't afford it right now. They are making this piece of revelatory work available to all who need to know that their "energy of trauma can be turned into the energy of life". Below I offer my own take and share a little vulnerably.

- Jess