Trauma Healing through Breathwork
My last post on Somatic Breathwork and Healing talked broadly about how breathwork can heal our energetic and emotional self, but there is also much science behind why breathing consciously helps our mind and body heal from traumatic experiences.
Trauma can be stored in the body in many ways. Even when you mentally feel ok about something that has happened to you, the body could be experiencing chronic pain, energetic blockages, or unconscious reaction patterns without you even realizing the relationship.
An article on How Trauma Affects the Brain and Body mentions that, “Long-term effects of trauma are often experienced in small, day-to-day interactions or situations that pile up and can lead to toxic stress levels. Because trauma can manifest in subtler, quieter ways, survivors may sometimes downplay or dismiss it, believing that what they’re going through doesn’t matter, or isn’t affecting them.”
More and more research, as discussed in the book The Body Keeps The Score, is showing that it’s not always beneficial to speak about your traumatic experiences; that finding ways to allow your body to feel and release is what we truly need to heal.
When we are in a breathwork session, such as Rebirth Breathing which activates the sympathetic nervous system, we open the doors to fight-flight-freeze mode, and can begin to act based on survival instincts or unconscious reactions to past experiences.
Those subconscious patterns think that our automatic reactions are the best, most effective, and safest paths through a situation, but they are often fear-based, causing more harm than good.
Psychologically…
Our hippocampus and associative cortex store past experience memories.
Our amygdala stores emotional memories; feelings associated with events.
When we experience something new, our amygdala, hippocampus, and associative cortex scan themselves for similar past experiences, then take the info for how we should react emotionally, and send that info automatically to the decision-making part of the brain- the prefrontal cortex.
Having the opportunity to consciously breathe through those automatic-brain-scripts in a safe space, somatically release energy blockages, and rewrite what no longer serves us is what leads to lasting healing.
Sources:
How Does Trauma Affect the Brain and Body?
Book: The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, By Bessel van der Kolk
Somatic Breathwork and How it Heals
Somatic Release: Techniques and Benefits for Mind-Body Healing
This resonated with me, thank you…. reminds me of a scroll fragment: I vow to build a place where the doors are wide, and the language doesn’t start in Latin. Where Chinese pulse meets Tamil pulse, and no one pretends the West invented the body. https://open.substack.com/pub/thehiddenclinic/p/the-oath-of-the-hidden-clinic?r=5hogqp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true