Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.
B.K.S. Lyengar

The Impact of Trauma and Anxiety On The Mind, Body, and Spirit

During a traumatic experience, your brain kicks into action and your body’s stress response is activated. This prepares you to fight, flee, freeze up, or even just shut down (fold) to avoid danger.  Many people continue to live in a chronically high state of escalation or shutdown after one or more traumatic events, with their stress response being very easily activated.

These amazing stress responses are there to help protect you from harm! Sometimes, however, a bit of a programming error occurs. It’s as if your brain gets “stuck” in that stress response and has a hard time shutting off. You can experience hypervigilance, which is a revved up, on-edge feeling all the time, like you are waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Since you often don’t know how to release all that nervous energy, it can actually begin to manifest as pain and illness in your body. Chronic muscle aches and pains, headaches, intestinal discomfort, autoimmune disorders, and much more can occur as a result. Other times, you can feel more fatigued and disconnected from your body, almost numb to sensations or emotions.

All of this, of course, also begins to have an impact on your spirit. Since your brain thinks you are in danger and keeps you in high alert, it can be very difficult to ever be still and quiet. Therefore, accessing a state of peace – that blissful place where your true, authentic self lies – can seem impossible.

These responses are there to protect you, but your brain is just a little confused. Staying escalated or shutdown and quiet may have served you well during childhood trauma, but it may be hindering you from living your best life now. The good news is, you can “reprogram” your brain!  Yogic practices such as pranayama (breathing exercises), meditation, asana (movement and stretches) can help calm and reset your nervous system.

Through these practices you can regain a feeling of safety and control in your body so trauma work can begin. Some clients benefit from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to help your brain reprocess particularly distressing memories so they no longer feel as intense.  EMDR also helps you discover more adaptive beliefs about the event to help you move forward.  Inner Child Reparenting (also known as Somatic Parts Work) can help you learn to comfort and soothe the parts of you impacted by childhood trauma. The combination of these methods can be a powerful healing tool!

Still have questions?

Contact me directly via email at pam@pamnelsontherapy.com.  I can’t wait to hear from you!