From Joseph Spinazzola's talks on Complex Trauma:
- The seat of consciousness is in the brain stem, not the frontal lobe.
- Instead of "I think therefore I am", it's "I feel my body, therefore I am."
- Psychological maltreatment happens more than any other type of abuse and leads to a 93% higher risk of addiction.
- "We can become addicted to pain, when it is inseparable from love."
- Our yogic third eye is called the medial prefrontal cortex in brain language, and its purpose is to locate where our physical body is oriented in space.
- Interoception is the ability to sense the body, and is dramatically decreased in trauma survivors.
- Building the ability to sense the body helps us re-learn the body is a reasonably safe place.
- Goals of trauma sensitive yoga are
- Empowerment
- Making Choices
- Present Moment Awareness
- Everyone has parts of themselves that are sometimes at odds.
- The degree of the separation between the parts reflects the degree of trauma.
- The goal is to get the parts cooperating and healing, not to eliminate them.
- Creating meaning in the story of one's life is a key component of therapy.
A Visual and Audible Meditation
--Courtesy of "the Cape"
1. What do you find beautiful?
2. What do you find distracting?
3. What judgments do you make? Is the clip too long, too short, too loud, too boring?
4. What past experiences does it bring up for you?
5. What hopes for the future does it bring up for you?