I want to share an experience recently of some personal work I was doing that completed and let go of an early trauma. I want to share how powerful working from a mind-body approach can be. I have always been fairly inflexible especially around my hip area. As years have gone by my thigh muscles have become chronically tight. I would stretch them out and it was like an elastic band, they would stretch and then snap back in. This has caused me a lot of pain and discomfort for many years. I had the opportunity to do some work with someone who works from a somatic based psychotherapy approach to working with trauma. It was on a training I am doing in working this way. The legs and arms are important for our survival. Legs carry us and move us away from danger, and these movements are part of our 'survival instincts'. If we are not able to leave then that instinct becomes thwarted and tension will develop. This is one way that trauma will be held in the body.

So as I reflected on the tension in my legs I became aware of many times in my life where I had to endure unpleasant situations that I could not get away from. Plus I associated a restlessness in that tension. It has always been difficult for me to sit still, or stand in one place very long, and I have lived my life making sure I did not endure being anywhere I did not want to be. So in the piece of work I did we worked with the instinct that has been cut off. 

What we discovered was that this tension started at six months old when I fell out of my swing and my mother caught me, but she was terrified. Being held by someone in so much fear was this early trauma.  This happened right before I was begining to become mobile. After I did this work I feel like I have a new body. I am blown away by how amazing this work is.  I have no pain in my thighs, they can move with more flexibility than I have had in years and I can stretch easily. I can sit still in comfort. The restlessness has gone and I can feel my calf muscles, which I now realize I have not been able to.  I also notice that my neck muscles are more relaxed. So what has happened here?

Basically what has happened is that my nervous system has been kind of 'reconfigured'. When we are affected by trauma our nervous system becomes hyper-aroused. That is we become tense, and fearful, heart beats faster to get the blood and oxygen going, hormones released, all to help us fight or flee.  So very simply if we have not been soothed and helped to return to a regulated self our nervous system will remain activated, or easily activated when we are stressed.  Our tolerance for unpleasant and stressful situations is compromised. So the tension in my legs if you like came from this over-activation that was reinforced by other situations as I went through life. When we 'reconfigured' my nervous system by working through this event in the body, my muscles were released from a ramped up part of the nervous system. It is no longer 'ramped up' but has returned to the regulated place that my mother was unable to take me to when I was a baby.

The amazing part to me is that my body did not need any physio, yoga, massage etc to release the muscles it was changing the nervous system. I am looking forward to strengthening my legs and doing yoga that will have lasting effects rather than the short lived relief I kept getting. It is also important to realise that getting to some of the core work like this requires ongoing psychotherapy. I would not have been able to do a peice of work like this when I started doing my own personal work.  You need a trusting ongoing therapeutic relationship to work around the edges and build up resilience.