bodywork

“Pain Is Really Strange” by Steve Haines, art by Sophie Standing

January 28, 2018 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: reading Trauma Is Really Strange

This is in the same format as “Trauma Is Really Strange,” a graphic “novel” (although it’s non-fiction) or comic, or graphic medicine book. Each page is divided into panels with drawings and word bubbles, sometimes with additional explanations in tiny red print at the bottom of the page.

Most of the book talks about the complex neurology of pain as a lead up to saying that long term chronic pain is almost entirely unrelated to gnarly looking bone bumps or torn muscles on MRIs. Pain is the brain’s way of signaling danger, and our bodies each interpret danger in different ways. Tissue damage usually heals in 3-6 months, so most chronic pain that lasts longer than that is due to a sensitized nervous system.

Cancer pain is an exception, since tumors continue to physically push on body structures. I suspect there are other exceptions for chronic infections, etc.

Telling ourselves stories about pain that allow room for change is more functional than telling ourselves stories that have no hope, like “I’m just getting older,” or “I have arthritis.” Choose metaphors with hope as well. Pain as protective rather than pain as punishment.

Getting in tune with your body, feeling what is happening in this moment, and gradually adding gentle movement can all help the brain feel safer and thus reduce pain.

Paying attention to what feels good not only feels good in the moment, it can reduce overall pain over time.

Much of the information in the book is in tiny red print at the bottom of the pages under the cartoon panels. The cartoon format helps defuse a difficult topic, but also simplifies its complexities. I like the overall message, and at the same time the topic doesn’t quite fit into this format.

Recommended if you need a gentle introduction to the ways chronic pain can improve.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Healing Trauma” by Peter A. Levine, PhD.

January 5, 2017 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body

Recommended to me by: a client

This is a practical, applied introduction to Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing work. After an introductory summary, he presents 12 exercises, starting with body awareness and grounding, continuing with awareness of felt senses in the body, and then moving into completion of fight, flight, and freeze responses. He includes orienting to a sense of normalcy and balance that may be new and unfamiliar. The approach is gentle, accepting, and warm.

A CD is included where he reads the exercises. It’s not really a guided meditation, because, for example, he says, “Tap your left hand … (notice, etc.), okay now move through the rest of the body.”

The exercises aren’t quite in the order I would present them, since starting with body awareness might be challenging for many people. I would start with grounding and resources first.

Recommended for people who want to tools to work with their own trauma, and/or who want to understand the nuts and bolts of Somatic Experiencing.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Focusing with Your Whole Body” by Addie van der Kooy & Kevin McEvenue

July 7, 2015 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Focusing is a way of looking inside and being with a felt sense of our experience. Alexander Technique is about interrupting unhelpful physical habits to allow the body to move with ease. Kevin McEvenue brought them together: inviting the body to move how it wants to as a way of restoring flow to blocked processes.

Addie van der Kooy learned the process from Kevin and wrote this clear, gentle, welcoming manual. It comes with a CD of guided exercises, although the copy I read no longer had it. At just over 50 pages, it is concise, while still covering the material with care.

The exercises are done standing, feeling a solid connection with the earth through the feet, or sitting, feeling a solid connection through the sit bones and feet. The first exercise suggests: “[I]nvite your body to raise your arms upward from the sides of your body in the way it wants to. […] Listen for and allow any kind of movement, however small and unexpected. It may even have nothing to do with raising your arms!”

After each exercise, there are exploratory questions and discussion. Addie says, “When I do this exercise it often feels like I am inviting myself to dance with the wisdom of my own body.” We invite the body to express itself through movement, and then give consent to what comes (or not).

The following chapters are Grounding and Presence, Allowing a Felt-Sense to Emerge, Holding Both with Equal Positive Regard, and Coming to a Resting Point. Holding Both references Peter Levine’s ideas from Somatic Experiencing about moving between the trauma vortex and a healing vortex.

This book describes a loving, careful way to listen to the body. I tried the exercises on my own, and I want to try a facilitated Whole Body Focusing session sometime. Highly recommended.

Available at the Focusing Institute.

Kevin McEvenue also wrote two articles about how he came to develop Whole Body Focusing as part of his healing process. They are combined in “Dancing the Path of the Mystic.”

“Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga” by David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper

February 12, 2015 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Subtitle: Reclaiming Your Body

Recommended to me by: a client

This book is divided into three parts: a general introduction to the history of trauma treatment and PTSD, a suggested yoga practice for traumatized people, illustrated with photographs, and suggestions for offering trauma-sensitive yoga for clinicians and yoga teachers.

Throughout the book, it is clear that these people get it. They emphasize choice, empowerment, and reconnecting with the body. From Stephen Cope’s foreword: “Sometimes we encounter experiences that so violate our sense of safety, order, predictability, and right, that we feel utterly overwhelmed […]. Unable to bear reality. We have come to call these shattering experiences trauma.”

Trauma involves being helpless to avoid pain. In trauma-sensitive yoga, students are repeatedly encouraged to change postures if they are painful, and instructions emphasize choice and control over their own bodies. Students are encouraged to attend to their own experience, rather than trying to get postures “right”.

There were two instructions in the book that seemed less well-attuned to traumatized yoga students. One is to “lift the crown of the head,” without explaining how to find a balanced upright posture for the head. The other is to “hug in and around the lower belly” to activate core muscles. Many traumatized people chronically clench their bellies already.

Trauma-sensitive yoga classes move slowly to give students time to connect with their physical experience. “Physical assists” (touching students) is done rarely, with permission, and with careful attention to possible triggering effects. Thought is given to the props available – many trauma survivors find straps triggering because of having been restrained, so the book suggests not having straps in the room.

“In teaching trauma-sensitive yoga, the job of the yoga teacher is not to create artificial challenges—many of our students have already challenged themselves more than we may ever know just by showing up. The work of the teacher is to cultivate enough safety so that students can challenge themselves as they are ready, and in ways they feel safe.”

Highly recommended for its compassionate approach to anyone dealing with trauma or traumatized people.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Core Awareness” by Liz Koch

September 27, 2014 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Enhancing Yoga, Pilates, Exercise, and Dance

Recommended to me by: David Mitchell

I enthusiastically endorse this book’s focus on awareness, especially in core areas that we often learn to block out. The psoas muscles connects the front of the lumbar spine to the inside of the pelvis to the inner upper femur, all areas we largely ignore. I like the image of telling small children, “Sense yourself!” rather than, “Be careful!” to avoid injury. My own experience supports that the psoas does not like to be deeply palpated, but responds better to gentle invitations to relax.

At the same time, while Part I is nicely poetic, it desperately [needs citation], as well as an editor who knows how to spell muscle names and types of bodywork. The statement that the psoas only contracts eccentrically is simply false. (More information at wikipedia’s psoas article.)

Part II contains carefully described exploratory exercises to connect with and relax the psoas, illustrated with photographs of people with a diversity of body types.

I recommend this book to explore new ideas around internal awareness, as long as the first part is read as metaphorical. It is helpful to look at a good anatomy book such as Trail Guide to the Body to visualize the psoas muscle.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Healing Back Pain” by John E. Sarno, MD

July 10, 2014 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: The Mind-Body Connection

Recommended to me by: Amy Bennett

What Dr. Sarno tells his TMS patients:

Resume physical activity. It won’t hurt you.
Talk to your brain: tell it you won’t take it anymore.
Stop all physical treatments for your back—they may be blocking your recovery.

DON’T

Repress your anger or emotions—they can give you a pain in the back.
Think of yourself as being injured. Psychological conditioning contributes to ongoing back pain.
Be intimidated by back pain. You have the power to overcome it.

Dr. Sarno defines Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) as chronic pain in muscles and tendons of the back, neck, buttocks, and limbs. He asserts that most back pain is not caused by muscle strain or ruptured disks or past car accidents, but rather by the brain depriving an area of sufficient oxygen for the purpose of distraction from anger or other unpalatable emotions.

The book describes his theory and includes many case histories of people who fully recovered from debilitating pain once they understood that it was caused by repressing emotions. In Dr. Sarno’s experience, most people improve simply by achieving that understanding.

Unfortunately, the book doesn’t contain any suggestions for other ways to deal with emotions, although it does strongly imply that acknowledging them and setting clear boundaries can be helpful.

I think the mechanism is slightly different, tension and pain as a result of suppressing emotions rather than as a subconscious distraction. I still highly recommend this book for a refreshing perspective on chronic pain.

Available at bookshop.org.