I wanted to introduce you to an amazing healing resource which appears on a page of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM). ‘The CMBM was founded in 1991 by James S. Gordon, M.D., a Harvard-educated professor of psychiatry and family medicine at Georgetown University Medical School and former chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, under Presidents Clinton and G.W. Bush. ‘
Here is how the resources are introduced:
‘Trauma – injury to the mind, body, spirit – comes to us all.
Our initial responses to trauma are healthy and designed to preserve us. First, we seek out connection and comfort; we call and look for help. When safety and reassurance are unavailable, we experience the fight- or- flight response. When fight or flight and the stress response can’t deal with an overwhelming and inescapable threat, a last- ditch survival mechanism, the “freeze” response, takes over.
Fight-or-flight is a life-saving response. When prolonged, however, we become agitated and hyper-vigilant; we feel powerless, grow angry with little or no provocation; we cannot concentrate or relax into a sleep that may be filled with nightmares of what we’ve suffered or might again undergo. When we freeze, our body collapses or grows rigid, and our emotional numbness may make us pull away from those to whom we’ve been close. We’re unable to find relief by sharing our pain with them.
The video modules here, and the comprehensive program in pages of Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing, directly address trauma-induced biological damage and its psychological consequences. The techniques you’ll learn are the antidotes to the fight- or- flight, stress, and freeze responses. They reestablish broken brain connections and promote the healthy integration of thoughts and feelings. They revive functions that have been compromised – memory, focus, self-awareness, judgment, emotional intelligence, and compassion. They will free you from the loop of hopeless, self-defeating thoughts that bind you to trauma.
The Transformation will help you discover hidden resources of physical and mental energy and hope, as well as your capacity to imagine and make use of perspectives and solutions that may have previously been unthinkable. You may also discover the treasure of meaning and purpose, and a love for others and yourself that will warm and brighten all the moments of your life.’
- Meditation: Creating Relaxed, Moment to Moment Awareness: Shaking and Dancing (3 videos by Jim Gordon)
- Drawings: Mobilizing Our Imagination (3)
- Guided Imagery: Accessing Our Inner Knowing (2)
- Dialogue with a Symptom: Writing Spontaneously to Understand and Resolve Problems (3)
- Mindful Eating: Travelling the Royal Road to a Healthy and Delicious Diet (3)
- Body Scan: Embracing the Wisdom that Lives Inside of Us (3)
- Self-Care Skills Plan: Putting it all Together (1)
Why not try these exercises. They are great! And check out James Gordon’s book Transforming Trauma: Discovering wholeness and healing after trauma.
I love the following self-care resource. James Gordon says of it: Shaking and Dancing, an “expressive meditation,” uses intense, disruptive effort and free movement to help us shed stress and tension and bring up and release emotion. Shaking and Dancing uses activity to bring us to a place of relaxation, balance, and acceptance that is similar to the one we find when we do Soft Belly.