--Moshe Feldenkrais, The Potent Self

This is a page of affirmation and support for all of us who are survivors: survivors of war, catastrophe, crime, trauma, abuse, cruel birth families, and other life changing circumstances.

I know a lot about trauma from first hand experience of a highly conflicted family system as well as inherited generational trauma from the experiences of my parents. When I happen to see a clip from a TV show like Jerry Springer, I do not laugh--not only because this stuff does in fact happen in families, but also because I now know that the effects of trauma continue to impact children well into adulthood and into successive generations if help is not provided.

Many of my clients use Feldenkrais as a complementary approach to emotional healing in psychotherapy. People who have experienced trauma can learn how to reduce stress, improve negative self-image, and create more awareness of their somatic patterns around depression, anxiety, and other difficulties. Embodiment is a powerful tool for positive change. Body and mind are systemically interwoven within our brains--which is slowly becoming a commonly accepted idea among health professionals in our culture. The work of Bessel Van Der Kolk, in particular, and Peter Levine have opened the doors for the science and application of body-centered approaches to healing from trauma. The work of Esther Sternberg, a prominent NIH researcher, demonstrates clearly the relationship between stress and physical health via hormone activity. Stress does, indeed, make you sick.

When a person has a pervasive or chronic physical difficulty that cannot be traced to a structural problem, the natural effects of aging, illness, or genetic causes, these difficulties are sometimes linked to feeling states that developed in response to traumatic events. These events may have happened within the context of intimate relationships, such as a long-term partnership or family of origin, or may have arisen as the result of accidents, crime, the effects of war or extensive medical procedures, or natural disasters.

Traumatic events can lead the person experiencing them to manifest patterns of holding and moving the body in restricted ways to protect the felt and sensed self from any "reminder" of the traumatic event or the psychological stress that resulted. If there is fear that the emotions involved (anger, sadness, helplessness, a sense of loss of identity) are too strong to safely contain, the body will often take on the function of bracing or becoming rigid in order to "contain" the emotions so that they don't "spill out". What's important to remember in these circumstances is that the pain and rigidity serve a purpose which is essentially self-protective. You wouldn't want to rip a turtle's shell off, nor would you want to suddenly dismantle all of the defenses that have kept you alive to this very day. It takes time and patience to move through this process in the best way, but believe me--it's worth it.

I am a big believer in psychotherapy--I am in school earning a degree in counseling, and have benefited greatly from therapeutic help. At the same time, I also think that it can be very difficult to "think" feeling different, because feeling is feeling--it contains far more information than the simply cognitive. As such, words alone sometimes do not go directly to the heart of our experience. If we incorporate our bodies into whatever approach we take to our healing, it amps the process up. There is more movement--both literally and figuratively.

If we don't know what we feel, this does not mean that we don't have feelings. We do. We can find those wordless feelings, learn to listen to them, and use them to bring our lives back into a sense of place and a feeling of peace--and a feeling of confidence that no matter what arises, we have resources to work with it. That is what "integration" means, at least to me.

All feelings originally arise in the body. Why is it called a "feeling"? It's because you experience physical reactions to a situation prior to having cognitive thoughts about it. You could call "feeling" the preverbal, bodily experience before a label gets slapped onto it. You feel something--then your brain thinks about it and gives it a name--angry, mad, sad, scared, happy, etc. All of this happens very quickly, of course, but that's how it works. In PTSD, your cognitive mind might not even be able to understand or cogently think about what's happening until later on. But you have a larger awareness that you can tap into, one that doesn't need to "know" in order to be innately good, innately healing, and powerful in keeping you safe.

Children and people under extreme stress may not have words to describe what they are experiencing. But they are definitely experiencing something--of that we can be certain. I've noticed time and again that trauma survivors, in particular, tend to try to "think through" feelings because our actual feelings are overwhelming or are being thought of as overwhelming--which is the same thing to the brain. It's one way of dealing with stress--one that probably saved us at a significant point in time--but it doesn't work that well long term. In order to feel more whole, we have to get into a relationship with our bodies--the same bodies that suffered the hurt. That's not easy. It takes a lot of courage. It also takes a lot of courage to choose softer, gentler, deeper ways of knowing in a culture that tends to go for extremes in things like sensation and appearance. In choosing healers to work with, I encourage you to find those who you feel possess the capacity and love for deep listening, reflection, change, and clarity.

There are times when it is clear that someone I am working with is suffering from emotional as well as physical pain, and in these situations I will recommend that a psychotherapeutic relationship be formed as part of the healing process. I know a number of excellent, caring psychotherapists, and I am happy to share their information with you.

Many people don't know that it is extremely common for trauma survivors not to talk about their experiences and to hide them from their families and children. They not only fear the memories but also the negative effects of sharing their experiences with people who have not been down the same road. It is very difficult for survivors to find a safe environment in which they can integrate what has happened to them--all too often, they feel they must hide and split off their journey in order to get along in a society that seems to care more about TV and shopping and making nice than the real cost to human beings of tragedy.

Children and spouses of survivors can also develop secondary trauma, which resembles post-traumatic stress--nightmares, inexplicable fears, depression, anxiety, and so forth. As a child, I remember continually being afraid that armed men would come and take my family away, even though I had never seen such a thing happen. I had dreams and fears that I have since learned are directly related to traumas my parents suffered, even though these have never been talked about openly in my family. The book "Children of the Holocaust" by Helen Epstein is a powerful and deeply moving series of interviews with the adult children of Holocaust survivors. When I read this book, I was stunned to find how closely the experiences of these children of survivors mirrored my own.

In addition to secondary trauma, I went through several tragic events in my own life that amplified my PTSD symptoms for a number of years. For a long time I didn't know what was wrong with me; I just knew that I had changed, seemingly into someone else I didn't recognize. It was a long journey back to health, which took some years to accomplish.

As a survivor who has personally recovered health and wholeness and continued my life--going back to graduate school, being in a wonderful relationship--the single most important thing I feel I can say about PTSD (and depression, and anger, and anxiety--you pick your personal demon) is this. Write it in huge letters and post it wherever you can see it:

This feeling is not all of who you are. It is not who you really are.

Depression--anxiety--anger--these are not our true selves. These are conditions, afflictions. They are clouds that roll in and cover up the best parts of ourselves. If the cloud is dark enough and hangs around for a while, we start to think, mistakenly, that this cloud is who we are--that we can only hope to live in its shadow the rest of our lives and nothing better. Regrettably, there are people who unwittingly propagate this viewpoint by (either subtly or overtly) regarding survivors as permanent victims who will never be able to recover. And there are survivors who choose to be victims, believing they can do no better.

I, for one, believe we can do better. I've done it myself; I've worked with dozens of people who have, and still more who are well on their way. We don't know how far each particular person has to go, but there is no question that we can be on a road toward healing. It's easy to discourage ourselves by trying to compare who we are today with who we were before, but if that's what we are using to measure success, there's no chance of happiness for anyone. If you don't believe me, just look at all the celebrities in Hollywood!

I don't think there's a standard yardstick for health. We have to define it for ourselves, and it changes as we heal. We shouldn't expect to become the same people we were before things happened. That won't be the case. It won't be the case for people who haven't survived trauma, either. You can't become who you were five or 10 years ago, or five or 10 minutes ago, for that matter. You can't go back--only forward. That's just human life, and it's that way for every single person on this planet. That said, I don't believe that we have to live forever in the shadow of a condition. The rages, the tears, the overwhelmingly frightening and negative thoughts and feelings--these things are not our true nature. They are a storm cloud. OK, sometimes a BIG storm cloud. I mean, I get this--I've been there.

Healing takes a lot of work. You have to be dedicated and you have to mean it. You sometimes have to go down unusual paths to get what you need. Sometimes you have to trust people to be able to guide you even if you're not sure they can help you. For example, I went through psychoanalysis while simultaneously doing rigorous Buddhist practice under the guidance of a Tibetan teacher and studying the Feldenkrais work. Talk about a weird combination of modalities, but I was determined to stop the cycle. And, what do you know, it worked. It took about four years of these in-depth processes to get rid of most of my symptoms.

I chose to work incredibly hard for several years, spending a whole lot of money and time, in order to make my best shot at living a contented life rather than being afraid to go outside because the world is a scary place. (I know what living like that looks like already; I grew up with it.) One of the most important things I learned during that four years is this: As long as I got mileage out of being a victim, or I let others do so, I limited my chances of getting rid of my victimhood. I realized at some point that I couldn't be invested in the same stock that was bankrupting me emotionally. I became aware that certain people in my life were getting a sense of security out of thinking of me as a "broken" person. I call this the "sickness and drama cycle"--by turning to people who had a lot of sickness and drama themselves, I was unable to find the support I needed to heal from my own. When I finally began to break through and prove irrefutably that I was anything but broken, what a revelation that was--and a lot of those relationships ended. It was sad, but necessary. You can't get blood from a stone--and you can't get help with healing from those who have not healed. A simple enough truth, but one it took a long time to understand and internalize!

Most of the trauma survivors who come to see me have about the same amount of determination I did--and, often, just about as little information as I did, which is why I'm glad to help. Ironically enough, the real payoff of healing is, comparatively, a kind of gentle boredom--a life without a lot of drama. Contentment, in its genuine form, is a sweet and rather unspectacular thing. This can take some getting used to.

If trauma is in your personal picture, I feel strongly that you need to be engaged in ongoing psychotherapy with someone you like and trust while working with me. There are wonderful people I can, and will, refer you to for these services. The things you learn through Feldenkrais can be a powerful support for healing and for change. Yes, things can change. It takes time and patience and a lot of love. But they can, and do.

You're alive. You may not know how to walk the next step, but there are people out here who can help you. You're not alone, though you may feel that way much of the time. The part of you that remains unbroken and courageous is what has you reading this page right now. Obviously, no matter how bad you feel, you haven't completely given it all up and just decided to drink a case of 40/40 instead, have you now?

Even if you have a hard time believing in this goodness and fight inside of you--it's there, just as the sun rose today whether you thought it was going to or not. Fortunately, we are not powerful enough to keep the sun from rising--and, similarly, we are not powerful enough to keep the innate qualities of light and courage inside of us from shining forth. We can be thankful for that, don't you think?