Trauma, Awareness, and Acceptance

Trauma, Awareness, and Acceptance

Trauma and the Nervous System

Last week, we talked about how trauma changes the nervous system and identified the different ‘states’ our nervous system can be in.

This week we will work with how to know where you are at any given moment.

Our nervous system changes moment by moment. You could be in sympathetic overdrive one moment and then parasympathetic freeze in the next moment.

You could be grounded with a balanced nervous system in one moment and in sympathetic overdrive the next.

The nervous system isn’t static. It changes from moment to moment.

States of the nervous system

Sympathetic Activation

In this state the sympathetic nervous system is activated. The overriding emotion is fear or anger. Your instinctive reaction is to run away or fight. You are mobilized; your survival energy kicks in. You feel like you need some kind of action to be safe.

The perception here is one of danger. We’re alarmed. We’re hyper vigilant. There’s a sense of separation, where we’re cut off from others. We are looking and listening for danger.

This gives rise to ongoing anxiety, panic attacks. Angry outbursts. An ongoing feeling of anger. Being in self protective mode. We can’t rest or relax. Insomnia is frequent.

You may be driven to be active all the time, unconsciously trying to keep yourself safe.

What are other signs that you become aware of, that are unique to you? We are all different and unique.

Parasympathetic Activation

The body puts you into a state of freeze. You are immobilized.  You shut down. You are locked into a hypo arousal state. You become fearful of everything with an inability to respond or react. If your parasympathetic nervous system is engaged you will feel lethargic, exhausted, no energy, overwhelmed, dead, sleepy, disengaged, spacey, ungrounded. Brain fog.

You don’t have the energy to fight or flight. You may feel as if you are floating. You are untethered. A sense of me versus you, us versus them. You we have a sense of separation, cut off from others. Disconnected.

What are other signs that you become aware of, that are unique to you?

Regulated Nervous System – Ventral State

A healthy nervous system regulates our experience. Our body can gear up for activity and gear down for rest and relaxation. And we can easily switch from being geared up to gearing down. In a healthy, balanced nervous system, we experience a sense of inner calm, clarity, compassion and confidence.

 

The goal isn’t to always be in the same state.

As we move through life, we will experience all of these states. We naturally move through the states. That is normal and healthy. The problem arises when we get stuck in sympathetic arousal or parasympathetic freeze, or a combination of the two. We don’t have access to the ventral state.

Often, shame creeps in. Self judgment arises. We feel like we need to be more in control. We shouldn’t get angry. We should have more energy. We shouldn’t be depressed or anxious. But we are.

But remember, these states are your nervous systems way of trying to protect you and keep you safe. They are automatic reactions over which you have no control.

Compassion is necessary. Let yourself off the hook.

There is a way out.

 

Awareness and acceptance.

Last week, you were introduced to a simple breathing exercise. To let the out breath be twice as long as the in breath. Regular practice will help to bring you into a Ventral State, which will become stronger over time

This week, we will become more aware of our states. And holding yourself with compassion and acceptance. Becoming aware of your states, is an essential part of healing.

 

For this week.

This week, focus on watching your experience. Noticing when you are in sympathetic arousal, parasympathetic freeze or Ventral – regulated. Here are some things to watch for.

  • Do you stay in one state most of the time?
  • Do you move between states? How often?
  • Do you ever experience Ventral – regulated?
  • What state is dominate in your experience?
  • Are there triggers that will throw you into a fight or flight or freeze state?
  • What are they?
  • Do you judge yourself?
  • Do you feel ashamed?

You might want to pause a few times during the day and just ask yourself, “what state am I in”. When you wake up in the morning, what state are you in? When you prepare for bed, what state are you in?

Notice if self judgment or shame arises.

Place you hand on the center of your chest. As you hold the hand there, breath in for two counts and out for two counts. Notice what happens.

Give this a try this week and let me know how it works. You can use my contact page or message me in Facebook.

 

May you be aware, 💗Bindu

Coming Soon

Fibromyalgia – Trauma – Fight, Flight or Freeze

Fibromyalgia – Trauma – Fight, Flight or Freeze

Trauma and the Nervous System

When you have experienced a trauma, your nervous system changes.

A healthy nervous system regulates our experience.  Our body can gear up for activity and gear down for rest and relaxation.  And we can easily switch from being geared up to gearing down.  In a healthy, balanced nervous system, we experience a sense of inner calm, clarity, compassion and confidence.

When we experience a trauma, our nervous system gears up to protect us.  It prepares us to either fight the threat  or to run to safety.    Until the body can express and release these energies the nervous system stays in fight or flight mode.  You become locked in to a hyper state of awareness.  If your sympathetic nervous system is engaged, you will feel anxious, angry or both. Panic attacks are a result of the sympathetic nervous system being activated.

If the threat is ongoing or so strong that you become overwhelmed, the body puts you into a state of freeze.  You are immobilized.   You shut down.  You are locked into a hypo arousal state.  You become locked up and fearful of everything with an inability to respond or react.  If your parasympathetic nervous system is engaged you will feel lethargic, exhausted, no energy, overwhelmed, dead, sleepy, disengaged, spacy, ungrounded. 

Many who survive a trauma may move back and forth between the hyper arousal state and the hypo arousal state.  And may or may not have the ability to access or stay in the “normal” state which can move between gearing up and gearing down as the situation required.

The trauma could be an accident or traumatic experience as an adult. Or abuse, neglect, loss or co-dependency as a child. It can be a seemingly harmless negative life experience at any age. What determines whether it is a trauma is how it impacts us. Given what we as a planet have gone through in the past three year, many many people have been traumatized. And that builds upon what trauma existed prior to that. Not a pretty picture.

From what I am learning is that fibromyalgia, is one of the illnesses that studies connect with trauma. This validates my experience in working with fibromyalgia. Trauma is almost always involved.

 

How to release trauma?

This is the million dollar question.

The trauma is created when the body is unable to release the physical energies that were engaged when the trauma happened. If your body geared up to run or fight and it doesn’t get to release those energies, then the energies stay trapped in the body. Or if your body was in a freeze state, those energies stay trapped until they can move out of the body.

In future emails, I’ll be sharing simple tips to help release these energies from the body.

I’ll also be including what I am learning in my upcoming programs in a more in depth way. Being in a community of people with the same focus can be very helpful in healing trauma.

  • Connect to Your Calm Inner Presence
  • An Introduction to the Integrative Wholeness Experience

I have a few pieces to put in to place before I can launch. But stay tuned. Coming soon.

 

Tip number one

We want to start by calming the nervous system. Begin by watching your breath. Then make the exhalation twice as long as the inhalation. So, you might inhale for 2 counts and exhale for 4 counts. That is it. This is said to help the nervous system move towards balance.

Give this a try this week and let me know how it works. You can reply to this email or message me in Facebook.

 

May you heal, 💗Bindu

Coming Soon

The Fibromyalgia Matrix

The Fibromyalgia Matrix

When I first learned about fibromyalgia, I was excited . . . and then disappointed.

After 20 years of suffering, there was a name for what was going on with me. I thought that meant that it could be cured. I was sorely disappointed. I found that just because there was a name for what was wrong with me, didn’t mean that anyone knew how to heal it. 

I wanted to be healthy.

So, I pulled up my bootstraps and began applying what I had learned in my explorations of holistic health and consulted with holistic practitioners. By that time, I had given up on medical doctors as they had nothing to offer me that made any significant difference. In pulling it all together, I came to a place where I could manage my symptoms, but not make any real progress on completely eliminating them.  I wanted more. I wanted to be healthy and not live within the limitations of having fibromyalgia. I felt like I was living in a box and had to carefully manage my life to maintain a manageable level of pain and fatigue.  

 

Managing my symptoms wasn’t enough.

My search continued. I slowly began unraveling the underlying causes of my dis-ease.  Piece by piece, I began to resolve physical, mental, emotional, expression and spiritual imbalances that were keeping my stuck, unhappy and sick.   Realizing that there was not one thing that would fix or heal what was wrong with me, I coined the term the Fibromyalgia Matrix. 

 

Fibromyalgia Matrixtm

The Fibromyalgia Matrix is the interweaving and interconnected physical, emotional, mental, energetic and spiritual imbalances that underlies the experience of fibromyalgia. Each person’s matrix is unique to them, just like a fingerprint is unique. The Fibromyalgia Matrix creates chaos physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically. No foundation, no stability, impaired function, chaos, nothing to stand or build on. Sound familiar? 

 

Recovery from fibromyalgia! 

Recovery from fibromyalgia is a process of identifying and resolving these imbalances. It is quite like putting a puzzle together. You find the right pieces and put them together in the right sequence. Out of chaos comes order and improved function. As the pieces of the puzzle are found and put together, symptoms go away, health emerges, and peace is restored.  

Rather than chase symptoms, we find and resolve the underlying imbalances. That is the path to creating true health on all levels. 

 

The 8 fold process 

By moving through the 8-fold process I spoke about last week, we can unravel the Fibromyalgia Matrix, and progressively rebuild our health, reclaim our life, rediscover our joy and align with our purpose.   True health is much more than the elimination of physical symptoms. It is embracing the totality of who we are, body, mind, emotions, energy and spirit with love and compassion and reclaiming our uniqueness and our gifts and living successfully, powerfully and joyfully in the world. 

 

An Introduction to the Integrative Wholeness Experience to the Rescue!

That my friends, is what I am about. Are you ready to join me in this grand adventure? I hope so. That is why I am launching the Introduction to the Integrative Wholeness Experience next month. In this program, we can come together to heal individually and collectively. I’m excited about this. I hope you are too.  

Stay tuned, look for more information about the Integrative Wholeness Experience. 

May you be whole, 💕Bindu 


Coming Soon!  Stay tuned for details.

What if?  A new perspective on Fibromyalgia

What if? A new perspective on Fibromyalgia

Consider, for a moment, the possibility that fibromyalgia is a phase or stage in your life that you can move beyond. What if fibromyalgia is a wake up call; your spirit’s way of getting your attention to move you beyond all that holds you back in life to become the person you were destined to be?

What if life is a process of Integrative Wholeness™, that it is time for you to move into the highest expression of who you really are step by step?

What if true healing deals with more than just alleviating the physical symptoms, but that you are composed of separate dimensions – physical, emotional, mental, expression, spiritual and energetic – and your mission is to balance and integrate each of these dimensions back into a whole? What then?

The Integrative Wholeness™ Experience is an 8 fold process designed to empower you in this process of healing, transformation and evolution. In the Integrative Wholeness™ Experience, each dimension of your being is addressed, balanced and integrated into the whole. The result is improved physical health, greater emotional stability, improved mental clarity and focus, an internal sense of well-being, increased ability to manifest your dreams and desires, a greater sense of purpose, and a highly tuned internal compass to guide you in your life. 

  • Heal the Heart (emotional)
  • Balance the Body (physical)
  • Harness the Mind (mental)
  • Enhance Your Expression (relationships, career, finances, and passions/hobbies)
  • Reconnect to Spirit (spiritual)
  • Strengthen Your Energy (energetic)
  • Reawaken Your Innate Intelligence
  • Align with Your Core Values

My Experience

My experience with fibromyalgia, led me on a journey to heal my body. In the process, I discovered healing my physical body, included much more that I expected. I discovered traumas that I wasn’t even aware of. The impact of which were not only undermining my physical health, but my emotional health.

I spent many years walking a fine line between sanity and insanity. Dealing with panic attacks, ongoing anxiety, being easily triggered into rage or terror. I was severely depressed as well. My self esteem was non-existent. I was a people pleaser and felt like nothing I ever did was good enough. I became a work-a-holic and a perfectionist to cover up my deep sense of unworthiness.

I began with taking care of my body. Eating better, exercising, getting rest.

I worked with healing my imbalanced emotions and gradually unwound my traumas.

I had to harness and retrain my mind out of a persistent negative view of life to a healthy and optimistic perspective.

I discovered a spiritual perspective that helped me to accept life as it was, harvest the lessons it had for me and discover a sense of calmness, deep within.

I learned to listen to and trust my body and my intuition and allowed it to guide me in my life.

I learned how to interact with others in a harmonious way. I identified my core values and began to live more in alignment with them. I had to forge my own path in the world, that was unique to me.

I recreated myself. It was worth the effort.

 

The Integrative Wholeness Experience.

Out of my experience, I have created a course call The Introduction to the Integrative Wholeness Experience. I will be launching it in the next month or so.

I look forward to sharing this with you. Stay tuned for more information.

 

May you find health and inner peace, ❤️Bindu

The Power of Kindness

The Power of Kindness

The Power of Kindness 

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” – Henry James

Can you remember the last time somebody was kind to you? Or when you were kind to someone else? Do you remember their reaction?

Kindness leaves a lasting impression on both the user and the experiencer.

Do you think of kindness during your daily routine?  Do you realize the profound impact small acts of kindness have on yourselves the world around you?  Kindness is sometimes underrated and forgotten. 

In this fast-paced world, kindness and compassion sometimes takes a back seat. Selfies, self-interest and interacting through the online world can keep us from being kind and creating a true heart connection with those we interact with.

An yet, I see acts of kindness increasing.  With the increasing stress on our planet, it seems to me that many are becoming more kind.  We stand by each other.  I see more and more people standing up for community and treating others with respect and kindness.  

Kindness is one of the essentials to our existence. From birth we are nurtured in kindness. Therefore, kindness is a part of our DNA. 

What is kindness, anyway?

According to Psychology Today, “Kindness means a behavioral response of compassion and actions that are selfless; or a mindset that places compassion for others before one’s own interests.”

Kindness is the ways both big and small that we express compassion, concern, consideration and care for ourselves and others. Kindness transcends race, religion, social class and language barriers.

Being kind has a big impact on the world around us and on ourselves in ways that most don’t realize. It has many benefits including increasing our happiness and helping us have a healthy heart.

You probably don’t realize you’re performing many kindnesses every day. Simple things like smiling and greeting others in a friendly way, complimenting someone about their hair, clothes, laugh or something they do are acts of kindness.

Helping someone in some way, opening a door or saying thank you, please or excuse me are kind acts. It shows kindness when you don’t gossip, find fault in others or make negative judgments either.

This Week’s Contemplation: 

This week, pay more attention to the role of kindness in your life.  Ask yourself the following questions.  Remember that there is not right or wrong.  This is simply an exercise in awareness.  

  1. What does kindness mean to you?
  2. Do others treat you with kindness? 
  3. Do you treat others with kindness? 
  4. How do you see that in your life?   

By contemplating these questions, you will be increasing the awareness of kindness in your life.  Again, there is no right or wrong.  This is an exercise in awareness.   

May your life be filled with kindness, 💗Bindu