The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.
—- Peter A. Levine
For many of us, we are aware of much within and around us; even if we are unable to articulate how we know what is happening, where to go, whether to hurry up or take it slow -- each of us knows -- somehow. That is our nature as sentient beings. Our instincts are gifts. Our senses are worker bees of the nervous system. Our breath is a conduit of life that is with us until the body’s end.
What about trauma. . .
Trauma can be simple. It can be complex. It accumulates. It creates pain. It interferes with life. Trauma can be a shock that leads to laughter once we get to the other side. Whether the pain of trauma is in the body, the heart, the spirit, the mind, it is something that requires attention. When we listen to the pain of trauma as a voice from within, it is a tone in the song of healing.
When corrupted by trauma, the gift of our inherent healing capacity is obstructed. The benefit of our inner knowing is obstructed. Choices are not trusted.
Fortunately, we are resilient and adaptable creatures. Our most basic drive is to live. Every instinctual or unconscious choice we make tends to be in the furtherance of life.
We are possessed with unique resource; resource meaning, whatever it is that has helped us survive so far. Some resource, while helpful to our survival, may be maladaptive. But our deepest resource is pure and dependable, starting with our felt sense.
The more able we are to connect with our purest resource, the more we support the shift out of survival modem into thriving mode. In thriving mode, there is a grounding sense of an expanded heart. As the heart expands, it supports the embodiment of sacred action; sacred action is love in action. An expanded heart allows for the capacity to hold the experience of life’s dualities that exist concurrently: pain/pleasure, suffering,/celebrating, damning/exhalting, etc. It allows us to do the work that needs to be done in the moment.