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Dr. Eva Detko is a natural healthcare practitioner, speaker, and author of "The Sovereign Health Solution: Heal the Psycho-energetic Root Causes of Chronic Illness". She has studied natural medicine and the human mind for 23 years. Dr. Eva successfully recovered from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and reversed Hashimoto's thyroiditis. She... Read More
- Understand the criteria that lead to trauma encoding and the complex neurochemical processes that contribute to it
- Gather knowledge on the role of the amygdala in trauma encoding and its responses
- Learn how depotentiation techniques can be employed to manage and potentially alleviate the impacts of trauma on the amygdala
Related Topics
Amygdala, Attachment Trauma, Biochemical Imbalances, Biology Of Trauma, Chronic Illness, Copper Excess, Depotentiation Techniques, Dopamine, Gaba, Glutamate, Intergenerational Trauma, Mental Health, Methylation Imbalances, Nervous System, Neurochemical Reaction, Neurons, Nlp, Perilla Chia, Resilience Building, Serotonin, Somatic Exercise, Transactional Analysis, Trauma, Trauma Healing, Vagus NerveAimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
Trauma is stored in the nervous system. And so that’s where we need to go in order to start to heal it. I’m your host for the summit, Dr. Aimie, and we are doing the Biology of Trauma Summit 3.0, talking about the trauma disease connection. What is that mechanism? How does trauma become our health symptoms, conditions and diagnoses, and what can we do about it? I’m so excited to bring you this interview because somatic work and we’re going to talk about hastening techniques, which is a form of somatic work. Somatic work has been life changing for me personally and for all of those who come through my 21 day journey. And there’s a reason why, even though I’m a medical physician, I now start every one on a 21 day journey into their nervous system. You need to become the expert of your nervous system. You need to know it so well. It’s like knowing the streets in your city. You need to know how to come back home. If you go out, you need to become an expert and know how to navigate the streets of your nervous system to be able to come back home to yourself. And somatic work allows you to do that. And so that’s why I start. And here’s the incredible thing. When we start with somatic work, it already changes our physiology, our biology.
And as I’ve started to study and collect data on those who are going through my 21 day training program, it’s been wonderful to see this data 26% decrease in daily physical pain, 28% decrease in GI symptoms, 28% decrease in sleep issues, 30% decrease in anxiety, 30% decrease in depression and this is just with a short somatic exercise every day for 21 days. Yes, we do it every day because that’s how we form a new habit. We form new pathways in our nervous system. We have to be consistent about it. And I teach all of that and more in the 21 day journey, start to teach you the principles of your body, of your nervous system, so that you can become the expert in that you can navigate those streets and the power of that somatic work and actually being able to have this kind of effect on people. This is better than a pill. This is better than any other treatment for a specific diagnosis, because we’re not looking at a diagnosis. We’re just saying, hey, you have an autonomic nervous system. It’s a bit out of control. You can tell that by the thoughts that you have, by the reactions that you have, you either you’re go, go, go or you’re in shut down. Those are both reasons to become the expert in your nervous system and get that sense of self-management, internal peace, safety, what I call calm aliveness. You’re calm, but yet you’re not, like, exhausted and calm. You’re calm and very alive. This is the value of somatic work.
And we’re going to be talking about a form of somatic work today. And in this interview, we’re talking about how it then changes the brain. And with those of you who experience anxiety, I want to share some insights we’re going to be exploring in this interview because we’re going to go into some of the neurotransmitters, glutamate, GABA, serotonin, dopamine. And it’s important for you to understand the basics of it and why some of those maybe are for you. And when I was, I would say the somatic work will not be all that you need. You will need some biology work. And that’s why we talk about the biology of trauma, because you will need some biology work. And I want to bring your attention to what I have seen as the three most common biochemical imbalances that people with stored trauma in their body have. And each of these have changes on the brain chemistry, these neurotransmitters that I just mentioned. Meaning what does that mean for you? Meaning that you will have a baseline anxiety and greater tendency for anxiety just because you have one of these. Or if, like me, you have all of them, all three of the biochemical imbalances. It’s a simple, easy test. Many people come and see one of my biology trauma health coaches just to get this testing, just to see because it can cause anxiety, it can cause depression. But most important, I guess, is what it causes the the unsettling than the agitation and the rawness in our nervous system, which is where trauma is stored. And so that is why those with stored trauma in the body have a higher tendency in prevalence of these three biochemical imbalances than those who do not. Now, how can you find those biochemical imbalances?
Let me share where you can find them. If you go to my website, traumahealingaccelerated.com and you scroll down to the resources section. So here is the website, my website traumahealingaccelerated.com and we’re here on the homepage and you scroll down, you’re going to come across a section titled Resources and here in the middle you will find the three most common biochemical imbalances. This is the guide that I created here for you. So you’re going to learn about methylation imbalances you specifically need to know about under methylation because it will increase your levels of glutamate and can decrease your levels of serotonin and dopamine, all three of which we are going to be talking about in this interview. So you need to know if you have that biochemical imbalances. We’re also going to be talking about copper, copper excess, the copper to zinc ratio, and then something called Perilla chia, which will cause other forms of anxiety through the copper will be through adrenaline. So you’ll have greater levels of adrenaline. And with the perilla create, you’re going to have the effect on your serotonin, dopamine and GABA. So as we go into this conversation, this interview, as we come across those neurotransmitters, I want you to remember this and come back to I need to come back and grab this guide on the three most chemical, common biochemical imbalances. Now, if you will come back up here to the top, this is where you would find where you can actually have a health coaching session with a biology of trauma health coach.
So here you can actually schedule a one on one health coaching session with a biology of trauma health coach. And so I look forward to supporting you in this as we look at the biology piece for you and what biochemical imbalances you might have that we can support so that your nervous system is not as raw. And with that, I’m so excited to bring in Dr. Eva Detko, and she has become a master on the vagus nerve. And so when we talk about this, I always like to bring her in. She is a natural health care practitioner, speaker, author of a bestselling author called The Sovereign Health Solution Field The Psycho Energetic Root Causes of Chronic Illness. And she has studied natural medicine and the human mind for 23 years, and she herself has successfully recovered from chronic fatigue as part of my story as well, and fibromyalgia and reversed Hashimoto’s over Titus and now helps others. So I’m so excited to bring her on. And with that, let’s jump into this interview on trauma being stored in the nervous system and what we can do about it even I love that we’re talking about hastening it is something that has come across my awareness many times. It’s very similar to some of the somatic experiencing practices that I do and have changed my life. So tell us, what are there all the different things that you have seen Heaven in actually help people with? I know it’s a long list. It’s a long list. And what are some of those things that evening helps people with?
Eva Detko, PhD
Yeah, it’s an excellent method. May I say that in all my years of working with trauma, it’s been my favorite for many reasons. One reason is that the results are truly permanent. Once you deal with something, that’s it. If you have to go through another traumatic experience in order for that encoding to then occur again. But once we deal with that trauma neurologically, it’s gone. And so in that sense, it’s really great. It’s also great because you can actually get results quite quickly if you’re dealing with something straightforward, like a phobia with straightforward phobia. Second, 15, 20 minutes and that’s it some. But somebody could have a phobia for 20, 30 years and then boom, in a very short space of time, like 15, 20 minute session, it can be gone. I have done that with people before. Obviously we can work with more complex things. So any amygdala based disorders, it can be worked. You can be used with PTSD, like I said, anxiety type issues, fears, phobias. But I also have to say any sort of somatic type things, you know, pain issues, those sort of things.
Personally, I work a lot with attachment trauma and even intergenerational trauma. And because of how happening can easily be combined with other modalities, I can literally use it for, for instance, resilience building. That’s an excellent way of using this method. If you maybe don’t want to go too deep, but you still want the benefit, you want to stimulate your vagus nerve, you really should get the relaxation response. This is really, really great. But then even if you have that complexity, like for instance with people with chronic illness like loads and loads of trauma, layered, lots of different emotional layers going on, we can use this in a different way. For instance, we can introduce transactional analysis into, we combine it with NLP, we can combine it with other things to kind of give us a more of a complete approach. So in that sense, I work with here evening to target anything and everything, to be honest, when it comes to emotional and mental health, well, technically speaking, what we’re doing here with happening is we target saying the amygdala, we talk targeting neurons on the surface on the of the lateral amygdala specifically. And so any issues that are to do with the amygdala, which is obviously a brain that modulates our behavior and emotional responses potentially can be addressed with happening.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
So how do we know that happening is addressing the amygdala and those memories that are stored in the amygdala and that amygdala activation? What is some of the science behind Haven in that we know that it’s actually working at that level for this trauma response.
Eva Detko, PhD
So. Well, the simplest sort of answer to this is because you’re going to feel it, you’re going to literally feel the change. So one of those things that we need to do with happening, we need to very briefly stimulate those receptors on the surface in the amygdala. We want them to come to the surface so that we can initiate the neurochemical reaction and then through that neurochemical reaction and the different chemicals that are involved, what we actually end up doing is those new those receptors are starting to disintegrate and they’re no longer are on the surface of all of the neurons, and that is what needs to be there in order for that cascade of trauma. I’m sure people are familiar when you have an encoded trauma and it’s unresolved and they think that even remotely resemble the circumstances around that original trauma can set you off. And suddenly there’s a cascade of, you know, you’ve got the Phoenix, you’ve got emotions, you’ve got your hormones, everything, neurotransmitters, everything, just sort of going on in the body. And before you know it, you have this reaction. It could be completely overblown because in a given situation, maybe it’s not called for, but because you just triggered that neurochemical cascade, you can’t help it before you know it.
Boom, you’re there and it’s happening. And you said something or did something that maybe you then regret doing or saying, right? And this is all to do with those receptors in the amygdala, right? So when you start to use the methods and you are happening, first of all, what you’re doing is to changing your brainwave activity or dominant brainwave activity. So during the trauma response, we can go quite high up in terms of our brainwave oscillations. We can hit the 100 hertz even higher than that. And with the happening the cracks here, sometimes they called Delta wave techniques because one thing that you doing by stimulating the receptors on the skin in those of the find places that we’re going to describe later and show later, what you’re doing is you kind of or you can say you’re tricking the brain in a way, too, because you you through those receptors, you acting directly on the brain and your brainwave activity starts to come down and lower and that you then inducing the state of dominant delta wave that that sort of relaxation that that comes with with relaxation and the whole body, the whole system just calms down. You can feel that right away. And when you’re working with trauma and you initially triggered that original trauma response, when you then start applying the haven, you know it’s working because then the next moment you’re trying to recall that event in the same way. It’s not actually having an effect on you.
So usually when somebody is dealing with something fairly activating, if I get them to connect with that emotionally or in their mind, they may obviously remember what it was like. But even if they come to that, as long as they can evoke that emotion that is connected to that regional trauma, they will get activated. They will get upset. We then scored that on the scale of 0 to 10 and immediately. And so we know keeping them in that state for any length of time. So like very, very brief activation to kind of undo that, you know, those receptors that kind of draw them out sort of thing and then create that the response starts to happen. But we applying the happening and immediately the response changes and then what if we then ask this person to tap into that trauma again? That just either won’t be able to do that, either won’t be able to recall what happened because that sometimes can happen. And it’s not about erasing the memory, but sometimes it’s just not that located anymore. But sending that emotional charge is gone. Yeah, the emotional charge. Because ultimately it’s not about the memory, it’s about the emotional charge that it carries. That’s what activates the part of flight, right? Of freeze.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
Yeah. Yeah. So and I’m glad that you’re bringing that fighter flight and freeze up because as we’re talking about the amygdala I’m already going into. And how would this then affect the sympathetic response? How would this affect the dorsal vagal response and the vagus nerve? So we’ve talked about the amygdala. Do we have any idea of the science behind how happening is actually changing the downstream sympathetic response or that freeze response?
Eva Detko, PhD
So when so in the let’s say that we start with that there is something happening, something traumatic. So let’s talk for a second about this, the moment of encoding. So in the moment of encoding, the thing is it’s just completely different. Neurochemistry from the moment of encoding to the moment of decoding. But essentially the steps are almost like backwards. So in the moment of encoding, what happens is, like we already said, the dominant brainwave oscillation is kind of wild shooting right up. And then what goes with that is this specific neurochemistry. And we have a lot of glutamate, release glutamate being the most abundant excitatory neurotransmitter. And then we have other chemicals present that we’ve got dopamine release, we’ve got cortisol release, we’ve called norepinephrine release and what goes with that? And then in that moment, people can already feel that because those names may not necessarily mean a lot to people. But when you in that situation and boom, you feel it. You feel it in your entire system. And so when we then use hey evening to to target that trauma to kind of deep, potent, deep potentiated, as we say, the amygdala by initiating the delta wave dominance, by applying the stroking, we also are initiating a different neurochemical sequence. And now we have oxytocin, we’ve got GABA, right? So, so literally boom. With that change, that’s what’s starting to flood into the system. And of course, if we then have things like serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, that’s when people will actually feel, oh, you know, everything is just calming down and the whole system is now put on a different path. And those chemicals are associated with risk just versus fight or flight, right? Whereas the glutamate and dopamine and just once I look at.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
The adrenaline ride, the adrenaline the.
Eva Detko, PhD
Course. Exactly. Yes, exactly. Cortisol nor epinephrine. Those are associated with the sympathetic nervous system response. So the crux of this is the delta waves. That’s the crux of it. I’ll tell way. So maybe that is going to be what’s going to in initiate that neurochemical, which then will be really putting the body and people at that point feel it. It’s activating now, arrest and digest and everything is starting to calm down. So and then it’s very, very quick. It can happen very, very quickly.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
So the main benefit of well, I should say not been a bit the main mechanism of the hastening techniques, if I’m understanding you correctly, is that it puts our brain into the delta waves.
Eva Detko, PhD
Yes.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
That’s the key there. It’s like it kind of flows from there. It activates the more of the ventral parasympathetic that rest and digests social engagement. But the mechanism of how it kind of does all of this, that main mechanism would be shifting our brain from a triggered place to a delta wave relaxed state, bringing on the oxytocin and the Gabba and allowing the deep potentiation of the amygdala during a trigger, correct?
Eva Detko, PhD
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yes. So and then of course what goes with that? You’re going to also when you first activate it. Of course there’s a whole lot of outflow from that, right? Because there’s cognitive, there is emotional, there is some of the sensory. So you can have thoughts and perceptions. You could have, you know, sweating and palpitations and all the things that people are only perfectly familiar with. You could have pain. And so then obviously when we the potentiate, the amygdala that is no trauma, will not cause that same outflow any more that that gets cut off.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
And so all of these somatic expressions of trauma, like the pain or like physical health issues, those are all a result and part of a trauma response in the body that shifting our brain to the delta of the wave will even help the physical somatic expressions of trauma.
Eva Detko, PhD
Yes, yes, yes. Certainly. Yeah.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
All right. So I’ve got some more questions, but I think that the audience is super curious now about like, okay, I’ve I’ve heard about Haven Ade, but what the heck is it like what?
Eva Detko, PhD
Right. Yeah, let’s.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
Let’s go into an example for you to show us. This is an example of haven in this.
Eva Detko, PhD
So this is a method I will just cite developed by Dr. Serrano, Ronald and Stephen RUDIN and Dr. Ron Arruda is an M.D., but he also has a PhD in organic chemistry. And it was really back in 2011 when he came across tapping that his curiosity was sparked by that, and he wanted to know the neuro scientific explanations for why tapping works. And for years and years he was digging and trying different things and really kind of went down a few sort of blind avenues, but eventually figured out that it was about the synaptic, the potentiation, and from that developed it was looking at it. So if we’re talking about touch, so we’re talking about this therapeutic touch, okay? And we want to apply this therapeutic touch in such a way that we can have this direct effect on the brain and the nervous system in the way that we have just described. And I do apologize that maybe at times kind of those are really quite actually complicated concepts. Okay. So some of this terminology is, you know, quite complicated. So I’m trying not to make it sound so completely boring and it’s going to go over people’s head. I’m trying to make it more relatable, but it’s not easy because those are complex concepts. But the bottom line is that the method is psycho sensory.
So it’s that touch that is stimulating the receptors on the skin and through that has this direct impact on our brain and nervous system and on the lateral amygdala and the receptors in the lot of lateral amygdala. So that’s in itself is really simple because when they then looked at some edges and various research to do with with that with regards where do we stimulate the receptors on which parts of the body to get them sort of maximum you know affect with the it so so then they identified three sites so those sites are face the Palms and also the outside of course. So your upper arm and in terms of applying the technique, the tempo so we sort of doing it in sort of like a sweep sort of motion like this. It doesn’t have to be, you know, we don’t have to try very hard. It’s really just is very delicate. It’s like washing your hands, washing your face or washing your hands, that sort of thing. And the tempo is not too fast not to sit on it, make it super slow, but you don’t want to be manic about it either. So just sort of be comfortable with how you sleep and then the inside of the hands, we will do it this way.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
And I have noticed that just as I just as I did this, I already had a deep, spontaneous breath, which is kind of what I’ve learned from my somatic experience in practices, that that’s my body’s way of telling me that I’m I’ve hit the mark and I’m shifting even more into that vagus parasympathetic state.
Eva Detko, PhD
Beautiful. I love it. I love it. And then the third one is going from the top of the arms to all the way to the elbow, then picking your hands up and always sleeping in that direction. Because coincidentally, we actually are stroking the triple warmer part of the triple wall meridian. So we don’t want to go up and down, up and down, sort of like it’s move activates, move activates. So we want to be doing this by picking the hands up and always stroking and as I like to.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
Do it over the clothes or would it be best to wear a sleeveless shirt and do skin to skin?
Eva Detko, PhD
So what we find is that with one layer, I have one layer of quite the thin top here. That’s fine. But if I had another layer than that, we obviously too much because I can still feel it now. I can still feel it and I know it has an effect. But yeah, you don’t want to obviously be overdressed for it. But yeah, one layer of thin clothing is fine.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
And how would a person know if they’re going too fast or too slow?
Eva Detko, PhD
So it’s really an individual thing and really this sort of tempo like I’m doing here, right? It’s more or less what you want if you want just to be a little bit faster or a little, little bit slower, that’s okay too. But if when you find is if you say doing something like a mantra, head affirmation or happening, I just do kind of relax a little bit to build resilience for building resilience. This is a really good one. We’re going to do this together in the moment. And what you find, it’s not even if you start a little bit faster because everything is slowing down and calming down, you’ll probably end up slowing down towards the end anyway, even if you start a little bit too fast.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
So the idea is to not try to have to do it perfect at first, to just start with what you can and it’ll kind of sort itself out as you start to sense or that feels a little too fast and even as it’s working, it’ll probably slow you down as you relax. And so just start with what you can do. Don’t think that you have to have everything perfect before you give this a try.
Eva Detko, PhD
Absolute knob. And remember that I can teach a child how to do it in a matter of minutes. And I have done and parents I work with very, very often. More often than not, they will teach the children. And don’t forget that you can use this in the moment. So if you’re going through a moment of anxiety or something, you know, you’re out and about and something happens and it’s irritating you or stressing you out. You can use it there. And then to calm down and just, you know, top back into, you know, because if you’re stressed, you can’t think clearly. So if you have a moment where you having an anxiety attack, everybody will be well familiar with this, that then suddenly you’re going to say the wrong things, do the wrong things. You just can’t think clearly right, because your prefrontal cortex is sort of not online in that time. And so this can be an excellent way to just do it. Just even if you don’t want to stroke your face because you’re in public, you don’t have to. You can just rub your hands. Nobody will know any better. And you can very quickly bring yourself into the state. And if you actually slow your breathing down as well, at the same time, boom, you very, very quickly get yourself to a state where you can actually make a rational decision and not regret that later. And so there are different sort of ways of using it. And certainly for building resilience, it’s an excellent tools. I really recommend that people try it out.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
And I feel like you’ve just kind of highlighted one of the initial points that you made about happening, which is that you can just incorporate it with other practices that you do. It doesn’t have to be all by itself. This is just another tool to add to your tool belt that you can use all of them together. You can use the breathing practices with the happening and it doesn’t have to be one or the other. So let’s go into this resilience building exercise. You’ve mentioned it a couple of times now, so I’m super excited and curious for this. And let’s move into this evening exercise wise for building resilience.
Eva Detko, PhD
So really, like I said, you know, a child can learn it and do it. And it’s just so simple. So the mechanics of it is simple. And in a simple way, you can still achieve a lot because of that neurochemistry we were talking about. But of course, it can then be just like exactly like you said, combined to the degree with other things. And then it enables you to target more and more complex issues. And then obviously you would at some point if you’re going to complex, you might may want to work with a practitioner, obviously, but you don’t have to for those simple, simple applications. You don’t need a practitioner. This is totally for you to kind of have a method, have a tool, make you more sovereign and just make you kind of take care of yourself or your child when you need to. Right. So because we have those three sides. Well, all I’m going to say is there is no sequence. So that’s one thing I didn’t say. So we’re just going to go through this together and you can close your eyes. You can have it open, have your eyes open to kind of if you if you’re still unsure what you’re doing just to have them open, take advantage of the mirror neurons by watching us on the screen.
And but basically, if you wanted to do it on your own, for instance, and you just wanted to just calm down and close your eyes, okay, that would be absolutely fine. Okay. But if you, for instance, maybe you want to do so for affirmations, you might want to do it in front of the mirror and actually be saying those affirming positive things to yourself, looking at your yourself in the eye. So that is a very, very good technique also for building self-worth. So we going to use either handsaw arms or face, and it’s really because there is an no sequence. It’s really up to everybody individually how many. There’s no like I have to stroke my face this many times and which there’s not nothing like that. So you can either skip one side completely or you can just focus on one side and tighten. It’s really up to you. Your individual situation will tell you. And it really what resonate is just just do what resonates. So actually you feel good. So I want to use like just very short mantras for this. You could go and do it with maybe just longer affirmations when you have entire statements and you just keep repeating those. But for the purposes of now, just just so we have a little go at it, you know, here, grab it together as a group, just start applying the happening talked. I’m just going to use some words that are well, very important, if not the most important when it comes to building resilience and also activating the vagus nerve. So what I’ve chosen here for today is safe, relaxed and calm, right? So really all I want to do with this is as you are applying the healing torch, just slowly, just come up, keep repeating, safe, relaxed, calm, safe, relaxed, calm. So you notice that kind of can be preceded by the words I am. So that’s that’s I’m not affirming safety. I’m relating this to myself. And really, I could be saying I am safe, I am relaxed, I am calm. I just cup this goes out.
And that’s why I’m saying safe, relaxed, calm. So that’s what you want to do you want to relate just to yourself. You want to really feel that you want to have your brain tap into what it is to be safe, relaxing, calm, because your brain is familiar with that from some other time. And the moment you keep saying over and over, safe, relaxed and calm, apart from the touch and the delta away and the neurochemistry, what you also doing is you prompting your brain to access the safety, right? You’ve got access what it’s like to be safe and relaxed and calm. So that’s why it’s really nice and powerful to do that. So just for a few more moments, it’s just too about safe, relaxed, safe, relaxed, calm, safe, relaxed, safe, relaxed, safe, relaxed, stay relaxed, safe, relaxed, calm, safe, relaxed, calm. So obviously you can by all means continue. We’ve got a time limit on this interview, but sometimes even if you really, really are activated by something, just a couple of minutes and you will start to feel that chemistry changing, and then, of course, immediately you’re starting to observe your body and your mind are feeling differently. You’re responding differently. How quickly this is going to work for you depends on a lot of things. It obviously on the situation, but it’s also depending on your history, right? Your history in terms of, you know, how many layers of traumas you may have. But it will. It will. This is simple biology. A key cannot not work once you start doing it. The connections are quite just like slow breathing, you know? It’s pure biology. You cannot not work. If you do it, it will work. But sometimes some pose like one person may feel like, okay, like literally starting to feel it right away. And then another person may need those three full minutes of consistently doing this to actually start to feel the difference. So I just wanted to say that obviously it’s going to be a bit of an individual thing, but it does work. You cannot not work, right?
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
Yeah. And thank you for voicing that because I have a lot of people who go through my 21 day journey, for example, and they they start doing these exercises, these somatic exercises, and they’re like, I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything. And I’m like, well, it’s sometimes it just takes more time, depending on how disconnected we have been from our body. And so it’s not that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s not that you’re doing it wrong. It’s not that you it’s not that these practices don’t work for you. It just can take longer depending on the relationship that you’ve had with your body and how shut down in fear and disconnected it has been. So just the practice, right? Just the practice without even necessarily having this fixed outcome of like this has to happen as a result of this and this amount of time just being able to say, I think that this might be helpful and being able to move into it. What I also love, Emma, is that this also helps us stay out of the story and when in the moment we have that trigger, it can be so common for us to go into the why is this happening? And you know, the analysis and being stuck in our head and being able to use this technique to just know like it’s not it’s not about that right now. Like right now my job is just to bring my body back into that safe, relaxed and calm state. The story does not matter right now. Right now, my job is to switch those brainwaves to delta waves, to turn off this emotional charge, this cycle of sequence that happens with the trauma response, and bring my body back to a safe, relaxed or safer, more relaxed and a more calm state rather than getting that getting caught up in our brains and in the story. So I love this about somatic work and happening.
Eva Detko, PhD
Yeah, absolutely. And it can really make you spiral okay in that moment when you stop those narratives, you can make things so and will it will make things so much worse. It can make you spiral down out of. And that’s when you feel out of control is because the ego, the mind came in and boom, you just start running, you know, chasing your tail and this and that and the other. And you start winding it up and winding it up. One, winding it up. That’s how you get a panic actually is because of that, right. So you could if you came right in the moment, you starting to feel anxious and boom, just focus on being present, coming back to the body, working with something like having, experiencing or even breath. You would not actually have that panic attack because you would stop it before it would even happen. But because the mind comes and just starts running crazy. That’s so. That’s exactly right. So much like somatic experiencing happening is enabling you to stay present and connected and that in itself is super powerful.
Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH
I love that we get to go into so many resource lives with the brain, with the nervous system. And I hope that this interview has left you with the hope that it is never too late, that you can always do something to change what has been your normal. Don’t settle, please do not settle. It can be so much better. And with that, I invite you to consider the 21 day journey to start to do somatic work and become that expert in your own nervous system. Learn the streets of your nervous systems. You can find your way back home to yourself. Look at those three biochemical imbalances so that we can start to look at the biology piece for you and do remember that you can purchase all these recordings so that you can revisit this, rewatch these as many times as you need to in order to be able to process and integrate all of this information and all of these tools. I’m your host for this summit. It’s been so nice to have you here on this interview and I will see you on the next interview on this summit for the Biology of Trauma 3.0. Talking about the trauma disease connection.
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