Self-Care And Thriving

Introduction to Trauma and Transcendence 0:00

Hello to you all. And welcome to the Trauma to Transcendence Summit. My name is Dr. Isaac Eliaz, and I am one of the co-hosts for the Summit. Today I want to explore the definition and generation of trauma processes, how traumas affect us all the way to the cellular level, and what we can do about it. So imagine that we are clear mirror everything that we experience that comes to our senses, everything that happens to us internally, we respond to it at the moment without influences from our past, from past experiences,

How Experiences Become Trauma Imprints 0:55

from insights, from difficulties, from traumas. Well, that's not the case. When we respond, we respond based on life experiences, and we try to be as clear as possible at the moment. We can have an experience like we lead something interesting and then it can have an impression on us, but we move on with life. It doesn't change the way we react. And then there can be experiences that are intense enough. There's a trigger, a survivor response in us, the trigger, a response that activates our autonomic system, our sympathetic system.

And this response may not resolve as easily. Sometimes it can be a huge insight. Also something very positive that we keep on thinking about and start affecting the way we behave, the way we make choices. And often it's a difficult experience. And as we notice and look at it, it doesn't resolve fully. It can be a big event or it can be a relatively small event. It repeats itself. For example, we are about to cross the street in the sidewalk and the car almost us over. We kind of pull back. The car goes by the next time we come to cross the street.

Suddenly we are hesitant for a second. We try to cross the street and it happens to us one more time, and then suddenly we are afraid to cross the street, even when it's safe and there is green light on the sidewalk. Why? Because our past events are affecting the way we behave right now. So if we look at this as one example, and there are so many of them, we realize that

Trauma, Epigenetics, and Cellular Effects 2:56

this kind of experiences really shape the way we interact and the way we react to life. Every past experience that we didn't let go of completely, we live in impression. We leave an imprint will. If we leave a scar. And this scars, this imprints will affect our present reaction to stimulus. And that's where traumas come into play. So traumas can be traumas of our own. What happened to us in this life can be ancestral traumas that affected us on a genetic level, or also affected us on a behavioral level through behavioral traits that affect the way our genes are expressed.

The whole field of epigenetics. So while genes are very hard to change epigenetics, the expression of genes are much easier to actually change. So we have this complexity of multi-generational influence of multi-generational epigenetic influences on the influences of the environment. And all of them are going to affect how we function, how we react to a stimulus. And this goes all the way to our cell membrane. Our cell membrane will respond to stimulus based on this quote unquote, state of mind.

They will put different receptors, different doors on the surface of the cell that will decide what comes in and what goes out. What kind of metabolism are they going to have? And metabolism of balance in peace or in metabolism of survival and crisis. And this will affect mitochondrial function and will affect our well-being. And in a similar way, our genes from within our DNA and the epigenetics effect which opens and closes genes, will also affect the cell function. So we have our affect is the person and we have the affects all the way to our cellular level.

And really this process actually drives every cell of our 50 trillion cells. And each of our cells can have up to 1 million reactions a second. So this is really how we function our organs, our tissues and our cells. So it's really important to understand this.

Survival Responses and PTSD Reactions 5:47

We are really survival driven. And this is really our maintenance system. What do you mean when I say maintenance system. It's our attempt in surviving our survival response, in managing with a reaction that are built into us based on these complex influences. Now, if within it, we have very strong trauma from the past, that is how to handle, we will put it aside by boxing it, by covering it, by shielding it so we can keep on surviving without being run by the trauma. But from time to time with the right trigger, we may have a memory that goes back to the past, to this trauma or this trauma.

Like a container gets shaken and radiates into the present time. And suddenly, out of the blue, we have a reaction that is unexpected. Something small happen and we start having palpitations and sweating. This is really PTSD, and all of us function within a certain level of PTSD, within certain level of reactivity. That is based on our survival response. Every organ in the body, every cell in the body. What can we do about it? We can connect with our one organ that functions differently. And this is our heart.

Our heart is based on actually not having an outside survival response, but actually accepting with open arms. The heart accepts all the dirty blood from everywhere in the body. So the heart physiologically has acceptance built into it. And instead of fighting, it connects with the universe through the breath, transforms the quality of the air detoxifies and gets the air clean and then gives nourishment without discrimination to everyone and everyone. So this quality of the heart is a physiological quality.

We are not necessarily connected with it

Heart-Based Healing and Open Heart Medicine 8:12

on an emotional, psychological, mental and spiritual basis. But this is why it is a basis for open heart medicine. My way of teaching how to heal with meditation and with heart based practices, we are connecting with our transformative quality. And this is really the benefit of heart based meditations. Heart based breathing. When we simply breathe out of the heart and different heart based, heart based practices. So this is a pretty simple to understand, and the goal is to shift from our head, from stopping from analyzing, from being suspicious to connecting with ever flowing love and compassion and acceptance that that is the basis of our heart.

But there is a challenge. Otherwise it would be really easy to hear. And the challenge is that the heart can be opened and can continue to open up. But when the heart send its clean blood, when the heart sends its electromagnetic field, which is now opened and in coherence and balanced the target tissue, the place where it disease is, the place where we are holding is a trauma. The place where the trauma is stored and hidden, can be shielded, can be hidden, can be blocked and we need to reach this place and allow it to open up in order to create a transformation.

So what can we do about it? The healing journey is really to allow the target tissue to let go. To allow the target tissue to detoxify the trauma. To let go of the trauma. Now this is a more comprehensive and complex process. It's really the inner part of open heart medicine. When we actually create this transformative quality of the heart within our cells, and it's beyond this minute talk. But what is important for all of us to recognize? Is it because the heart is overflowing, never stops. It always takes dirty blood, what is considered toxins by the cells, and it always gives clean blood.

Because this everything is changing all the time. And because our reality is ever changing, it also means that anything and everything is possible. If we can transmit this quality all the way to our cellular level, we can heal from our own trauma and we can heal other people's trauma. And this is really why I'm excited and driven to share open heart medicine with as many people as I can. So thank you for listening.