We talked about trauma as being
a highly energetic response, right?
Tremendous amount of energy...
I just happen to have
one of the greatest inventions
of the 20th Century,
this slinky.
And this represents, this...
Okay, we're just walking and kind of
our energy is just bouncing like this.
>> So this is just casually
living our lives...
>> Living our lives,
going about the activities of the day,
taking a nice walk on the beach,
you know, this kind of thing...
Okay, here is maybe we're working out,
so we're kind of pushing this a little bit.
Now, here's where we're threatened--
and tremendous amount of energy is mobilized.
This wild amount of energy is mobilized.
And what happens is when we are overwhelmed,
this energy gets locked down.
You see...we don't, we...
We're frightened of it.
The best thing you can do is shut
down your metabolism so that you
are no longer using oxygen.
So that's this.
So this energy gets locked down here.
And so we step on it,
we try to keep it...
>> It must take a lot of energy
to hold that amount of energy down.
>> You better believe it!
And that's, again, why we get these kinds
of tremendously painful symptoms
when we've been traumatized.
Because, in a sense, these are fragments,
fragments of sensory body memory. And what happens
in healing trauma is that you kind of
bring these elements,
these sensory experiences together in a coherent way
while discharging this energy.
And it's not about getting the memory,
or even the effect of the memory,
but how much energy has been released
and cannot be integrated into the organism.
And that's the key...is in discharging the energy.
Because here, look...
Here's the bound energy.
Now, what would happen
if this energy released all at once,
it would be tremendously bursting of energy
and it would be chaotic.
You see...
>> I think that's what happens
when they get triggered, basically...
>> That's right, that's right...
When they're reliving the trauma,
this energy just goes...crazy.
>> I guess that's why some people
end up actually being violent at that moment
or violent towards themselves.
>> Right, violent towards themselves--
or violent towards the other.
It is not uncommon for returning soldiers
to, in the middle of the night, be attacking,
sometimes really hurting or even killing
their wives or their spouses,
with this unbridled rage, you know...
Because they are experiencing as though
somebody were coming to kill them.
As far as they know,
they're protecting their lives by trying
to kill a Viet Cong soldier.
So the important thing in this process
is to find a way to release this energy gradually.
What you want to do is create the situation,
in this case, the play,
which allows a little bit of energy
to be released.
You can see the way it vibrates.
And again, you see it vibrating.
And again,
and again, until the full energy
is integrated back within the nervous system.
And that, if you like,
is what allows the nervous system to reset.
Little by little, so that the person
is not overwhelmed, and so that they can
have... reaccess their life energy.
Because when you're suppressing this energy,
you don't have energy to really live.
You're not living.
>> You're using your energy, I guess,
to keep it capped. >> You're using your energy
to keep it down.
So you don't do things that could be exciting,
or even fun or pleasurable.
The trick here is to not deny it--
but to not get swept away with it.
To feel the anger as physical sensations
in the body, because anger
almost always goes to power.
I'm going to give you an example.
You feel your jaw feeling really tight
and you feel your fist, okay.
So I'll say, okay,
let's just put all of this aside for a little bit,
this stuff that you saw on the TV...
>>Right, and... << Okay?
So feel your fist... >> Okay... >> ...and now very slowly
just tighten your fist a little bit more.
>> So actually move into that
anger... >> And move into that tension.
Just tighten it to a little bit, but just a teeny,
teeny bit--and then release it a teeny, teeny bit.
Okay, so again, feeling your fist,
and very slowly contracting it a little bit more,
just minutely, and then releasing it.
That's right... And just noticing what happened
to your breath and to your shoulders.
So that's kind of how we dance with anger.
Another thing, we can work with the jaw.
Okay, so you feel there's tension in the jaw.
So just feel the tension and just play
with something like this...
Go to the point where there's resistance--
and then just come back.
Go to the resistance...and come back.