Are you a Human, or a Lizard?

Perspectives on Trauma from a Chinese and Western Perspective

 By Jessica Mariah

           Trauma is experiencing an event that is so overwhelming and world shattering that it overrides your temporary ability to cope with the situation. When the body is expecting to fight or run away, it directs the body’s energy and blood into your muscles, and away from digestion and the natural processes of repair. It’s your body’s way of prioritizing. However, when we stuck in a flight or fight mode, the long-term effects are damaging not only to our body but to our lives.

            So, what is trauma from a Chinese Medicine perspective?

            In Chinese Medicine, there are fourteen meridians in the body. These are lines of energy. You can think of them like the energetic equivalent of veins, like tiny streams running through your body supplying it with life force energy rather than blood. Twelve of the meridians connect to specific organs of the body and two make a loop down the front and back of your body.

            Just like how your muscles get flooded with blood in a normal flight or fight response, so too do your meridians get flooded with qi, which is another word for energy. In particular, states of shock and fright activate the Heart, Lung and Kidney channels*. 

            From a Western perspective, this makes a lot of sense. The heart is responsible for pumping blood through your body; heart rate naturally picks up when we experience something stressful. In Chinese Medicine the Heart is responsible for housing the spirit and is referred to as the “Great Emperor”. Basically this means that no issue in the body can arise without it also simultaneously affecting the Heart.

           

Trauma is said to “scatter” the Heart qi. “Scattering” qi is like a river that gets so flooded that water spills out over the banks, leaving wreckage around it. The word for this is Ci Ji. Here ‘Ji’ contains the radical for ‘water’ and means to ‘swash, surge’ as a wave does. Relating to our earlier analogy, the “Emperor” gets so overwhelmed by paperwork that he stops doing his job effectively. This can result in restlessness, anxiety, insomnia, mood swings, personality/ psychiatric disorders, and memory issues.

            The Lungs sit closest to the “Emperor”, and are in charge of creating “Wei” qi, which is also known as the “defensive” qi of the body. You can think of the Wei qi as similar to the wall or boundary which surrounds the Emperor's country. This border is in charge of what comes into our body and what leaves. When the Wei qi is weak, so too are our boundaries. Pathogens wiggle their way past our defenses to create a nasty cold. Western ideology would liken this manifestation of qi to the immune system, yet Chinese medicine thinks of it in much broader terms. Wei qi includes the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects, as well. 

          Many forms of trauma, such as verbal, physical and sexual abuse involve having our boundaries violated. When boundaries have been invaded, especially chronically, our "international borders" get worn down. We are no longer able to sort what should come in and what shouldn't as effectively, and this can result in frequent colds, cough, wheezing, dysfunctional/ abusive relationships, weak voice and fatigue.  

The Kidneys in Chinese medicine host the “Pre-Natal qi”, a finite amount of qi that each of us are both with. It is similar to the idea of a deep underground reservoir. In Western medicine, this translates to the adrenals, which are little endocrine glands which sit atop the kidneys. When our bodies enter into sympathetic stress mode, the brain signals the release of stress hormones from the adrenals: cortisol and epinephrine and norepinephrine.

In a flight or fight response, because our digestion has been shut down and we are not getting energy from our food, the body compensates by releasing some of it’s stored energy. Thus the Kidney qi is depleted. Some symptoms of Kidney deficiency include: low back pain, thinning hair, fatigue, joint pain, urinary issues/incontinence, and bed-wetting in children.

            So. The long term effects of being in a flight or fight response from a Chinese Medicine perspective is that it “scatters” the Heart Qi, diminishes Lung qi and drains the Kd qi. What are the long term effects of unhealed trauma from a physiological and psychological perspective?

In parasympathetic, our body can fully absorb nutrients, and cells have the energy to grow. Toxins get removed from our bodies and we experience peace, joy, and love. 

In flight or fight mode, our frontal cortex shuts down, which means so too does our ability to respond to situations logically and creatively. The little fighters in our immune system get shut down to ready the “big guns”; our muscles.

In sympathetic mode, we lose the capacity to respond to situations with  novelty and dynamism. Instead, our bodies fall back on its oldest habits: instinct. When accidentally placed on a hot surface, your hand moves away automatically. You don't have to think about it because there is no thought process involved. Similar to the reflex, the sympathetic nervous system accesses an ingrained survival process, which bypasses the frontal cortex (the area of the brain dedicated to higher cognitive functions such as logic and reason) and goes straight to what is referred to as the “reptilian” brain. 

            Studies have shown that when one is in a sympathetic response, our range of vision is quite literally narrowed. It's logical from a biological standpoint; when we are in danger, our focus becomes specific to that which we want to either fight or run away from. Taking in the details of a flowery meadow is not useful when we’re trying to escape from a hangry tiger.

             Trauma also causes disassociation and disconnection. Through it we learn that the world is not safe and that people will hurt us. To cope, we avoid reality, we avoid ourselves, our bodies, and our deep, aching hearts. People disassociate through various methods, whether it be through drug and alcohol use, sex, food or shopping addictions, self-harm or other destructive behaviors. Any self-destructive behaviors will have its roots in trauma and stress, and the understandable desire humans have to avoid pain.  

            However, there are two states of being—moving away and moving towards. When we are “moving away”, we are guarded. We are poised to fight or run, we are narrowed, contracted, and condensed. This is effectively living in fear. 

In a parasympathetic, the body opens up. We smell the breeze, we can think about situations critically and effectively before reacting. The possibilities for change and growth open up before us like a welcoming forest path. This is living in love. If we desire to live this way, we must learn to recognize and effectively deal with trauma as it comes up. This involves learning to regulate the nervous system. 

So, what are some tools to do this? 

            #1 build awareness

            There is an awesome technique called Shamatha meditation that allows one to build awareness. With this form of meditation, we are not trying to stop thoughts or condemn ourselves for thinking—here we engage with ourselves gently through the process of attention. That means the first step to getting into Parasympathetic means noticing that you are in a Sympathetic mode. For me, this feels like a “buzzing” around me. I feel a lot of energy in my upper body, like a stone in my throat and a weight or uncomfortable tension in my chest. I notice tension in my shoulders and neck and occipital region. I notice tension in my spine and a feeling of being disconnected to my lower body. I notice that my thoughts flow quickly and that there is some sort of intense resistance to being still. These are all my own internal cues that my body is stressed out. Although it is probably similar for many people, each person is unique and stores or processes stress differently in their body. So, noticing is the first action.

            You begin Shamatha by sitting relaxed but upright, with our head, shoulders, and hips in alignment. Ideally the hips are raised over the feet. We can begin by simply bringing our attention to our breath. I like to cycle my attention through my senses to keep me focused, ending with focusing on the breath. When thoughts arise, you say to yourself; “thinking” and come back to the present moment. You do the same when strong emotions and sensations arise, as well. Doing this when you’re not stressed out resources you to notice when you are.

            Using meditation allows your body to relax, slow down, and come back to homeostasis.

            #2 Just breathe.

            This is pretty self-explanatory. Since the body is all interconnected, slowing your breath will slow your thoughts and your nervous system. They say that it takes about ten deep breaths to shift the body from sympathetic to parasympathetic.

            #3 Feel your feet

         The body naturally drives qi upward during times of duress. So by bringing the qi back down we can relax our bodies. We do this by focus the energy on our feet. It’s a great way to calm your nervous system. You can give yourself a foot massage, roll your feet over a golf ball, or do a body scan where you go through every muscle of your body and tense and relax.  

            For a good body scan meditation, you can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7xGF8F28zo

            #4 Realize that every emotion has an instant physiological effect. 

            We live in a culture that separates the mind from the body. “Mind over matter” is considered a talent in our culture. Yet every thought and feeling has a corresponding effect on our body. That’s right. Every one.  Emotions and feelings are a type of energy, and the physical body is affected by this energy. Above is a chart that shows the infrared photos of differing emotions. Heat follows qi in Chinese medicine.  

Thinking: “I am sad” is very different from feeling the sensation of a weight on your chest and like your heart is being squeezed. Yet a lot of times we use thinking as a defense to feeling. We run away from the feeling. But really what we do when we run away from a feeling is create further disconnection in our lives. Meditation helps us tune into the physical manifestation of the energy of emotions without getting caught up in a head trip about it.

#4 Grounding Visualization 

I think visualization is a great tool and I use it daily. Qi follows attention, feeling & thought in the body. So we can ground ourselves just by using simple visualization techniques. I like to start off by imaging a special place in nature. Imagine the sounds, scents, and sights you might experience there. Then when you feel fully immersed in your relaxation place, imagine a thick cord of any color connecting your pelvic bowl to the center of the planet. Imagine anything that isn't serving you disappearing down the cord to be swallowed up, and recycled by the Earth. 

Another variation of this exercise is imagining thick roots growing out of your butt and firmly attaching you to the ground. 

#5 Tapping technique

“Tapping” on specific acupressure points has been known to relive tension and discharge lingering stress/ trauma from the nervous system. The technique involves tapping on alternating sides specific acupressure points, while utilizing other actions  to balance the separate hemispheres of the brain. You can find out more about Tapping at: http://peacefulheart.se/videos/

#6 Acupuncture

Sounds counter-intuitive, right? I mean, who would think that sticking needles in your body would be relaxing? But recent research has shown that the effects of acupuncture have the capability of relaxing not only muscles, but one's nervous system. 

      Because acupuncture accesses the deeper energetic fabric of the human body, it's able to discharge excess energy that gets stuck in the system from trauma. Seeing a licensed Acupuncturist is a wonderful and gentle way of releasing this stored tension in the body. 

The topic of trauma is vast. In this article I feel as thought I have barely scratched the surface, and yet I wanted to give the reader some information on trauma from both a Chinese Medicine and Western medicine perspective. There is so much research out there—if you are struggling with Trauma I would encourage you to seek further information. Peter Levine is a leading expert on trauma and both of his books Healing Trauma and Waking the Tiger are excellent resources.

           

            *Although called by the same name, the organs in Chinese medicine are similar yet different from the Western definition. Since Chinese medicine does not separate the body, mind, and spirit, each organ includes these. The Chinese medicine organs are capitalized and the Western ones are not.

            References:

            Maciocia, G. (2008). The practice of Chinese medicine: The treatment of diseases with acupuncture and Chinese herbs. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier.