Dear <<First Name>>,

I hope this newsletter finds you well. It brings to you information about my clinic dates this summer, future courses (last call with Fundamentals with Dr Tracey Clark in KL end of this month) and also some nuggets from an online summit on Trauma which I attending this and last week. 

I will be back in the charming cobbled streets of the Belsize Village at BodyMatters Clinic on 16 and 19 July - see below for details, and as usual please contact the clinic directly for booking. My last days with clients in Kuala Lumpur will be 11 July and I will be back in the swing of things again first week of September. I will be working with clients on a distance basis throughout the summer.          

Trauma is not just something that happens to people in extreme circumstances. It is part of being alive and relevant to us all. While it certainly isn't pleasant, there is lots of learning, growth and improved health to gain from initiating a gentle process of working with our traumas. And if not addressed, it can create illness in the body and mind and wreak havoc in your relationships. To quote Peter Levine, Doctor of Medical Biophysics and Psychology, “What we resist, persists." 

It has been an inspiring and insightful 10 day of online lectures of The Healing from Trauma Summit. 24 world-class experts gave lectures on various fascinating aspects of trauma. I was pleased that most of the experts talked about the importance of including the body in the healing proces, and some presenting research into the link between trauma and the immunesystem and other aspects of health. I have learned a lot about working with clients through trauma and I would like to share some points that I find relevant for everyone: 

Trauma is....: Trauma is not the story that happened to us (e.g. child abuse, accident etc), but what happens inside us after the event. It is the disconnect from our essence, the disconnect from the present moment and the people around us, it is the guilt ("what is wrong with me?"), the impact on the brain and a tendency to see the world in a distorted and negative view. (Dr. Gabor Matè, physician and author). 

The healing process: Knowing that things can be difference is an opening to the healing process. The healing process includes a dis-identifying with the narrative and the identification with the victim suffering. Maybe it is possible to go through the emotional memories as a compassionate witness to the traumatic contracted state (in a therapeutic setting), rather than as a victim locked into the compressed stage. (Gabor Matè). 

Pre-traumatic stress: When living with fear for the future, we close ourselves off to the world, other people and ourselves, and live in a contracted state. A story from Mark Epstein, who has spent extended time with Thai meditation masters, will help illustrate this point: "One day I went to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence? The master held up a glass and said ’Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. And I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious". (Elaboration 1  2). (Dr. Mark Epstein, M.D and psychiatrist)

The Trauma of being alive: There is no way to be alive without being conscious of the potential for disaster. One way or another, death (and its cousins: old age, illness, accidents, separation and loss) hangs over all of us. The willingness to face traumas — be they large, small, primitive or fresh — is the key to healing from them. They may never disappear in the way we think they should, but maybe they don’t need to. Trauma is an ineradicable aspect of life. We are human as a result of it, not in spite of it. (Mark Epstein). People who are willing to experience negative or uncomfortable emotion build much more resilience for when the going gets tough. (Dr. Richard Miller, clinical psychologist, researcher, author, yogi)

Isolation: You don't honour someone who has endured trauma by telling them "I can never imagine what you have been through". It adds to the trauma being something incommunicable and it adds to the isolation that the person may feel. Instead, listen and try to imagine, and together try and create a relational home for the trauma. (Mark Epstein)

Just as you are: People have been healing each other since the beginning of time, long before there were surgeons, psychologists and oncologists. We were there for each other. The healing of our present woundedness may lay in recognising and reclaiming the capacity we all have to heal each other. The enormous power in the simplest of human relationships, the strength of a touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are, and finding in you an unsuspected goodness. "Pause for a moment and notice what it feels like inside when someone approaches you with the need to fix you or to change you (even with goodhearted intentions). What happens in your system…? I feel a tightening and tensing, I feel a wanting to push away. Sometimes I can even feel tearful, out of just wanting to be heard. Our autonomic nervous system is so sensitive that any attempt to fix us threatens any sense of connection, which is a precursor for being able to open up to healing. Advice and intervention would always be secondary to receiving the person just they are in that very moment". (Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. and Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine)


A final point I want to share with you is a macro view offered by Dr. Gabor Matè. He shared material from his upcoming book titled The Myth of Normal. He looks at the consequences of living in a society that doesn't value us for who we are, and our compassion, connection and expression. Rather in our society we are valued for what we achieve, produce, consume and how we look (external factors). That is a society that wants to take us away from ourselves, and that compromises our health and ability to heal trauma. On a positive note he asserts that whenever we heal ourselves by reconnecting with our core self and truly connecting with others, we also, at the same time, contribute to the healing of the society we live in. I really like this point and perhaps we can even see ourselves as a kind of Connection Activist. I believe that is also what we are doing in our BodyTalk sessions together.   

Last week I met a school teacher and mum who had never met my two children. As part of a conversation about our kids I shared that my kids unfortunately didn't show much interest in music. She said "Oh, so they are sporty then?" and I told her that they aren't particularly sporty either and she replied "Well it's great when they are academic too". To which I replied "My son reads a lot, but I wouldn't say that either of them is very academic either. My kids aren't really the diploma and prize winning types in anything so far, but they are really awesome people, and my 12 year old likes bar tendering and baking cakes". For some reason that conversation stayed with me and made me reflect on how we from an early age are socialised into focusing on outputs and achievements in a particular format.

Let's try as much as possible to really see each other and make an effort to connect with ourselves and each other. In the name of health, wellbeing and the world we live in. On that rather grandiose point I shall leave you with a few links to more material from the lectures of the summit if you are interested in exploring further:  

Dr. Gabor Matè: Myth of Normal video, When the Body Says No, Being self-disconnect 
​Dr. Diane Poole Heller: Blog, Connection Exercises