Bodywork for trauma healing and processing
Trauma can take many different forms: emotional trauma, physical trauma, medical trauma, sexual trauma, generational trauma, the death-by-a-thousand-cuts trauma of everyday existence, often a combination of these. There are many ways in which these traumas may affect you: (C)PTSD, body dysmorphia, feeling disassociated from your body or parts thereof, body image issues and shame, generalized anxiety, a loss of faith, or having an adversarial relationship with your body, perhaps even feeling betrayed by it – to name but a few.
Your body, mind, and spirit may be hyper vigilant, and for good reason. But this very protective mechanism is what may ultimately keep you from processing what happened to you, and from reintegrating all that is you now into your whole being.
There are multiple ways in which we can work with the body, mind, and spirit to support trauma healing and processing. If part of you is actively healing, we can support it in doing so by gentle, integrative work, reminding it that it is seen and cared for. If the trauma is older, and you perhaps feel estranged from, or even angry at the part that was hurt, we can work on building bridges, bringing some love and care back towards this area, and slowly bring it back into the fold. If the trauma has your whole being on edge, we can work with your nervous system, and through that with your mind and your spirit, to bring a measure of peace and calm – and once that sets in create an opportunity to start processing, be it consciously or subconsciously.
What trauma healing and processing looks like will differ from person to person, from session to session, and sometimes even from minute to minute. Sometimes people expect they will have a huge cathartic blowout, and instead they drift off into bliss. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Just as often this work entails creating a series of gentle restorative experiences that slowly teach your body and mind that things are OK rather than deep emotional releases.
The most important thing about this work in particular is knowing that there are no shoulds. There is no single way you’re expected to react or process. Rather, we create the space and optimal conditions for your body, mind, and spirit to show us what they need, and then we care for them as they go through that process – even if if what you need now is radically different from what you needed five minutes ago, or during the last session.
To read more about what to expect, see my writing on what trauma-informed means in my practice.
If this resonates, please reach out at help@woodstockmassageworks.com, text me at (347) 693-9340, or book a session. I’d be honored to work with you.