Healing Body Work

Often I see or *hear* a cringe when I mention various work I've had over the years that I believe have been an integral part of my overall healing. One of my recommended resources is The Body Remembers which explains how the body stores trauma memories just as the mind does.

More and more somatic (body) therapies are being used to help heal trauma including PTSD in war veterans. I had the privilege of attending a workshop by Pat Ogden who is one of the leaders in the field.  She coaches the client to move the body (on their own) to release where the body feels locked or tight or sore.

Peter A. Levine's book Waking the Tiger addresses the need for humans to "shake off" (engage the body in releasing trauma) much the way animals do in the wild to survive.

Ogden and Levine's methods are client initiated and do not involve touching on the part of the therapist except possibly as a target or to provide resistance for pushing.

Where the greatest resistance seems to be is in massage...another person touching the body. I know through my own massage therapist there are techniques such an Indian Head Massage where the client is fully clothed and sits in a chair. It could be a gentle way to become familiar with the healing benefits of massage.

I don't know why I had no aversion to massage. I used to have some relaxation massage before known trauma. Perhaps that is why. Throughout healing, I've had Reiki, a bit of acupuncture, deep tissue work, hot stone massage, cranial sacral massage, and today I was introduced to a technique called cupping.

I learned of cranial sacral through another survivor in the late 90s. The masseuse must have special training. It sounds like it is only the head but it encompasses the whole body. Cranial sacral fluid flows throughout the body and the therapist feels for blockages and uses a light touch around those areas for release. I always felt better afterwards but it didn't have the feel of the deep tissue or hot rock which I like...a harder touch that feels like it's really getting to the tight muscles.

It's been a long time since I've had so many knots in my head and neck and upper back, which I thought related solely to my two week cold. Internally I sensed there might be tension and should have some work done. I just needed from shoulders up worked on but I love the warmed massage table. A masseuse will work with your comfort level so you just need to communicate where you are uncomfortable with touches and/or be able to ask the person to stop if something feels uncomfortable.

The cupping was a gentle suction sensation created by cups (adapted to area of body being worked on) attached to a machine. Very comfortable. It released tension through suction instead of compression.

You can also do your own body work to some extent, especially hand and foot massage. Those appendages carry nerves to every area of the body. So if you work out a hard knot between your toes, for example, it may well be alleviating a headache. Charts are online if you want to know what is what. I just tend to feel around and massage sore spots.

I also have a massager that can reach behind me to get behind my shoulders and slightly under shoulder blades where tension can hide for a long time. A Shiatsu pillow is my favorite for lower or mid back pain.

I encourage all the listen to their bodies. For those with DID, you probably know that alters can "live" in different parts of the body. I used to have parts sometimes heal as they were released from the knot they were in. If you haven't tried body work as a healing modality, maybe it's worth looking into.

It's not okay to be a baby

My friend Faith (the Blooming Lotus blog) has been discussing unmet child needs of a child born into abuse. I'm addressing this very intense topic here because all born into the organized world of pedophilia are subjected to a "formula". Getting back to sophisticated pedophile basics: a child is not human; a child has no rights; the only purpose of this birth is to add to perverse pleasures while also providing a source of vast income. Child exploitation is a huge business.

Part of the formula to create a dissociated baby is to use the baby's body as it's own source of trauma and torture. The word neglect cannot be used because neglect is to not do something that is right or to otherwise do something that is hurtful. Harm inflicted on babies born into pedophilia is intentional. It's not neglect. Neglect implies some level of caring at some point.

Babies are hungry. Keeping a baby in various stages of starvation or forced overfeeding creates a fear of food. That becomes a source of extreme fear and resistance when an individual genuinely tries to care for the baby. Random fear makes it worse. The baby doesn't know when it will be fed without trauma or with a trauma element. Ability to speak is not a requirement for a baby to experience sufficient trauma to dissociate. Even though there is no vocabulary for the baby, there is definitely emotional response.

The baby's body produces waste products. The baby learns quickly to fear his or her own body functions because something awful will follow. This trauma induced with one's own elimination processes, and sometimes a perp's elimination processes, creates phobias and shame of untold proportions. I don't know of a single survivor recalling any element of this early abuse (which continues into verbal years for the child) who has done so without enormous shame. Even though the child is the target of the shame, it is recalled as having been the shamed one. It is very difficult to process these memories where just having been a baby was the crime.

A baby's natural response to cry when in distress is used as a weapon. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that no survivor has gone unscathed by harm that has come from trying to call out for help or simply to survive by expressing a need such a hunger, a wet or dirty diaper, the need for nurturing. One of the first planned giant traumas to ensure dissociation is to have a caretaker who is part of the pedophile organization be the nice person. The baby will come to know this person as "the safe one" who does no harm, who offers nurturing, who is the rescuer after being isolated in scary places. The bond is allowed to build until a certain age of infancy when it becomes the big event for the safe person to horribly betray the bonded child. "Trust no one" becomes one of the earliest lessons of life along with "It is not okay to be me." For years the child tries to make sense of the senseless messages and trauma. However, a young child, lacking any other explanation, will shift the blame onto herself. Something must be inherently wrong with the self and that is why there is so much harm and hatred directed toward the body.

Am thinking "hate crime" is too mild. Pedophilia is too mild. What happens to the unseen children of this underworld is an atrocity. It is on the same level as the holocaust. Unfortunately, few holocaust survivors were able to dissociate their memories.

Numerous times I have read how the wealthy of the world financed both sides of World Wars and that can be proven as well for elements of the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. Thinking in those terms, the wealthy elite have financed and continue to finance the evil of this world. Elements of our country financed the holocaust to include providing the chemicals used to exterminate the Jews in the concentration camps. It sickens me that taking of so many lives from birth to be raised for the hidden world of child exploitation comes from my own country.

I have to hope and believe that President-Elect Obama will help to topple the secret elements of government in his efforts to revise government into something that helps its citizens rather than helps the government to keep its secrets and make more money. Hmmm...somehow I started out with helpless babies and end up with government corruption. On that thought, let's hope for a rebirth of a nation into the arms of hope and no longer into the arms of terror.