The Polyvagal Theory

Peter Levine and Stephen Porges both place their trauma-informed insights on understanding the polyvagal system in the body. While I found the Polyvagal Theory too medical to understand for a long time, when I attended a masterclass with Porges during the Australian Childhood Foundation Trauma Conference in 2014 he turned out to be a clear, simple and engaging speaker; finally, I understood his important research. During his masterclass Porges used the image of traffic lights to explain his Polyvagal Theory in a way that I found even children and parents can easily comprehend. It is one of the printed resources I keep on my desk and show to parents and children alike to assist them in understanding what is happening inside them. The Polyvagal Theory focuses on how the autonomic nervous system impacts on every somatosensory system in our body illustrated by traffic lights…

Healing Trauma

An iceberg can be a symbol of our different memory system. There is the cognitive part visible above the water line, capable to rationalize and symbolize, and there is the huge hidden part floating underneath the surface. Implicit memory systems are not visible and have little words, if at all. They describe our emotions and all other body memories including learnt action patterns such as walking, eating with a spoon, or riding a bike. Our survival responses from the autonomic nervous system are implicit, just as our heart rate is not something we need to think about in order to make it pump our blood.

The Transformation Journey

The concept of a topside world and an underworld is as old as human consciousness. We have the universal experience of day and night, of light and darkness. The day-light, sunny side is associated with what we know, what we can see and what is familiar, also with rational, logic, linear thinking and planning. The nightly dark side is unknown, mysterious and equally fascinating as it is terrifying. Here we perceive with our intuitive mind, processing the surroundings in associative image-based patterns. The night-side is the world of our dreams and the source of creative ideas. This underworld has different layers of darkness, which we can associate with the moon cycles. At full moon we can perceive, often with heightened awareness, what wonders this unknown world entails, whereas the dark moon can be filled with terrors and existential danger.

Rhythmic Movement as a Vital Trauma Response

In recent weeks I find myself watching dance and movement video clips wherever they appear on social media. My soul craves them. On the days when I cannot go out and walk, I turn off all the lights at night, search for streaming Gabrielle Roth and dance to the 5 Rhythms in the dark. The many posts on Facebook inviting me to visit famous art galleries all over the world, to take virtual tours through the pyramids, and glide along the walls of the Sistine Chapel soon feel strenuous, like yet another thing to focus on. My eyes are hurting from too much screen time and the incessant online bombardment with visual stimuli.

A Visual Meditation: The Higher Consciousness

One of the core tools in my practice is a visualisation exercise I learnt in the nineteen seventies from Jungian analyst Phyllis Krystal (Krystal 1995). It is a visual prayer that can communicate a profound sense of safety flowing from a spiritual core that remains undefined or as you like to imagine it. I apply the exercise consistently as a visual aide to picture the client-therapist relationship and how both relate to what she called the ‘Higher Consciousness’. I introduce it to almost all groups I facilitate, and frequently meditate like this on my own.

The Primary Shapes in Guided Drawing: The Lemniscate

Lemniscate is the term for a horizontal figure eight. Of all the primary shapes this is the least threatening. It is without exception experienced as positive rhythmic flow without any threat of overwhelm.

The Primary Shapes in Guided Drawing: The Spiral

The spiral pattern of growth is found throughout nature as rolled-in fern, in shells on the beach, in the shape of an ear, in a fingerprint, the umbilical cord and how an embryo is curled up in the womb.

“Both the winding forms of the intestines and the brain have been depicted in religious and symbolic art as the labyrinth of spiral path, which creates, protects, and lays the foundation of the new town or centre”. (Purce 1992)

What is Guided Drawing?

Once we have made contact and sufficient trust in the setting has been gained, I explain that it might be easier to imagine having a bodywork session rather than the idea of making art. If need be, I will take some time to explain that all emotions have a physiological expression. Fear might make your heart race, your palms sweaty and your stomach churn. Excitement wells up. Joy flows usually with ease.

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