How the Body Heals the Soul

On a gorgeous green, pleasant-looking prairie, a juvenile pronghorn peacefully forages the landscape for sustenance. Smelling a frighteningly familiar scent, the even-toed, hoofed mammal lifts its head up and looks to the horizon from which the smell originates. The young artiodactyl sees a giant grizzly bear several yards yonder. It runs in the opposite direction of the ferocious carnivore by a lake. After a few minutes, the bear catches up with the pronghorn. As the bear swings its sharp claws to the back of the pronghorn, the latter is immobilized. The former examines the carcass of the ungulate.

Shortly afterwards, it begins to rain cougars and coyotes. A yellow perch jumps out of the water and lands on the pronghorn. Distracted, the bear nibbles on the live fish. A flood comes and the bear runs away with the fish in its jaws. The pronghorn, still, is washed away by the violent water. Upon making contact with land, luckily not drowning, the body of the pronghorn continues to stay still. Once the rain ceases to fall and the water calms down, the body of the pronghorn begins to tremble and jerk in a frenzied manner. Once the convulsions end, the pronghorn springs away, not to be seen again in that area for a while.

After mentally digesting the text above, some people will think something to the effect of the following: “Poor deer. It must be going through so much trauma 🥺.” Such sympathetic compassion is misplaced. Why? That pronghorn will never experience trauma. In order to understand this statement, we can direct our attention to Peter A. Levine’s book Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997). In the book, Levine stated that trauma is the stagnation of the natural physiological process of dispelling distress. In the wild, animals rarely, if ever, negate this process of rejuvenation. Humans, on the other hand, afraid to spontaneously surrender to this deep biological process, do experience trauma.

Due to having sophisticated neo-cortexes, humans have the ability to halt this healthy release of pain through the deployment of rationalizations. Humans residing in primitive societies have a profound comprehension of the mind’s connection to the body and vice versa. They establish ceremonies and rituals to facilitate the clearing of the minds of the possessed; in other words, those who are victims of an acute attack of distress. Once the psycho-emotional systems of the beneficiaries are brought back to proper homeostasis, the tribe or clan celebrates the recovery.

On the other hand, we humans from advanced societies believe that this evolutionarily built-in process is “weak” and “unbecoming.” Obviously, it would not be conducive to civil society if done in public. Yet, we don’t even set time in private, where no one else would observe us, for the release of stress. This leads to many psychological disorders – chronic anxiety, chronic depression, anger mismanagement, etc. In turn, many people turn towards talk therapy, thinking that it will cure them of their mental anguishes.

Because traditional psychoanalysis focuses only on the mind, this form of assistance is believed by Levine to be limited in its effectiveness. Levine advocates that traumatized individuals partake in another kind of therapy – somatic experiencing (SE). What is somatic experiencing? It’s simply a type of therapy that teaches the patient to tune into his body and to fine tune his felt sense. Felt sense is simply one’s bodily awareness of situations, people, and events.

During a typical SE session, a patient will come in with a symptom or dilemma and the therapist will ask the patient about the physical sensations said patient experiences in tandem with the description of the issue. For example, a patient may tell the therapist about a recent car crash from which he barely escaped, then tell the therapist that his heart is racing and skin is sweating. The therapist, with particular skill, will then massage or manipulate the patient’s body. Certain feelings will be released. SE essentially trains the patient’s body to gradually release the shackles that hinder the stress-releasing process – the same process that, as a reminder, the pronghorn went through.

Besides the commonly mentioned symptoms like anxiety and depression, trauma can also affect one’s breathing and is linked to certain illnesses such as asthma, bronchitis, and gastrointestinal issues, to name a few. Levine did not elaborate on these sorts of symptoms in Waking the Tiger. However, other body therapists have. The symptoms are numerous, so we’ll focus on only two – breathing and asthma.

In Pleasure (1970), Alexander Lowen distinguishes between three types of breathing, one which is healthy; the other two, unhealthy. In an undisturbed, integrated person, inspiration starts with the expansion of the abdominal cavity. The diaphragm contracts and the abdominal muscles relax. As expiration begins, the chest is let down and the pelvis is contracted. In healthy breathing, smooth, uninterrupted wavelike sensations flow through the body. This type of breathing is characteristic of human babies and non-human animals.

In one type of dysfunctional breathing, the chest is immobilized, while the diaphragm and upper abdomen are relatively free. This type of unhealthy breathing is characteristic of people who are afraid to “let go,” or surrender to their bodies. These people, however, can at least experience pleasure to a moderate extent, unlike the poor breathers that will be briefly described below.

The other type of pathological breathing involves a diaphragm that is immobilized and an abdomen that is constricted. The ability to inspirate is limited, which unconsciously communicates a severely diminished ability to “take in life,” so to speak. At the deepest levels of the unconscious mind exists a sense of abject terror. People with this breathing pattern, walking as skeletons, demand nothing from life. From themselves, with robust psychological defenses sewed like the intricate web of a nimble spider, they hide the desire to die.

Moving on to asthma, let’s direct our attention to Elsworth F. Baker’s Man in the Trap (1967). Baker stated that asthma is an unconscious attempt to suppress latent anxiety. The parasympathetic system is overactive to block the sensation of such piercing anxiety. Through thorough implementation of Reichian therapy, which is somewhat similar to SE, it has been revealed that the asthma patient, unbeknownst to even himself, also hides a great deal of rage.

A person with asthma presents a brave and calm façade as a defense against a relatively superficial layer of anxiety, which is in turn a defense against destructive rage, which is in turn a defense against a deeper anxiety that is more intense and archaic. The deepest anxiety had likely developed very early in the person’s life, perhaps when he was an infant or even before he was born. Such profound anxiety failed to be soothed by the infant’s primary caregivers due to insufficient emotional contact and attunement with the infant.

Now that two, of many, symptoms have been described, attention shall now be redirected to a SE session. The basic methodology of a SE session has been described above. Therefore, at this point, a case study named Marius will be explained. Marius was an individual who was raised in Greenland. He was a young Eskimo man described by Levine as “slight, intelligent, shy, [and] boyish-looking.” He possessed an inclination towards anxiety and panic. Levine noted the weakness of Marius’s legs.

Levine began to work on Marius’s body. During the bodywork, images of a hunt came to Marius’s mind. He was envisioning a spear in his hand as he chased a polar bear. He hit the white Arctic beast with the spear and the men began to cut the carnivore open. Marius’s body began to tremble during the session. The young man was initially unsure whether he could handle the vibrations. Through the session, Marius began to “unfreeze.” Freezing simply describes the pathological (partial) immobilization of the body.

By the time Marius was done working with Levine, the former was no longer a victim of the immobilization response – a response he developed as an eight-year-old child due to a sense of being rejected by his father. He no longer experienced the type of anxiety that had been experiencing before meeting with Levine.

Levine had noted that the process of overcoming trauma is a mythical journey. It is by no means a magic pill. One must be willing to confront rudimentary conceptions about themselves. However, once the trauma is fully resolved and properly integrated, the patient becomes more in touch with both his “animal” and his “spirit.” He is more effectively able to utilize aggression, which, as described by the author, is “the biological ability to be vigorous and energetic, especially with instinct and force.” They also gain the courage to face life head on and accept responsibility for their actions.

Based on such observations by Levine, one can reasonably extrapolate that the process of integration, rather than being a process of learning, is actually a process of unlearning, since integration involves the restoration of qualities that, in the natural world, would never be lost for an extended period of time in the first place. The coward does not learn to be courageous, he un-learns to exhibit cowardice; the gluttonous person does not learn temperance, he un-learns gluttony; the sloth does not learn diligence, he un-learns pathological idleness; and so on and so forth.

“Every baby has possibilities for self-actualization but most get it knocked out of them. I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.” – Abraham Maslow

Do such “ordinary men” exist? As we all know, “perfect” people don’t exist. However, there exist people that come splendidly close to being perfectly integrated. All human beings experience trauma. Trauma is an inherent part of the human condition. That said, these people, respecting their biology almost as well as animals, rarely experience any prolonged after-effects of trauma. The people being referred to are the Trobriand islanders. The Trobriand Islands is a collection of islands located east of Papua New Guinea. They are tropical islands.

What type of society have these natural people formed? In Me and the Orgone (1971), Orson Bean stated that the islanders constructed a society that would not impede on the ability of its citizens, at any point of maturation, to fulfill two basic human needs – work and love. Like boys in more advanced societies, Trobriand boys like rough-and-tumble play and lengthy adventures, whereas Trobriand girls like delicate girls’ play. However, unlike our children, Trobriand children never think of the opposite gender as “having cooties” and “being gross and icky.” Instead, at the tender age of eight or nine, the boys and girls pair off to play love after the boys come back from the woods and bring gifts to the girls. “Sex” is never treated as a taboo, don’t-touch-it, topic. Thus, unlike children from unnatural societies, Trobriand children have no pathological fascination with it, akin to how children from certain European countries lack the temptation to drink alcohol irresponsibly due to being exposed to the beverage from an early age.

Psychoanalysis Wilhelm Reich, who was a teacher of Lowen, noted that Trobriand children were spontaneously clean, orderly, prosocial, sharp-witted, and hard-working. Baker stated that pathologies such as rape and kleptomania are non-existent in the Trobriand Islands. In unnatural societies, people who display these types of pathologies exist, and are rightly locked up for the safety of the societies. The islanders are well acquainted with the roles of the masculine and feminine polarities. Maternal uncles act as the male role models for the children of their sister(s), instructing their nephews on how to hunt and fish. The mother carries out the feminine role, teaching her daughters household tasks such as cooking and cleaning. In other words, Trobriand children are raised by their mother and her male relatives. The father of a Trobriand child plays no role in rearing said child; therefore, such a child is able to resolve, not merely repress, the Oedipus complex.

The Trobriand Islanders are tribespeople. They are primitive. Therefore, it logically follows that they have no way to definitively verify which father belongs to which kid. This is why the mother and maternal uncles, respectively, act as the feminine and masculine archetypes for the children to follow. The uncles, upholding the patriarchal role, are the ones to set the boundaries and carry out the disciplinary procedures.

As a side note, Reich recounted a tribe located in the Amphlett Islands, which is just a few miles away from the Trobriand Islands. Said tribe rears their children in the same strict, compulsory manner as nuclear families in more advanced societies did before the mid-1900s. Because of this style of education, Amphlett children fall victim to the same pathologies as our children did (and still do) – suicides, perversions, etc.

So, it seems like we went a bit off a tangent. That’s fine. We can bring our attention to the original point of the post – the healing of the mind and body. How, from Levine’s perspective, can one prevent the trauma? One way to prevent trauma is to stay actively mobilized during a threat.

Levine recounted a case study named Bob. Fourteen-year-old Bob, along with 20-plus other children, was kidnapped and shoved in a van in the summer of 1976. The children were then trapped in a trailer under hundreds of pounds of dirt. Bob, being one of the older children, took the lead in getting the other children out. He was able to flow through the situation and direct his energy towards getting out of the dirt. This redirection of energy is what old-school Freudians classified as a form of “sublimation.” He showcased the effects of trauma – panic attacks, nightmares, health issues – to a markedly lesser degree than the children who were passive during the ordeal.

Parents can help prevent trauma in their children by getting in touch with the feelings and sensations of their kids. They can step out of the way and allow their children to “shake off” any distress that occurs in their bodies. It is also to the benefit of a child that the parents treat him as an individual. Not all children need to be raised exactly the same way. Many people, failing to think in a nuanced manner, believe that this implies “permissiveness.” This is false. So-called “gentle parenting” can easily be distinguished from “permissive parenting.” The former involves guidance, co-regulation, emotional connection, boundaries, communication, and discipline; the latter, letting the children run amok. Permissive parenting is the reason why many children in this day and age conduct themselves poorly.

Parents should also ensure that they themselves are mentally and emotionally well-adjusted as well. The moods of the parents, along with the resultant atmosphere of the home, are absorbed by their children via psychic osmosis. Children are fine-tuned to the feelings of their parents, no matter how well the parents trick themselves into believing that they can conceal said feelings. The children depend on this sensitivity for their survival. 

Levine believes that the world will be a more cooperative, functional place when people decide to courageously plunge into their hearts and guts and begin their odysseys to integration. People who have resolved their trauma tend to be less destructive and disruptive to humanity than those who have not. If people keep projecting distortions onto each other, raging wars and abusing each other, then humanity may not last very long.

Below are two videos. The first one is an interview that explains the process of somatic experiencing; the second, a video that instructs parents on how to help their children regulate their emotions in a healthy manner.