Here’s my take:

Just because you’ve read books on trauma and done a few courses doesn’t necessarily mean you can call your work trauma informed. And, calling your work trauma informed before it actually is can be (unintentionally) misleading, shaming and confusing for your clients. Because it directs them to relate to trauma on the level of the mind. It can have them believing they should be able to Think their way out of a trauma state or reaction (and by trauma here, I’m referring to any frozen or reactive responses arising from the reptilian brain).

Trauma is primarily held in the reptilian brain and the nervous system and must be met on the level of the body. If you haven’t Personally experienced and tracked your own nervous system in action it can seem like trauma is something you can just talk about and that’ll be enough for those “other” people who have trauma to feel taken care of.

It’s not. Or not if you are running embodiment or therapeutic processes. Because trauma is such a Body thing.. We communicate safety to our clients with our Bodies, our energy and voices. With our embodiment.

To be truly trauma informed you need to have deepened your capacity to track your own fight, flight, freeze or fawn behaviours, to be able to stay present in your body and inner felt-sensing, and to experience the process of release and resolution of at least Some of your bound trauma or shock from the past.

This doesn’t have to be an intense process. You don’t have to go to the bottom of your barrel to be embodied in trauma informed facilitation. (In fact it works better if you start with pleasurable felt-sense processes to experience your nervous system in response to “good/ok” sensations). It doesn’t mean that you need to have “healed” your deepest stuff. Just that you’ve been willing to experience your own nervous system in action without just Thinking about it. You’ve walked the track you want your clients to feel safe to walk with you. (I see it a bit like reconnoitering before a hike.. you’ve checked out what the cliffs and ravines are like and your feet know the terrain).

So yes, having the information is a wonderful start. But if the information hasn’t moved through your body and the foundations of your work (the words you speak, the pacing, the level of choice you give and most importantly your embodied Presence) it can be a bit like a lot of “trendy” words spoken over the top of an old system. And it can be like walking your clients out on the hike with just a paper map in your hands, when their terrain is an alive, moving landscape.

This is why I’m offering an experiential training in trauma informed facilitation. 
Because I see a lot of wonderful counselors, therapists and coaches who have the information, but haven’t walked it through their body. They either don’t use the tools they have, or they talk “trauma informed” but don’t embody it, and so cant actually support someone in real time when needed. (Leading to clients staying stuck, blaming the work, and both of you losing confidence fast). Which I know is not what you want. You want to see your clients more free and happy and you want to be of service in a tangible way.

Being trauma informed to me means being more deeply human. More anchored in these fleshy vehicles. More present, compassionate and inclusive. And from that place, hearts heal. Families become healthier and poor strategies for survival are no longer chosen. You don’t need to yell so much when your nervous system, and that old wound, has been met. You don’t need to shut down and cut off from other people when your freeze response has been unwound and safety found in the body again.

Healing trauma releases a Lot of bound energy that can then be used for creating good things; more gardens, more spacious time hugging. More meditation and silence and listening to the wisdom of the earth. More good creative thinking, more systemic change that is connected to present-time Care.

Let’s do that, hey

If you want and need your work to be more embodied and trauma informed, this program will take you through 3 stages:

> Module 1: Work with the Mind to Support Somatic Healing
One of the biggest blocks to effective somatic work is the mind and the inner judge. This module will show you how to use the mind to support rather than hinder the process of resolution and healing. It’ll show you how to get deeper access to the somatic (embodied and programmed) patterns underneath thoughts and to know what to do when the ego/identity throws up defenses.

> Module 2: Landing in the Animal Body
This will teach you how to increase presence and body awareness in yourself and your clients (even the heady ones and the disassociated ones), understand and work with the body’s natural unwinding process, create emotional resiliency, and use language to create more safety and willingness in your clients body.

> Module 3: Successfully Work with Unconscious Programming
This module takes the core skills of the program and goes deeper into how to work with relational wounding, incorporate symbols and expressive arts, how to work with shame or common patterns of bracing or collapsing found when a client is facing something that has felt too big for them to digest. This third module brings the entire training to a 400hr Certification in Somatic Therapy (recognised by IICT) 

You’ll learn how to work with intention and attention in a trauma informed way, the maps to work with someone in a freeze or shutdown state. How to work with fight or flight responses in a way that invites resolution. How to use “time” to make content more manageable and you’ll master the Goldilocks Method; how to create the right balance of safety and challenge to create healing.

The training also includes a module on ethics and trauma as well as bonus teachings on creating effective secure attachment in sessions and the structural and relational elements to working with diverse clientele (multicultural, gender or sexuality).

The course is delivered online in a series of live workshops over the space of 12months:
15 classes, 16 full workshop days, with 11 x group inquiry and connection calls, 11 x practice and case consult calls, 6 x 1:1 sessions with me and 2 x 1:1 video review sessions and lots and lots more designed to help you Embody the work personally, anchor the skills and frameworks well and then naturally offer that safe and grounded presence to your clients. 

Class times are offered on Thursday mornings and Monday evenings and the workshops on weekends (AEST)

The first Module begins as soon as you are ready, and the second module starts on June 6th.

Check out the full outline here.

There are limited places as I want to ensure good quality attention for each participant. 

If you are interested, please reach out via PM (I don’t always get notifications if you comment below). I’ll ask a few questions to see if you’re a good fit for the program and we can begin with Module 1 soon as you’re ready!

Much love

Amanda

This client explained that he understands that what we focus on expands, and, I definitely experience this to be true, in fact that’s a core of what makes my work Work. We use our focus to develop strength and capacity, to build and create beautiful things.
But what he was expressing was a fear that if he turns and faces the trauma and locked patterns in his body, that he will create more of it (by the law of attraction) in his life.

So I want to address this, because it’s a concern that I see effecting many people’s ability to be deeply present with themselves, and to actually build new brain pathways towards greater health and resiliency.

There’s a school of thought that says “if you are experiencing pain, the best thing to do is to focus on what feels better and keep building your focus on that, and the pain will melt away”.

Now that works to a Certain extent, but it doesn’t take into account the automatic programming in our physiology, nervous system and brain pathways.It doesn’t take into account the high charge that can be in the body of someone who has experienced highly challenging or traumatic events. And we all have some version of something challenging either in our own or our family history.

We can consciously choose to focus on pleasure, but if the body is holding unconscious trauma, fear or hyper vigilance (for eg), focussing on pleasure can be a bandaid that works till that trauma is unconsciously (or consciously) triggered.

And then, the body takes over as it goes into survival responses.

In this experience, I see many people become self-judgemental and feel shame that they couldn’t maintain their focus on pleasure and shift out of pain. And of course the combination of survival-strength sensations, feelings and shame is something we naturally don’t want to get more of.

The way I view this pleasure/pain dynamic is that we want to be able to Look at difficulty, if it is here! 

Difficulty can be such a teacher and strengthener, but not if we ignore it.

So, in answer to the question “doesn’t focussing on fear bring more fear?”.. I want to share how I use FOCUS to help build resilience, presence and inner connection with a sense of Home*. How that focus is not about avoidingfear, but strengthening the foundations that can hold the fear, creating the safety to be able tofeel the fear without fear of it.

This approach doesn’t bring more fear, but allows it to move through in a gentle way so we have More space to feel the whole spectrum.

* I want to be transparent here, that my intention in sessions is to help you to find your way Home into yourself. To me, your inner “home” holds everything you want and need, not in a “happy all the time way”, but in a good and true and grounded way.

………….

When I’m working with someone and they bring something like:

“I feel anxious a lot of the time”

My focus will be on the witness that is able to observe this experience.

On building their capacity as both as a human being and a consciousness, and as a physiology that is able to tolerably manage (sometimes) large amounts of charge/energy moving through it.

On building capacity to be present to whatever life is moving through you. 

Because when we focus on our containment, our largeness… that largeness, that capacity and strength, expands. We become more solid, more present, more anchored.

And what is possible when we do that …  when I don’t shrink back from fear because I’m scared.

When you’re relaxed, even when trauma or constriction is here.. then, the constriction moves through a larger field of relaxation.

Then you begin to identify yourself with relaxation, with love, with the field that holds all these things.

So I want to bring this back to my clients question “If I focus on fear, (in the law of attraction) wont it bring me more fear?”

And my answer is, it might seem like that at first. Because it’s quite possible that if you’ve set up your management patterns, trying to keep fear away, that when  you start to pay attention to what’s happening in your self, you might begin to notice fear is in many places in you, cause you’ve pushed it away and tried to control it.

But as you focus on… “is this ok in this moment to feel this fear?”, the fear may very well start to soften and move and shift into something new.

Once you have a sense of your containment and capacity, then you can turn for a moment towards the fear. And I want to share with you, that if we turn for a moment towards the fear, and give yourself, give in to that fear totally, for just a moment, it will shift into something else, it will become excitement, shivering. It will be Space for your body to shake it off and move into something else.

It’s the resistance to the fear that holds it in place, and keeps “bringing it back”.

So I would re-word the above question in my answer as:

“If you avoid fear (because you’re scared of feeling it) this will tend to strengthen it and make it seem bigger than it is. If you can learn to soften around it, focus on your strength and capacity, there will be more space for it to move through and for you to feel feelings such as peace, joy, contentment and power”

So my advice to you is to do what you can to create foundation and safety in your self in your life in a felt sense way, and then turn towards the monsters you’ve been running from.

And if fear has been your shadow and that sounds like a crazy idea, or way too overwhelming, I’m here. You can reach out to me by email, or see more about this work here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about attention lately.

Where I put it, and the effect it has when I put it there.

As a mum,
An employee or business owner,
A householder  …. we get called and asked to be these things 100 times a day, and so the attention naturally sticks to these definitions.

We generally get recognised for the Doing that we Do.

The other day a dear friend gave me a beautiful gift. I was complaining of how busy I was and how much energy parenting was asking of me, whinging that my life was too full, too scattered. He reminded me that 5 minutes before I had been describing a lovely peace and space that I had been feeling after a weeks holiday hiking in the bush. He didn’t just point that out to me, he described it with details like “I saw your whole face relax and get shiny, your muscles soften”, and said that “I felt happy hearing you describe how you felt, it was contagious”.

It was like he was taking a stand for the sacred and spacious in me and I so appreciated it. 100 times a day I get recognised for how much I get done (or don’t get done!), for what I “do” in the world. The spacious in me rose up to meet his words, almost blossomed like a flower and I knew myself as relaxed and shiny, soft and at peace, and this lasted as I went about my doing-day.

What I know from giving regular sessions through the week is that it’s profound what happens when we take our attention away from the habitual places of pain or worry and put it on that small quiet whispering of peace or joy or just plain ok-ness. It can unravel whole wildernesses of unchartered peace, well-being and inner joy that aren’t just emotional states, but are also physically tangible experiences in the muscles, organs, bones and skin. When attention is experienced in the body like this it can change our entire experience and create transformation on a deep level. Yes even physical healing of disease and pain. So simple and so profound.

So, a question for you:
Where do you put your attention? Is there a way you could put your attention on the parts of you that deeply satisfy you? You know, not just that you ticked off the things on your list, but that the aspects of the deeper you – Like your ability to enjoy a great meal, meditate in deep silence, dance like crazy or lie in bed and just feeeeel that cosiness?

And how could you give the gift of your your awareness/attention to sacred parts in those around you? How could you help your loved ones “flesh out” their experience of peace, joy and ok-ness with the way you reflect back what you see?  (Hint: it may be very small and fleeting to begin with and using details to describe helps it to build)

If you do decide to explore this, I’d love to hear how you go and if you notice changes in your relationships or the way you experience life!!

With warm love to your sacred-ness, 

xx Amanda

Ps: Something lovely to put your attention on 🙂 ….
This is me… hiking on a recent trip to the rainforest in New Zealand… a truly happy me.. glorious nature, a good friend, lots of fresh air, exercise, new foreign friends every day and swims in a cold lake! Yumm!! 

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