How massage & yoga can help you on your healing journey from trauma.
I believe that massages and yoga are underrated when it comes to healing. Whether you are healing from a toxic relationship, childhood traumas, or one of life's many other stresses, somatic interventions like massage and yoga can really help you in your wellness journey.
As a psychotherapist, I spend most of my days talking with people to help them heal from the things that they have endured. As my specialty, I work with couples and those who are overcoming trauma. I am an EMDR therapist and therefore I am a huge advocate for somatic work! I work with people to heal attachment wounds that impact us on a deep level and one of the most effective ways to do this is to tap into a different part of the brain that responds to more than just words.
An attachment wound is something that is a result of a relationship hurt, often from a caregiver when we are young or a romantic partner who treated us very poorly. Common types of attachment wounds can result from having an emotionally unavailable parent. For example a parent who is depressed or has to work long hours to provide for the family. Another example of an attachment wound is parents getting divorced. These attachment wounds can often set a foundation of thinking about a relationship as being something that brings pain and therefore something to have extreme caution with, or all together to avoid.
Attachment wounds can continue to show up in adult life in relationship at home, with work, and with your friends.
So why would things like massage and yoga help with this? Keep on ready to learn about 3 ways that these somatic approaches can help you on your healing journey.
Before we get started, just as a full disclaimer I am not trained in neither massage nor yoga, however I do have extensive training and knowledge of the mind body connection. And as always, always run things by your doctor. I often teach my clients in our therapy work to be mindful about how stress and trauma manifest in the body. A simple example I give is that feeling in your gut that you get when you are anxious or scared. We can’t ignore how interconnected the two are. Because I spend my career treating the wounds inflicted on the nervous system, I have found myself seeing time and time again just how interconnected our emotional health is connected to our physical health. If you would like to read more on this topic I highly recommend “The Body Keeps the Score” By Bessel van der Kolk. In this book the author goes into depth about just how interconnected our body is to our minds.
Three things that somatic interventions can help with include:
reclaiming your boundaries
the releasing of stress & trauma
the creation of a healing community
Let dive on in!
Somatic Approaches Can Help You Reclaim Your Boundaries
One way that somatic approaches can help you on your healing journey is by helping you reconnect with your body. For example going back to attachment wounds, my area of speciality, sometimes the clients I work with were not given a voice and were not allowed to assert their boundaries. One of the most beautiful and sacred boundaries that we have is our skin. It is what separates us from the world around us. Often people who struggle with attachment wounds have trouble with knowing where they begin and end in relation to the world around them. This can be quiet jarring and can make it difficult to have a relationship with your body, let alone healthy relationships with others. Our bodies are constantly trying to tell us things. Those gut reactions are signals into the limits that we want for ourselves, often limits that we ignore.
In massage, you can work with your massage therapist on boundaries. A good massage therapist should always ask if the pressure is good. A great massage is a relationship between the massage therapist and the client, where there is constant communication about what feels good and what does not. About where the body needs something and where the massage will go. I am sure it isn’t news that massages can help relieve stored tension, that is why they are a common self care ritual for many people. Massages can help people regain a connection with their bodies and help them increase their awareness into the boundaries that their body demands. As a psychotherapist, I work with people on their boundaries day in and day out, helping them identify where they struggle to say no in their day to day lives. Our bodies do so much for us and we really owe it to them to listen.
In yoga you are also challenged with listening to your body. Often people start off their yoga journeys in the hopes of fitness, but yoga is so much more than just a workout. It is a constant opportunity to deepen the relationship that we have with our bodies. To create more space for stillness and embrace one of the most important relationships you will ever have, yourself. A great yoga teacher and practice will allow your body to move in a way that is nuroushing and without pressure to force yourself into a pose. Again this really goes back to boundaries. Our bodies are constantly talking to us, and we want to work hard to listen to them.
Somatic Approaches Can Help You Release Stress and Trauma.
As a trauma therapist one of my most important conversations that I have with people is to be willing to consider that the trauma or major stress that they endured is not just in their heads. It has been proven, time and time again, that our bodies have a way of holding onto the memories that have hurt us the most. This has to do with how our brains and nervous system works. There are parts of the brain that are responsible for memory processing. Memories are not just pictures, but can often include smell, sounds, taste, and touch. Sensations are a big part of memory consolidation.
This is yet another reason why somatic approaches can be so helpful for healing trauma and releasing stress. We can often become activated or triggered in a yoga session or massage session because of the very fact that our subcortex within our brain has a hard time knowing if something is happening now or if it was a past memory. Whenever I make conversations with people to consider adding a somatic piece to their healing journey, I urge them to research and ask if the yoga teacher or massage therapist is trauma informed. The last thing that I would want for any of my clients is to have a flashback and not be supported by someone who is trained and informed in how to handle such situations. Thankfully trauma informed yoga and massage practices are becoming more and more common.
Somatic Approaches Can Help You Create a Community
Healing and recovering from trauma can be isolating. Therefore one of the first conversations and most followed up on topics that I have with my clients is ensure that we have a community for which we can lean on for support. Being part of a somatic community can help you connect with other humans who may be on a similar journey that you are on.
I often hear that yoga has a way of finding the people who need it, I know that was the case for me. There is something beautiful about having a group of people who get it and don’t need the countless explanations. It is so important that we develop a circle of people that we can gain support from as we continue to heal and grow.
A very neat thing that has been more and more common over the last years is that you can often find a yoga therapist or massage therapist within a wellness clinic. I am all here for this because this just shows you how much more people are willing to consider that healing can take many different approaches and that no two persons journeys look the same. I hope that this content was useful and I hope you share it with those who may benefit from embracing somatic interventions as part of their healing journey.Take care till next time!
With Kindness,