Sam and Connor Beaton discuss somatic approaches to releasing stored trauma through screaming, crying, and bodywork with trained facilitators. They explain how embodied trauma, once released, creates more capacity for love and connection.
When you allow that junk to start coming out of you, which happened that first day in the woods with Dewey.
It'S taking up space in there. It is directing you in ways that you have no idea about. And when you start getting it out, then more light can come in. And people call that light a zillion different things. People. My word for it is God. People call it love. People call it energy. Could. You know, there's a lot of different words for that. The difference between carrying around all that weight and then all of a sudden getting more light inside of you, more God within you, is then you get to start interconnecting with. With what really brings us together as people. Connection is what heals. And if you can't connect, then.
You can't really heal. So connect with yourself and connect with others. So after I started.
Getting it out, it's like a boiling pot of water, right? And it's causing your pot. My body, to overflow. And. And that's what anxiety attacks are. It's. It's coming out. You didn't mean for it to, but it's coming out. You. You're. You burst out into tears. And people. You know, I wish people would stop apologizing when they cry, because I think crying is brilliant. I think it heals. I'm not talking about tearing. I'm talking about crying. Bawling your eyes out. Fabulous healing technique. But when. When that trauma bubbles out of us, which it will do, the most common thing is to suppress it, to push it back in. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, I shouldn't have acted like that. Oh. You know, But I think when we embrace it and then actively go in there and get it out, whether that is screaming in the woods or going to a body worker who's trained in this and having them take it out of us. I happened, by the grace of God, to capture one of those sessions on film. It's on my website. People can. You're welcome to look at it, but, you know, I'm on a body worker's table, and I'm dealing with one of the horrendous parts of my abuse where my father was allowing this other man to abuse me. And I am. It was manifesting in my back, like someone stabbing me in my back. And I go through this, and I am screaming bloody murder. And you can almost see the goblins, the crap coming out of me. And. And I can do it sitting in my car or in my bathtub. You can take an old tennis racket and beat pillows. There's a lot of ways to do this. There's any good therapist. Look for a gestalt therapist or there's a lot of. But therapists can lead you to this work. It is a physical work. It is brilliant. I think I, I think people don't know, like, oh, well, I didn't know about that. Like, I didn't. I'd been in therapy for 10 years. No one had ever said do this. And then once I started doing it, I was like, whoa, there it is. You know, and, and I still do it. I, I probably will have to do it the rest of my life because life happens. And so if I'm happen to be in a hotel room by myself, often I will curl up with the pillow and then put the pillow over my mouth and scream and then try to catch my breath from crying so hard and do it again. I try to. It's almost like the birthing process as a, as a mom having children. You know, you, you, you get it out and then.
Open the window and let it just get out and, and then, then take a second and invite in.
The love part. And that's like I said, in my experience, 100% of the time, if you can, if you can sit there and get the courage to do this work, you, you're gonna feel more light than I can even describe.
Yeah, I think, I mean, talk therapy has limitations and I think a lot of people who have deep trauma could benefit from other modalities, specifically somatic. And so it sounds like when you're talking about trauma excavation, what we're talking about is the release of the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual.
Wounds or pain that has been stored and held in the mind and the body and the heart and having ways to release those things to actually allow us to tap into them. And there's, you know, there's a lot of, I mean, at our, at our men's weekends, we do some of this work and depending on what the individual needs. And Dewey, and I am fortunate enough to work alongside Dewey, you know, he comes and helps to co facilitate my weekends and, and it can be very powerful. And it's not a. I think the thing that I just really want to emphasize, empathy, emphasize is it's not a catharsis. You know, one of the, one of the things that I've learned over the years is when a traumatic event happens, the difference between trauma ensuing to the degree where we have ptsd, versus ptsg, which is post traumatic growth.
Ptg, post traumatic growth. There we go. The difference is that in that moment. The, the people who have the freeze response or who don't have the capacity to.
Fight or when they do, it's, you know, they're put in a powerless position because, you know, a lot of stuff happens when we're kids, and there's just no way that you're fighting back.
All of that needs all of that in those moments, right, where you couldn't yell, you couldn't, you know, say no, or you fight back and you were overpowered, all of those things, those. That needs to be expressed at some point, that actually needs to be released at some point to have the chance to let your mind and your heart and your body and your soul to experience what was actually necessary in that moment, you know, what you needed in that moment and it, in it. ALKA I think in my own sort of in internalized terms, I think that when we do that, we're alchemizing that PTSD or that trauma into something formative or generative within our psyche, within our body, or we're just releasing something and creating more room for, like you're saying, you know, we're releasing that crap, right? And we're making room for, for more space, for more light with. Within ourselves. And so I just wanted to say that, because I think sometimes individuals can hear this, and it's like, okay, well, I'm just going to go yell. And it's like, well, maybe, but ensure that you're working with somebody that can guide you in this process. You know, I think that's what you. You've been saying, is that people like Dewey have been incredibly powerful in supporting you on this path.
SAM.
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