Can We Heal Ourselves From Trauma?

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

What happens is you begin to break up the fixed patterns, physical as well as mental patterns that trauma creates. If you have experienced trauma, you need to, you not only need to befriend your emotions, you need to re-friend your body. Because when we're traumatized, often our body becomes an enemy.

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On your Essentia mattress as much as I do. And now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, I'm Kaya Perowich, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Trauma comes in many forms and is something we all face in life. And while it might be easy to feel like trauma is something that we will just have to carry with us for the rest of our lives, there is actually accessible methods for healing that are proving otherwise. Dr. Hyman spoke about this with world-renowned expert using mind-body medicine to heal depression.

Anxiety, and psychological trauma, Dr. Jim Gordon. So you basically have taken the things you've learned from going to the places with the worst trauma, I mean, in war zones, in disaster areas, where people have really suffered extraordinary loss, and you've taken that insight, which has worked when nothing else has worked, and you brought it into a way that everybody who's dealt with some level of trauma can heal.

That's exactly right. And what those people do, and what I show in the transformation, is that these people who've been through these extraordinarily difficult times are able to move through and beyond the trauma. And that's been obviously important to them, but also inspiring to me to see that the simple techniques of self-care that we teach them and of group support can make it possible. And I hope it will be inspiring to other people because I keep, I'm constantly amazed at what human beings are capable of in terms of helping and healing themselves and reaching out to others. And a major part and a beginning part of the work we do is bringing people into the present. Meditation, Yeah. Is the time-honored way to bring us into relaxed moment-to-moment awareness of what's happening to us right now.

And you have people use the breath, the soft belly breathing, which is a- Soft belly breathing.

We can do a minute or two. It's just simply sitting quietly and closing your eyes and breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Don't close your eyes if you're driving.

Soft belly, soft exhale. Don't do this while you're driving. and just breathing deeply in through the nose, out through the mouth with the belly soft and relaxed. And focusing, this is technically a concentrative meditation, and we're focusing on the breath, on the word soft as we breathe in and belly as we breathe out, and on the feeling of our belly being relaxed. And as we do this, more air is going to the bottom of the lungs, more oxygen is going to all the cells in our bodies and helping them to feed them and helping them to be healthier. And we're activating the vagus nerve. V-A-G-U-S means wandering in Latin.

Not Las Vegas, but- Not the Las Vegas nerve.

Not the Las Vegas nerve, the V-A-G-U-S. And that nerve, is the antidote to the fight or flight response. And it quiets activity in the amygdala, the center of fear and anger in the brain.

So you have pathways to actually access different parts of your brain, and these are the techniques you teach, and they really work.

Exactly. It's all grounded in our biology.

And there's a lot of great science behind this.

Yeah, the science now is showing that meditation, simple techniques like soft belly, can not only help the brain to function better and more effectively, and help us to integrate parts of the brain like the left and right hemisphere that have been disrupted with trauma, but also we can build new brain tissue. We can decrease the amount of not only activity but tissue in the amygdala, the fear and anger center. We can increase the amount of brain tissue in the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory and modulating the stress response, and we can increase brain tissue in the frontal cortex in those areas responsible for self-awareness and judgment. judgment and compassion.

You literally can grow new brain in the right spots and you can calm down brain that's overactive in the wrong spots.

Exactly.

It's unbelievable.

The method that I'm teaching in the transformation can work pretty much for anybody. Doesn't require any, you know, major level of education at all. Doesn't require that you be a particular age. You can teach these techniques to little children and they can use them extremely effectively.

So break it down for us. What is the method?

That's the first thing that you have to believe it's possible.

Yeah.

And that you don't have to have, you know, years of psychotherapy and you don't have to have lots of pills to do it. That for most people, perhaps not everybody, but for most people, this is the fundamental method. And that's that's what I'm presenting. So that's the first thing. Second thing is that the method teaches you by your own experience. So we did soft belly breathing. So if you do that for five or 10 minutes, You don't need me to convince you that it makes a difference. So right from the beginning, I'm using techniques that people can, yes, there's scientific evidence and people should look at the scientific evidence, but they experience it. So the first one we use is a soft belly breathing. And then we work with, and people understand, oh, okay, I can quiet myself. And that generalizes because not only do you feel quieter, But your mind understands that you can make, I can make a difference in how I feel. And if I can make a difference in one way, then maybe I can make a difference in other ways. So that's the beginning. Second technique that I teach is working with drawings. And you don't have to be an artist and there are no grades. So what I do is I have people do three drawings. First drawing is draw yourself. And it doesn't have to be representational. Don't get nervous.

Stick, I do a stick man.

Yes, of course. The second drawing as draw yourself with your biggest problem. And what that helps people to do is to begin to identify something that's going on that's troubling them. And by getting it out on paper, it takes away a little bit of its power because you have a little bit of control over it. You're putting it out there. And then the third drawing is to draw yourself with your problem solved. And sometimes people will say, I don't know. I can't. There's no way to solve it. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be reading your book if I could solve the the problem. I said, just do it, see what happens. And most often something appears on the page. And people will say, well, I'm not sure it can really happen, but at least the idea is there. For example, we work a lot with refugees from wars. And one of the things that they draw, the biggest problem is their home has been bombed, they're living in a refugee camp, that's what they draw. Problem solved, they're often drawing themselves back home in a new house. They say, I'm not sure this can happen. I sure hope it can. And I say, Put it on the wall of your tent. And they do, because that's the goal toward which they're going. And the same with those of us who are here, whether our biggest problem is, you know, we've lost somebody who's dear to us. Maybe in that drawing, let's say we've lost a spouse or we've lost a parent. In that drawing of the problem solved, People will spontaneously come up with, oh, I can be with friends. I don't have to be so lonely. The biggest problem is my loneliness, my sadness. And then they draw in the third drawing and all of a sudden other people are appearing in the drawing. Or maybe they're drawing themselves in nature and being in nature is going to help them deal with their sadness. And it's coming from them. It's not coming from me telling them how to solve their problems. they're making those discoveries. And now we're actually doing groups, we're training many peer counselors, we're training veterans to use this model that we're talking about with other veterans. We're training teenage kids at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where the shootings were, we're training the peer counselors there to use our model with other kids. So the group is really important. We have forgotten that in medicine. All of our colleagues from aboriginal societies, all the indigenous people around the world.

All our medicine men colleagues. Yeah.

They know that the group is vital. When you have a really serious physical or emotional problem, they bring people together. When you're going through a difficult time, that connection with other people is so important. So all the techniques are crucial to the healing. And it's also the other part of it that makes it so much richer is being able to share what you're learning with other people. And I advise in the transformation, although I teach all the techniques, I'm also saying, and connect with other people. Reach out. When you're doing meditation and guided imagery and it comes into your mind, oh, I should call up my brother or my sister or my aunt or my friend, pay attention to that and reach out to that person and share what you're going through with that person.

That's so powerful. Is there anything else from your work that you want to share? Any stories, any techniques, anything that really matters that you want everybody to know about?

One of the techniques that we should share with people who are watching that I use all the time is shaking and dancing. And this is really important. We talked about when we're traumatized, we're either in fight or flight and we're really tense, or we're shut down, we're numbed out, we're holding the tension in our bodies. our minds are kind of frozen. What I do is I get people up shaking their bodies. You close your eyes, you put your feet shoulder-width, and you shake up and down for five or 10 minutes, and you relax for a couple of minutes and have some music that you can move your body to. What happens is you begin to break up the fixed patterns, physical as well as mental patterns, the trauma creates. If you have experienced trauma, you need to, you not only need to befriend your emotions, you need to re-friend your body. Because when we're traumatized, often our body becomes an enemy. So if people are watching us and want to do shaking and dancing, say five minutes of shaking, and then a minute or two of just standing and relaxing, and then moving to some music, move to some music that's inspiring for you, move to some music that's uplifting and upbeat for you and see what happens.

Trauma is kept in both the mind and the body, so it makes sense that modalities that tap into the mind-body connection are successful to produce long lasting healing. This is also why nutrition is part of Dr. Gordon's trauma healing protocol. If you'd like to hear him talk about trauma healing diet or any of the other aspects of what you heard today, I encourage you to check out the full length episode of Dr. Hyman's conversation with Dr. Jim Gordon. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a comment or rating below. Thanks for tuning in. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. this podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed.

Healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. Don't forget, there's a way to listen completely ad free. With Hyman Plus on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy every episode without any breaks. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial.