Peter Levine's somatic experiencing theory uses a 1984 National Geographic polar bear story to explain trauma release. A sedated bear thrashes and breathes deeply as the tranquilizer wears off, discharging fear. A client with severe PTSD used similar embodied movement and breath work to rapidly relieve trauma symptoms.
Did I tell you the polar bear story before? Okay, Peter Levine's book Healing Trauma, and it was a National Geographic 1984 special. He tells a story of, uh, researchers chasing polar bears in Alaska.
I don't know if they still do electric shock therapy.
It would have been— I have a client that I've worked with that I've helped her heal from the time she was committed, and it was just significant complex PTSD. Yeah, it was really activated and triggered. Anyway, so I started researching all this, and I was like, okay. I started learning about traumatic somatic psychotherapy. Did I tell you the polar bear story before? No, I don't think so. Okay. Peter Levine's book Healing Trauma, and it was a National Geographic 1984 special. He tells a story of researchers chasing polar bears in Alaska. They chase them with a helicopter gun, you know, checking their vitals, population count, all that. Shoot them with a tranquilizer. Carry him back to base in the net in the helicopter, and and they were you know then the polar bears in the cage. Beta wasn't around then, huh? No, they were like let's yeah they they were doing some things anyway.
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They're not doing that anymore, probably. But they were confused for years. Researchers— the polar bears? Well, yeah, the polar bears, but the people, the researchers. Because what would happen is the polar bears, as the tranquilizer would wear off, the polar bears would start making this frantic movement, and they didn't understand what was happening. But then one day, a researcher Plays the video of the polar bear in the cage in slow motion. What's he see? Sees that its legs are running. Saw its chest go, and what they notice is last time the polar bear was conscious. Let's think about it. It's top of the food chain. Never experienced terror or trauma in its life, and it's running from its life from a giant loud metal bird. And thinks it's in life, you know, life-threatening danger. And then gets shot. And then gets shot and falls to the ground. So it's still afraid, wakes up, the trauma or this emotion is there, but what's it naturally do? It releases it out with the leg movement and the breath, and then it looks 10 minutes later, it's like, I'm okay.
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