Hands on Trauma

With Katherine Ukleja, UK

DO, BCST (Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist), FCSTA (Fellow of the Craniosacral Therapy Association)

More and more craniosacral therapists say that they specialize in treating trauma. And we certainly make a unique contribution to that field. In the last thirty years or so there has been a revolution in the understanding of the neurobiology of trauma and powerful new treatment methodologies have followed. The frontrunners are sticking to Peter Levine’s essence statement ‘Trauma is treated in the body not the mind’. 

That’s where we come in. A major feature of trauma physiology is autonomic dysregulation. All the things that the ANS controls go haywire – sleep, digestion, temperature regulation, immune response, blood pressure, heart rate and sufficient oxygen supply to the brain to maintain attention and cognitive function. 

With our outstanding palpation skills, we can detect altered function in the major autonomic centres like the cardiac plexus or the prevertebral ganglia, the crucial Vagus nerve, and the brainstem. And with our therapeutic touch we can restore primary respiratory function in these neural tissues. With touch we are healing trauma from the bottom up, from the body to the brain, along the gut-brain and the heart-brain axes. This is our distinct competence; this is how craniosacral therapy facilitates recovery from trauma. This is what we do that other therapies do not.

This seminar, for experienced cranial practitioners, enfolds Peter Levine’s profound understanding of trauma and its effect on the body into cranial practice. Trauma results from overwhelming life experiences raging from difficult births, car accidents or even essential surgery to domestic violence and the horrors of war.

As cranial practitioners we can learn to palpate traumatic activation in the body; to distinguish between the maladaptive states of hyper and hypo-arousal. We can address these by working directly with autonomic plexuses and ganglia, the brainstem and limbic structures in order to restore normal autonomic function and regulation of key body systems.  This in turn reduces anxiety, panic attacks, vigilance, labile emotions, and aggressive behaviour as well as dissociation and fragmentation. The ability to work directly with disordered neurophysiology, gives us a clinical edge in the treatment of trauma.

The four key areas that we will cover are:

1. The physiology of stress, overwhelm and trauma
2. Self-regulation: an essential skill for practitioners working with traumatised clients, self-regulation is the ability to recognise and effectively manage our own activation when our clients’ trauma histories arise during treatment sessions.
3. Hyper-arousal and emotional flooding: Anxiety, panic attacks, restlessness, insomnia, irritability - these symptoms may all indicate an underlying state of Autonomic Nervous System activation; a defensive state where the body is constantly geared up for fight or flight. In the workshop we will learn how to help down regulate chronic sympathetic activation.
4. Freeze and Dissociation: Life-threatening events and overpowering events in infancy may result in dissociation and fragmentation. Clients will present with low energy, poor motivation, poor concentration and depression. Our focus will be on ‘hidden’ parts of the body and how to help clients come back into body awareness and mobilize frozen energy