Trauma occurs when our capacity to process emotional, psychic, and somatic experience is compromised or overwhelmed.
The fragmentation of our information processing faculties contributes to the perception of separation and isolation, resulting in an unendurable sense of aloneness.
Not only do we experience a possible flood of unbearable images, feelings, and sensations, but at some basic level we believe we are alone with all the unmanageable incoming stimulation.
It is this sense of aloneness, in the end, that is devastatingly traumatic to sensitive, relational human beings whose nervous systems have been created for companionship.
While understanding and insight can be supportive, it is right-brain immersion in fields of safety which fosters cellular restructuring.
The psyche will reassemble when it feels safe.
The body will reorganize when it feels safe.
Safety registers via physical sensations of rest.
Safety is perpetuated and sustained via thoughts and beliefs anchored to the somatic memory of rest.
Safety is realized, anchored and amplified via repeated reflections in relationship.
As an act of mercy and compassion, and to establish steady-states of safety, we meditate. We meditate in order to make the journey into the neural network where our unmetabolized shame, rage, terror, and grief is waiting for attention, respiration and relief. It is in the knotted tangle of our mostly unconscious beliefs where we find the frozen, confused, and scared one who has become stuck in the time machine of trauma; The one who is still lost in the disorganized field of implicit memory.
Meditate to sense, to behold, to listen. Meditate to feel, feed, surround, breathe into and love the knot in your solar plexus. You don't need images or understanding. Soften into the sensation. Breathe. Breathe without the expectation of change or shift. Offer kind attention and breath. That is enough. The body/mind/soul only wants your cooperation and attention. The greater consciousness that has manifested your body/mind knows how to reestablish balance throughout the system. Without having to do anything more, you are simply intending that your lost and orphaned parts know that they are safe now, perhaps for the first time ever. That is enough.
We have the luxury of simply bearing witness to the power of Universal Love as it guides Life-Force to enter our systems, to nurse our body/mind/souls back into alignment. Our intention to relax, to open, to allow and to rest . . . our willingness to be occupied by transcendent forces . . . is enough.
Echoing throughout the Universe is confirmation that "you matter, are being heard, seen, known, held, cared for, remembered, valued, appreciated for your life-journey, for what you bring to this world. You are loved. You are allowed to be truthful and authentic. You have never been and will never be alone. You are OK. You are Safe. As you grow and parts continue to shatter, die and dissolve, you will be supported simultaneously in growing ever-more whole.”
Meditation is a reparative neural experience that delivers sacred soothing to our unmetabolized images, feelings, and sensations. Guiding our attention to the sensations of tenderness and fear allows the nutrient-dense vibration of Love to enter these hungry parts of the body/mind. The hardness, the gripping associated with old mechanisms of defense and protection are freed to return to their rightful and appropriate place within the larger ecology of being.
Proper, fluid organization and inter-regulation of all our dimensions = attention . . . alignment . . . rest.
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