hi I'm Michael here with my partner
Dannette welcome to the stress relief
simplified summit we're excited to share
with you proven practices to calm your
mind and body in our overstimulated
world each day we will introduce you to
a leading thought experts who will share
resources information and simple
practices to help break the cycle of
stress and here with us today is Peter
A Levine PhD Peter is Dr Levine
is the best-selling author scientists
researchers and clinician he's been
called one of the worlds preeminent
expert on resolving trauma or more
specifically the symptoms of trauma such
as ptsd flashbacks anxiety and other
conditions he has spent close to half a
century understanding the human body and
its response to what he calls accumulated
stress and unresolved trauma the
creator of somatic experiencing approach
to resolving trauma and 1984 dr. Levine
founded the somatic experiencing
training institute an organization that has
trained over 25,000 practitioners and
therapists worldwide in this approach
to healing traumas he's the author of 11
books including the best-selling waking
the tiger in an unspoken voice and
trauma and memory and for the past six
years dr. Levine has been pioneering a new
method for resolving fibromyalgia and
related conditions he cowrote a
book with one of his students Maggie
Phillips titled freedom from pain
discover your body's power to overcome
physical pain this captures dr. Levine's
approach helping people with
conditions like fibromyalgia and
we're lucky enough to have him with us
here today welcome dr. Levine thank
you thank you for the warm welcome
our pleasure so I would love for you to
start off with
just an understanding of what is somatic
experiencing what is somatic and how
the science of how it helps us to
relieve trauma and pain gladly gladly
you know when I first started developing
this was in that 19 in the late 1960s
into the 1970s and at that time the
definition of trauma is PTSD hadn't yet
happened and also the
definition really gave the presented
trauma PTSD as a brain disorder that was
incurable thankfully I didn't know about
that so I had more freedom and what I
discovered is that um that when were
perceived that were threatened our
bodies do things we stiffen we hold our
breath we retract we we tighten our guts
these are all things that the body does
so when we're overwhelmed either by
continuing accumulated stress and or by
trauma when that happens our bodies get
stuck now and this is really important
if the what goes on in the body the map
of what's going on the body is also sent
back from the body into the mind okay so
so when we're we're tight and
we're bracing or when our guts are all
turned that information is going back
into the brain and saying the threat
still exists and so we then tighten even
more and then we get feedback from our
body that is even more and so this is
what I call a positive feedback loop
with negative consequences and and this
I really believe is one of the roots of
conditions like fibro-
myalgia yeah yeah and so the
somatic is that map if i
understand you correctly the map between
the body and the brain and how it
overlaps is that what somatics is
exactly it's what it is is about
changing that feedback loop you see
breaking that that that
perpetuating condition breaking the
loop and so the body can let go and then
have new experiences experiences that
contradict those of trauma which are
feared their overwhelming helplessness
pain yeah yeah my experience in 1996 I
suffered traumatic brain injury and and
you know it as as my brain trauma
started to heal as I was able to find
words again and things like that
the related effect was I developed severe
pain in my body and for me that was
even more troublesome than you know
forgetting words and which is where I
was led to being diagnosed with fibromyalgia
and but so thank you for not
knowing that the research that it sees
things can't be undone so that was
exactly what I found through through
yoga and through some of the practices
we can actually rewire that I
think it's becoming clear that really
the practices that work for trauma and
also for chronic pain fibromyalgia that
they are those that involve the body the
living sensing a live body yes so as it
relates to stress you've said that there
are a couple of ways that we can get
stuck in the trauma stress either it's
you know an acute incident or its
accumulated over time and I think it's similar
to to you know like fibromyalgia
if somebody might have a trauma a car
accident and end up with the symptoms or
it might have been you know 10 years and
in an abusive situation that they then
end up with that so can you say
more about how the stress relates and
and how overlaps these condition yeah
well we have to define stress its a big
its a big subject exactly it's a very very
very big subject but the example you
gave is really a good one somebody who's
in an abusive relationship or in a
family you know as a child where there's
a lot of fighting and and and and lack
of connection with the children and so
forth all of these erode our
resilience to meeting rest and my
approach is really to restore that that
resilience I my work really began in a
strange kind of way because you know I I
realized that animals in the wild were
able to throw off generally the
effects of stress or a predator prey but
if they're you know if they if they're
almost caught but they escape they they
they somehow shake it off so they're
not burdened with the accumulated stress
and trauma and what I believe happens
i'm pretty sure what happens is that
there are there are innate things that
the body does the brain and the body
does to shake off our encounters with
threat because if animals couldn't do
that then the animal wouldn't survive
probably then nor would the species
survive so there has to be built in
some kind of an immunity to stress and
trauma that actually brings us
back to baseline if we can learn not to
interfere with it and i found that was
the difference between the animal
experience in predation and the
human experience is that we're the very
sensations actually that destress us or
take us out of trauma the very
sensations our experience as frightening
because we're unfamiliar with them and
because they also have a high charge but
in somatic experiencing we help people
touch into these experiences one small
piece at a time that's what i call
titration so that the energy that's
compressed the stress and the trauma can
be released slowly yeah I've seen some of
your work where you use a slinky to
demonstrate that that idea oh yay so
let's just take this image of a cheetah
running down a gazelle on the in the
Serengeti and just before the the
cheetah is making the making the
contact with the gazelle or when it has
it down on the ground it was it was
running to escape like this full-out I
mean 65 even 70 miles an hour for this
short sprint and so you have this
tremendous energy that's that's being
used for this it's the same kind of
energy that allows an 80-pound mother a
90-pound mother to lift the car off of
her trapped child and pull the child out
it's incredible amount of energy that
gets locked in the body so if we were to
release this energy all at once we would
have an explosion of the energy and in
doing that we actually would be very
often actually reinforcing the stress
and the trauma so what what I discovered
is that if we have a way that we
very very slowly release that energy and
let it come to equilibrium and then
again release release more and let it come
to equilibrium and release release more so
we're not releasing it all at once and
that's the key I feel to any effective
approach to work with trauma and and
accumulated stress in some ways
accumulated stress is a little bit more
tricky because when you have something
that's the direct cause it's easier to
work with but the principles are really
the same follow-up to that I really
believe in the work i do as a yoga
therapist that the body starts to almost
trust that constricted state that it's
in it's because of the safety that it
apparently in the moment might provide
and that in that undoing and even in
that gentle you know let's have that
little relief like you said there's some fear in that expansion that's right and
so the undoing can often be as
complicated as seen in it so I just want
to know what your thoughts are to that I
know there's a lot of resistance yeah
well yeah again I think Yoga is one of
the things that's now been shown
demonstrated to be a very important
component in working with trauma and
also with chronic pain and again this
has to be done in a very titrated
way in a very gradual gradual way
the key again in in sensing and
coming out of these traps where the body
is reinforcing the minds experience of
fear the trick here is to become aware
that when we are actually able to
experience these sensations while they
may feel worse at first they may feel
even more contracted that they will then
expand and again you might remember the
toy that I have for demonstrating this
because we are always in a state of
either contraction or expansion so in
trauma and in chronic pain we get caught
in this contraction but when we and we
don't want to feel it because it feels
bad many cases it feels horrible but
when we're able to gradually contact it
to just touch into it it may feel worse
for the moment but then it feels better
and then it feels worse contraction and
then feels better expansion contraction
expansion and that's how people come out
of trauma and out of chronic pain that
is my my experience and as I said in
working you know working with this for
over 45 years oh Lord a long time thank
you for that work yes absolutely thank you for that
demonstration that helps a lot those of
us that are visual Peter you're
currently developing a method for
addressing fibromyalgia and related
condition can you tell us about this
work and what are other related
conditions your work will also address
okay well as you you probably know that
fibromyalgia is often accompanied with
other conditions that are related to the
fibromyalgia and I actually wrote an
article on that and I can probably send
copies of that to your audience yeah
I would be glad to do that but anyhow the
fibromyalgia often is accompanied by
irritable bowel migraines urinary issues
irritable bowel and migraines sometimes
and I see those actually being part of a
the same underlying mechanism of a
core dis-regulation and so we've been
working on a program for helping to
address these kind of conditions with
focusing primarily on fibromyalgia but
again knowing that these are followed
with these other conditions and we we
were in the process of we are in the
process of testing it of seeing really
how well it works as you know we did a
test with a group of 12 people who were
suffering from fibromyalgia and these
conditions and by enlarged it was a very
positive response so we want to really
make sure that that we want to test this with
more people and tested in a program and
a format that people can use at home so
forth so we're going to be continuing
research on that and I'm working with an
incredible team of it was a man who who
is a a philanthropist and entrepreneur
and who's really mission is to help
people who are suffering and we met at a
lecture that I gave and then we have a
person from MIT who is an expert in in
computers of human interaction and so
forth so we've been working together on
develop this program and we're in the
process of testing it and for sure if
your audience is listening or wanting
more information we'll give you a
website and they can sign up there and
we'll give you that information send the
article and I thought also a video that
might be helpful this marine that I had
worked with who is suffering from
traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD
chronic pain depression and so forth and
we see how in a few sessions he really was
able to come out of this and engage back
into life so we'll we'll send them that
link as well I think this says real
stories where you you see and you hear
about the transformation that's possible
are essential and thank you yeah right
again you know it's all theory until you
experience it and then when people you
know experience that oh my god I don't
have to be caught in this that I'm able
to actually move into it and out of it
and into it out of it that it no longer
keeps us absolutely trapped and and and
when that happens the person has gone 50
one percent of the way thats kind of
like Richard Miller had mentioned you take
these incremental steps and you kind of
move from hope to faith to trust and it
was kind of like the example you were
giving where you release the energy slower
or it's kind of incremental steps yeah with
yeah yeah that is
the key the incremental steps so again we
don't want to be overwhelmed we don't
want the person to be overwhelmed
because in terms of the brain it really
can't tell the difference between being
overwhelmed in present time and being
overwhelmed in past time so it's not
really helping and I'm I'm very I'm
definitely not a fan of some of the
treatments for PTSD that have to do with
exposure where you have the person
relive over and over again the worst
part of a traumatic experiencing I think
that's just inflicting unnecessary pain
and suffering and that does lead me
lead me to my next question for you
how does your understanding of fibromyalgia
differ from Western medicines
understanding right well Western
medicine is fantastic for certain things
that I am actually seeing and seeing
almost 20 20 is a miracle of modern
technical medicine i had cataracts and
had the surgery and then had lens
implanted that's absolute miraculous
you're in a car crash you're taken to the
hospital emergency medicine miraculous
you you have a lung infection and you
get an antibiotic and you're cured the
infection medicine is incredible in this
realm when people with fibromyalgia
comes to see a physician you need people
with fibromyalgia see an average of six
physicians before they even are diagnosed
with fibromyalgia Western medicine
really doesn't have anything to help
very much I mean there are a few things
that help some people there's there's no
question about that
but really getting at the underlying
dynamics of what's causing the
fibromyalgia Western medicine doesn't
doesn't really understand that doesn't
really have a have a clue and as I
described it I see it as a functional
disorder not as a pathology not as a
disease but the functional disorder
again that we get stuck in this
condition where our bodies are tight are
braced and often at the same time also
collapsed and without energy so to work
with these kind of functional issues a
Western medicine doesn't really have
much to say I mean occasionally they may
recommend something like biofeedback
which of course in very often it is
helpful but basically Western medicine
really doesn't have a clue about working
with fibromyalgia indeed many people who
see a physician who have fibromyalgia and
the other and other condition they may
be sent to a Rheumatologist because of
the pain and then there may be diagnosed
with fibromyalgia they migraines are
sent off into a neurologist and by the
way of course if somebody has any of
these conditions you have to eliminate a
possible medical cause and that's that's
that's common sense so so anyhow further
for gastrointestinal problems for
irritable bowel they're sent to a
gastroenterologist the urinary problems
to the urologist and so forth and so on
and so and then often these these
specialists you know report back to the
primary care physician we couldn't find
anything so again it's important to make
sure that there's nothing medically
involved but medicine per se doesn't
understand these kind of conditions and
therefore unable to work with them
effectively hopefully we'll begin to
change this I've seen a little bit of
change with alternative practices at
the VA I get all my health services
here in San Diego at the VA
okay the VA here they're really good
they have yoga in house now
they'll send you outside the facility
for acupuncture that's right yes there
are certain exactly exactly things are
opening up yeah acupuncture even the
bodywork or massage yeah you know
things are happening and I think in
10 years people look quite different
than they look right now I think in a
way as you gave an example for the VA
you know that people were not getting
the treatment that they needed it and so
then they started to ask the question
why and and that's an example of a
forward-thinking organization I I think
the subtitle of your book freedom
from pain it references your body's
power to overcome physical pain can you
speak more to what you mean by the
body's power yes important question this
is I spoke a little bit about this
before this is about the our innate capacity to
rebound from states of stress or threat
it's what allows the animal to shake off
its encounters with a predator it's
what I think someone called the instinct
to heal and I believe that instinct is
profoundly powerful the question is how
to tap into it and that for me is about the
living knowing the living sensing
knowing body that when we allow the body
to do what it is meant to do to allow
our sensations and feelings to do what
they are meant to do then we can begin
to overcome the effects of pain and
stress
and trauma again I see them not as
separate but as coexisting conditions so
you had said just a few moments ago that
the body the mind actually doesn't
understand the difference between a
real-time stressor and a stressor from
the past am i understanding you
correctly that is actually the body is
kind of that gateway to differentiate
between the two which will then allow
the space for healing yeah yeah you
i mean you could for
sure say that I think that it goes back
to again of not wanting to overwhelm the
person and that's really the key so a
lot of times are symptoms our physical
symptoms are in a way snapshots
accumulated snapshots of things that
have happened to us in the past and they
kind of layer one upon the other and the
other and again the key is getting the
best touching incident allowing it to
complete and to resolve so for example
let's just say the child was uh was was
hit by a parent routinely so the first
time the child lifts up you know tries
to protect themselves from being hit and
then they let go and then the parent
again start yelling or screaming or hits
them and the shoulders go up again this
time it doesn't come down all the way it
stays partly up so what what is the
shoulder doing the shoulder is actually
trying to protect the child against
being hit but it gets stuck here so
through body awareness through as we do
in somatic experiencing the person
actually is able to complete this
response so they're able to feel not
only the shoulders going up
but what the rest of their arms had
wanted to do but couldn't do because
they were too small and we're
overwhelmed so we're completing that
stuck response and then that allows it to
release it is powerful and when a person
first experiences it you see their eyes
will open and they look around the room
in utter amazement you know and also
because they're seeing things
differently they're seeing things with
more color more clear because once we
shift from the inside it also shifts on
the outside as within so without and
then how must that effects all the
layers of their life that they no longer
have that need to protect which isn't
just showing up in the body it's showing
up on how they relate and respond to the
world right exactly exactly because when
you're in that kind of a state you
experience even the loving touch from a
from a mate as being frightening as
being yeah right frightening or as
disgusting or something like that
because again it's reactivating
reactivating those circuits from the
earlier the earlier trauma amazing work
that you're doing that you can
understand and are training all these
practitioners to help then all the
people that they're touching to undo the
effects of this in our bodies and you
know I I have believed for very long
time that the symptoms I experienced
after my traumatic brain injuries were
not just the results of this traumatic
brain injuries like you know what was my
lifestyle leading up to that point not
everyone that has a traumatic brain injury
ends up debilitated for 13 years by
chronic pain right so you understood that
mechanism was you know was
the trauma was the trauma was
actually kinda a gift the traumatic brain
injury was kind of the gift that has brought me to
an understanding and through through
through body work through movements and
moving with the breath and then being introduced
to your work last year which we
so appreciate so so thank you from my
perspective and Michael really has
similar perspective and I think a lot of
times it's true I'm sorry I just to finish
my thought about PTSD in my
opinion a lot of people with ptsd
likely had some pre-disposition to it
before the trauma because of lifestyle or
yeah right I I mean it's the thing that
we're we're discovering more and more is
when there's neglect or chronic stress
in the family that makes the people more
susceptible to becoming traumatized
later there's there's no question but
again it is my experience that when
we're able to tap into that innate
capacity to heal that we can actually
restore re-learn how to be more
resilient human beings and as you
pointed out beautifully and many people
who have trauma have say this you know
when they come to the other side when
they come back to their bodies they in a
way thank the trauma because without
that they wouldn't have made that inner
connection also this one thing i forgot
i want to just add in that example of
where the child is afraid of being hit
well think of what happens when this
becomes chronic just do that for 20
minutes and you're going to start
feeling significant pain i'm not
suggesting people do that right
especially people with fibromyalgia
again you can see how these input
responses can then add up and then the
body is just burden
with this accumulation of stress and
pain yeah so I would love now if we
could come back to the practices to
to the things that you're actually doing
to help with this rewiring of trauma
and can you share with this you know
maybe one or two of your proven
practices to help with breaking the cycle well there are many
many many many but let's give one that's
deceptively simple and this relates to
the what we were talking about before
with the contraction and the expansion
this is what I call pendulation so when
we're experiencing something even if it
feels worse momentarily then it can open
and feel better and gradually will open
more and more and more so and this also is
again is a very simple exercise to take
the first step to coming back to the
body in a safe way so what I'll do and
by the way if any of these exercises
evokes this exercise evokes pain then
just don't do it just observe it or
imagine doing but sometimes that can be
as effective even more effective than
also doing it so let's just look at your
hand our hands and now just put your
hands in to a fist and just look at that
notice that again just gently gently
into a closed fist and then open them
again and just looking at that so you're
noticing that now begin to put your mind
your awareness into the physical
sensations of your hands as they slowly
begin to close and again only closing as
is comfortable enough moving towards the
fist feeling the closed position and
then slowly opening again feeling the
physical sensations noticing if they
spread to other parts of the body if
there's some sense of openness and
receptivity and then again if the hands
closed do you feel an increase in
tension or do you even maybe even
experienced something like strength or
power again just noticing the sensations
of the feelings and once more just
allowing the fingers slowly the
hands slowly to open and I'm just
wondering what you are experiencing
Michael and Dannette in doing the exercise
yeah so when the first time i was
closing slowly there was a moment where
it felt a little more comfortable and
then it became the constriction I guess
I could feel it more as constriction and
opening the second time i opened it was it
was much more of a release than the first
time got it Michael yeah so I think mine was similar
the first time I actually clenched
my fist a little tighter than I needed
to so I certainly felt the tension
there but with each time that I did
it I felt like I was I was focused
obviously that's important but there
was a became calmer and calmer I guess
just wow with great each time that i did it
again that's such a simple thing it's
trivial in a way but
it gives you again an indication of how
powerful the the introceptive sense the
felt sense of the body can be in helping
us release stress and restore the sense
of goodness and wellness which is our
true natural state which is exactly
which is our natural state and it's
about restoring that natural state I
don't know if you have another practice
to share but I want to ask about your
experience when we start to restore that
natural state what's the effect on our
experience of stress from there versus
when we're in that more diminished state
so in other words i'm just going to kind
of lead you like are we much more able
to cope with stress once we start to
restore versus when we're still stuck
in our our traumas sorry what more able to what
to restore you so are we able to deal
with life's daily stresses because stress is
inevitable from from that restored place
that you're talking about versus
before we you know where we're stuck in
our previous trauma right now
absolutely absolutely you know I think
that's the really the point of this is
that we what when we are more in balance
then then the stresses of everyday don't
effect us nearly as much maybe even
challenge us in some ways you know one of
my intellectual mentors was a man named
Hans Selye and he's the person who coined
the term stress and he was working the
1940s 50's into the sixties I think and
basically his idea is that we stress
it's like a bank account you keep
withdrawing cash stress
and then till you don't have any left
and then you go into the red so he saw
this as kind of I guess you could say
a zero-sum game we just the stress erodes us
erodes us erodes us but I was
discovering again something very different and
I can I can maybe give this as an
example if we have time but that people
when they rebound and they meet stress the
nervous system is able to to move through the
strength into relaxation activation
deactivation relaxation the stress
doesn't accumulate so it's not a linear
system like Selye had thought and when
I said to my PhD when I finished
it I I was in a way critiquing his
approach to stress and he sent me this
most amazing letter saying that he
really sees how important this is and and I was
so deeply touched I really was because I
didn't know what his reaction was
because it really contradicted his whole
whole theory but this is the key that when
we are resilient the stresses of
everyday life don't effect us in the
same way not to say I mean obviously
what we're talking about refugee Syrian
refugees who are in this refugee camps under
these horrendous conditions I don't
think you know the Dalai Lama is going
to do that well in the conditions like
that you know it's just one thing after
another after another although you do
find some people again like in the
concentration camps that were more
resilient you know Viktor Frankl of
course is the example of that and that
is a number of conditions and other
types of situations two colleagues and I
are actually going to be probably
writing an article
on resilience and I when that happens
again I'll be glad to send copies of
that too to your group i'll give you a
link before we know before we end and we
can get all that information to them
well that's a great cause i know our
listeners are going to resonate with you
and I know they're going to want to find
you so they can look into your work more
further and join you in some of your
programs and if you can just quickly
mention so many websites where they can
find you okay gladly the website where
they can sign up to get this information
and to get updates on how our project is
going how our research is going we will
absolutely do that and the website is
www.somaticexperiencing.com and then get on the
list and we'll send them send them
that information be sure oh and also my
assistant said that would I guess it's
kind of a raffle thing and we're giving
away three copies of the book and the
additional CD that goes with that
also can go with the book on chronic on
freedom from pain so we'll we'll send those
out there i guess to 3 folks yeah
wonderful thank you so is there any
final wisdom you want to share yes I
do i would say trauma and pain is
it's universal but it doesn't have to be a
life if trauma and pain may be a fact of
life but it doesn't have to be a life
sentence and another thing that I've
noticed when people work through their
pain and trauma that they become a side
effect of this is they become more
compassionate more compassionate to
themselves and more compassionate to
eachother and so I would say that's a
commodity that we could well use more
more of in the world today thank you for
your compassion your wisdom your
time your whole team's time I you know
I look forward to reading the book I haven't
yet but i definitely look forward
to it and I know personally my FibroHaven
community that you have made a
difference and we'll get you copies of
the book thank you for all the work you're
doing with PTSD and those with trauma and
for spending the time with us today well and
thank you for getting this kind of
information out it's so dearly needed
you know education is the first step
yeah yeah thank you to our participants
tune back in tomorrow we have another
amazing thought leader like Dr Levine
who will share their wisdom so many
different perspectives and approaches to
to helping with this so thank you again
Dr Levine and we look forward to tomorrow
okay Bye!
For more infomation >> Uống Loại Trà Này Thường Xuyên Dạ Dày Đau Âm Ỉ Và Viêm Loét Cũng Khỏi Không Cần Đến Bệnh Viện - Duration: 12:30. 
For more infomation >> VIVA LAS VEGAS 2017 - Retromorrow - Duration: 3:46. 
For more infomation >> (한글CC)프레이 (2017) 1편.베데스다 신작 공포게임 (1080P60FPS) - Duration: 28:51. 
For more infomation >> WATCH LIVE: The National April 4, 2017 - Duration: 59:57. 
For more infomation >> BREAKING This is not the health-care bill that Donald Trump promised - News - Duration: 7:03. 
For more infomation >> 20170413 ♥ 妮婭 ♥ 別裝了泛妳是粉絲吧 - Duration: 0:30. 
For more infomation >> HOW TO: Brown smokey eyes - Duration: 15:52. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét