Delicia Alarcon

Weekly Response

9/24/2023

 

Class 3 (Sept 25):

Western medicine is slow to understand: “outside the range of usual human experience” (original DSM manual).

This week I kept thinking about Leda Martins presentation and talked about knowledge and her account about how knowledge exists in the body in conjunction with trauma. Her talk was important to set up the discussion with Van der Kolk and The Body Keeps the Score.Van der Kolk shares that

“After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system.

The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the

expense of spontaneous involvement in their lives. These attempts to

maintain control over unbearable physiological reactions can result in a

whole range of physical symptoms, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue,

and other autoimmune diseases. This explains why it is critical for trauma

treatment to engage the entire organism, body, mind, and brain” (67).

Therefore, in order to process and move through trauma dance, play, performance must be activated in order to heal. As humans we need to recalibrate our nervous system in order to be able to survive and live through this world. Another point that Leda made last week that really stuck with me was that she said “everything is a sign” therefore everything can point towards information related to healing and or trauma. Part of the work is to be able to discern where we need to heal and using our body’s knowledge and information stored there as a means to help people move through the journey. Van der Kolk then goes on to discuss how breathwork, meditating and yoga support our top down or bottom up self-regulation. Thus, the dancing, chanting, and sounds made in the ceremonies Leda talked about last week are great examples of performance but also of healing in their communities. The body as a vessel and site for change but also in need of deep release from trauma experienced time over time.