Traumatic events are impossible to put into words, as stated by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of best selling book “the body knows the score”

This is because during experiences of trauma, Broca’s area of the brain, which is the part responsible for speech production, shuts down, compromising our ability to describe how we are feeling. Broca’s area is known as our motor speech area. It is near the motor cortex, located in the inferior frontal gyrus. This area regulates breathing patterns while speaking and vocalisations required for normal speech.

Blood and oxygen rushes away from the cerebral and is directed to the limbic system, our emotional brain that is responsible for emotional and behavioural responses. Our executive thinking switches off, and the subconscious feeling brain comes alive (van der Kolk, 2014; Werbalowsky, 2019).

Verbal forms of therapy that rely on recalling traumatic events without actually processing the emotions behind the event, discharging the energy that was induced in the nervous system form the traumatisation, can in fact re-traumatise people and hinder the process of healing (van der Kolk, 2014).

If you’re going to recall, it’s absolutely pivotal that you drop into the body and process the emotions, thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions related to the event, so as to complete the stress activation cycle. From here you can come home into a healthy window of tolerance

By working directly with the trauma-affected nervous system through somatic therapies, we learn to slowly surrender, learning neuroceptively that it’s safe to release the trauma from the body. In doing so, we create a space inside ourselves where healing can actually begin throughout our neuromatrix. As stated by Dr Peter Levine, founder of world renowned Somatic Experiencing Inc

I guide my clients through body-based techniques that assist them in releasing the energy behind the trauma from their bodies. I share practical strategies that help them to feel empowered, and to work toward a place of self-trust and self-sufficiency.

Here are many of my clients moving through somatic shifts and neural reorganisation, through intense involuntary movement and shaking. This is a key component in neural plasticity, and healing on an embodied level throughout the autonomous nervous system. We must retrace, release, rewire and recalibrate in order to be fully free of the neurobiological alterations of deep rooted trauma and pain