Aquatic Healing for Trauma

Comment

Comment by Diane Tegtmeier on May 16, 2009 at 5:26pm

It's wonderful to read the responses of people like Laura's client who can articulate and discern the dimensions of experience from being in the hold of an experience and being an observer of it. What always amazes me is how something like fear or terror or hypervigilance can feel so real at the same time we are able to just witness it. When both come together like that, and choices can be made, we know it's an authentic experience and transformation is happening. Yes, Christian, the water is that primal resource as along with the heart space of the practitioner, something that was usually not present at the original trauma.

On a related subject, the same day I learned that my nephew has been "chosen" for Army Ranger Training I heard a heartbreaking piece on KQED Forum about how soldiers with PTSD have such difficulty getting services both overseas and at home. That very afternoon I met an old Watsu friend who is a part-time Watsu therapist at the VA in Salt Lake who shared how valuable Watsu is to the vets he works with. We mutually regretted the bureaucratic hurdles to training more VA staff and also giving more aquatic sessions to vets. I'll invite him to join our group so we can brainstorm ways of making this powerful work accessible to those who need it.

Comment by Susan (Sunus) Kovacs on May 16, 2009 at 2:06pm

I so appreciate all Sista and Bro Water Beings in this World and elsewhere. Namaste'

Comment by Christian Muller on May 16, 2009 at 2:00pm

Laura and client,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write about your experience! I did Peter Levine's first training in Boulder about 15 years ago, and that way of working and perceiving has stayed with me and infused into my aquatic bodywork practice. What you are describing about the direct experience of non-hypervigilance is one of the most important aspects of the water work and in particular the underwater work. Warm water is the original resource, the matrix of creativity and new life, and I believe a missing experience for PTSD . I love how you described the transformation of being caught by hypervigilance to a perspective of seeing hypervigilance as an observer, a realization of a larger field of awareness so that you weren't bound by it anymore. Wow, your experience is an inspiration! Thanks to you both.

Comment by Laura Srygley on May 16, 2009 at 1:32pm

I shared these comments with my client today, and asked her if she wanted to share any more insights she might have. Since you mentioned Inika in your comment Diane, I told her that Inika had done Peter Levine's work (my client has been doing SE therapy for about a year now). I'd like to share what she had to say (all the rest are her words):

Thanks for sharing this with me. It was interesting and hopeful. I would appreciate receiving any other such comments in the future. One of the things that is good about reading their comments is that it made me look closer at the experience and makes me think that it would definitely be a good thing to do more watsu.

I'm not certain what you mentioned to them about the hyperviligence, but as I recall, I also mentioned that, in addition to resulting in my letting go of being hyperviligent in the moment, it also made me awareof the hyperviligence from a different perspective--more as an observer than as someone caught up in hyperviligence. Also, losing my sense of hyperviligence for that time gives me a model of what it's like to not be hyperviligent. I think that getting a new model of what it's like to experience the world from a place devoid of hyperviligence could be a key component in healing. I know that Somatic Experiencing has been so helpful in this way.

I just got the awareness that I felt so much safer in the world once I let go of the hyperviligence, as opposed to before I went underwater for the first time. Amazing! What a helpful awareness! Before I went under, my nervousness about going under led to moments of panic, which weren't there at all once I went underwater. In fact, I was so relaxed that I had to remind myself to breathe.

I've done a lot of work on myself, as you know, but this experience enabled me to see places where I am still hyperviligent.

I would certainly be interested in receiving other comments from folks in your online trauma group. I would be very interested to hear any comments from Inika, given her training with Peter Levine.

Comment by Diane Tegtmeier on May 16, 2009 at 10:42am

Thanks, Laura, and to your client, for putting what I've observed in myself and clients, in this perspective. I remember several sessions in which I felt like my brain literally got scrambled in an underwater session so that a new order arose. A few weeks after
9/11, during a session I felt like I was being thrown from a building and later rescued as I was being brought to the surface, healing the collective as well as the individual. Yes, Christian, it would be interesting to know exactly what this re-set button or repatterning looks like in the brain. Anyway, it's great to know it's happening regardless of the neurochemistry. We know something lets go to allow a new experience to emerge. I expect Inika has some thoughts on this.

Comment by Christian Muller on May 15, 2009 at 7:41am

I love this Laura. I have had similar experiences with clients with the dissolving of long held holding patterns and hyper-vigilance. I wonder if our whole compass for re-organizing and re-orienting gets reset by the water into a deeper and more life giving way of sensing and being.

Comment by Laura Srygley on May 15, 2009 at 2:49am

I want to share a short insight that a client today had. She is someone I worked with for years, but haven't seen in a long while. She had a severely abusive childhood and has been in therapy for about 40+ years, and has experience with many types of healing work. Now she works with an SE therapist and thinks it is the best thing for her. She went underwater today for the first time. She had an interesting comment about how profound it was for processing trauma: because being traumatized leaves people hypervigilant about everything in their environment, she felt that being underwater might be the only place where you completely lose all your bearings and so have to let go of that part of your organizing brain during the session, and of course that leaves room for so much more to happen.
This might be an obvious insight, but it was nice to hear from someone's first experience of being underwater.

Comment by Diane Tegtmeier on March 31, 2009 at 1:32pm

I have two emails for Kathleen; I'll send them via regular email because she hasn't yet agreed to be public on this group. I'm also in contact with a client I had last week who wants to connect us with the VA in Palo Alto. She suggested we could train the therapists who do aquatic therapy with the vets there. I'll forward her email to Inika and Sulis. We'll keep you in the loop, also, Christian as things get cooking. Thanks to all of you for keeping this flowing. I'm still catching up after my trip north.

Comment by Inika on March 31, 2009 at 11:02am

Do you have an email for Kathleen. Let's invite her to join this group.

Comment by Sulis (Sara Firman) on March 31, 2009 at 10:20am

Here's a good resource for monitoring military media viewpoints on ptsd.

Didn't find anything in a google search about the new Pentagon allocation of funds to alternative therapies (that I just sent you I and D).

• First
• Previous
• Next
• Last