Dr. Bessel van der Kolk: Trauma Lives in Your Body — Healing Begins Here

[00:00:01]Have you ever felt like your body reacts before your mind even understands why?

[00:00:06]Your shoulders [music] tense, your breathing changes, your stomach tightens, you freeze, shut [music] down, or feel suddenly unsafe, even when nothing obvious is happening?

[00:00:20]In this video, Bessel van der Kolk explains something many trauma survivors were never told.

[00:00:27]Trauma is not only stored in your memories. [music] It can live in your body, too.

[00:00:34]And sometimes healing does not begin by talking more.

[00:00:38]Sometimes it begins by learning how to breathe, move, notice, and feel safe inside yourself again.

[00:00:49]>> So, I was part of the generation where a large number of kids were uh starved to death. And so, I was a very fragile, barely surviving little child. And then, uh I had asthma and eczema and uh my parents were pretty [music] harsh people, and I grew up a little bit of like an uptight kid. Very cerebral, but would like that. Um And so, of course, then you start studying this because all research is research at the >> [music] >> And then, one of the first things that's extraordinarily helpful for me was getting Rolfed.

[00:01:27]And it's an old German saying, um >> Yeah.

[00:01:31]>> And Rolfing is actually a very harsh procedure, actually. Like, [music] uh somebody really opens up your muscles and body [music] works. And uh And for me, it's incredibly helpful.

[00:01:45]Just This I always had this sort of little bit of a frozen body, and after I got Rolfed, I could move my body.

[00:01:54]I could stand straight, and my breathing became deeper, and my heart rate variability changed, and I became a calmer boy person [music] because I was no living no longer living in an uptight body.

[00:02:07]And so, it's interesting with all the psychoanalysis and talking and talk therapy, um which wasn't all completely useless, but at the end to my mind, having a body that actually felt open to new [music] experience was uh was the most helpful thing.

[00:02:24]Uh and then uh another really very significant time was for me when I was uh I was an advisor to the Truth Truth Commission in South Africa.

[00:02:35]I don't know how that happened, but and I saw Bishop Tutu at work. Mhm.

[00:02:41]>> [music] >> And and you know, it's horrendously traumatized population. And the these And the reason why the Truth Commission came [music] into existence because he went from town township to township, and he had people talk about what happened, and he would listen, and they would sing together, and they would dance together, and they would move together, and there was not a dry eye in the house because it was so moving because they were so amazing in terms of helping people to speak their truth, and for people to be seen, but most of all, for people to feel a sense of pleasure, harmony, and joy by moving together and singing together. Mhm.

[00:03:20]And all around the world, except in [music] America and Europe, do people sing and move and dance in response to trauma.

[00:03:28]It wasn't It reestablishes a sense of synchrony, harmony, and that's [music] really very part of our core, part of our brain. That's what little babies learn is to be in sync and harmony with the people who take care of them. [music] And that needs to be reinstated. Mhm.

[00:03:45]Mhm. Right. And and of course, being still Mhm.

[00:03:49]really allowing yourself to realize all that stuff that's happening inside. Whether you feel those all the things and you sit and you say, "I feel restless. I want to look at my iPhone."

[00:04:03]And you go, "No, just take a breath.

[00:04:05]Notice >> [music] >> Notice what happens. How uptight you are. Notice what happens in your body."

[00:04:09]And then you need to know that what happens if you take a breath.

[00:04:15]What happens if you put your shoulders back?

[00:04:18]What happens if you straighten your spine?

[00:04:20]What happens if you just notice what happens when you pay attention to [music] yourself? And I think that's terribly important. Learning to safely pay attention to yourself and to start looking after yourself as a creature.

[00:04:35]Your internal creature.

[00:04:37]And say, "This is a very uptight, scared creature that I'm dealing with. How can I help this creature [music] to feel better?" And that is that I became increasingly aware and as I'm getting larger and larger, is that how you get traumatized, you get stuck in certain habits.

[00:04:54]>> Right.

[00:04:55]>> And the habit is really I'm done for, I'm screwed, I'm helpless.

[00:04:59]And so you become a helpless creature >> [music] >> and you live in a helpless body or you live in an angry body and you see the world in a particular way and being traumatized means you become very inflexible.

[00:05:13]>> What Dr. Bessel van der Kolk is saying here is so important because many trauma survivors blame themselves for being tense, frozen, restless, or unable to relax.

[00:05:27]But sometimes your body is not betraying you.

[00:05:31]Sometimes your body is still trying to protect you from a past that has not fully felt safe yet.

[00:05:39]That is why movement, breath, stillness, singing, [music] dancing, or creative expression can feel so powerful.

[00:05:48]They do not force the body to forget.

[00:05:52]They gently teach the body that something new is possible now.

[00:05:56]>> You see the world in your way and that's the only way. So, you get narrower and narrower and the first person who I know who really said that very well is Pierre Janet back in the 1880s who said it's all about the narrowing of consciousness.

[00:06:12]As I get more and more focused on those people out there and how can these people out there and I'm in danger and I'm screwed and blah blah blah. As you get in this habit of of not seeing other perspectives.

[00:06:26]Or seeing being narrow-minded, narrow-bodied, etc. etc. So, the question is how do you open up new possibilities?

[00:06:35]Right? And as I singing, dancing, and moving is one way of doing this. Right?

[00:06:41]And then I've been seeing the book also that [music] I One of my kids was a very oddly wired kids and who more and more became and had an identity of I'm weird, etc. And he got involved in theater.

[00:06:57]And my frozen son gets to play Riff in the West Side Story >> [music] >> and he sings Dear Officer Krupke we're on our knees and suddenly I see my son sort of developing a new body, a new identity. And then his next role is he's the Fonz in Happy Days.

[00:07:15]He sings and moves and dances and I see my son evolve into another creature because he was playing in a play that allowed him to experience [music] his body different from his identity that he experienced.

[00:07:30]So, I got [music] very intrigued as how do people develop new identities by [music] having living in a body in this new identity. And so, we set up called trauma drama and my wife and I took uh it's not Shakespeare in acting courses and you go to really see what it feels like to be somebody else and to be a frozen person and then play Lady Macbeth and who has despised her husband for not being willing to kill kill his king and she says, "If he had not so resembled my father, I would have done the deed myself."

[00:08:14]And to embody this evil feeling, you go like, "Oh, that's what it feels like to be a powerful evil person. How interesting." And the next play next play you play something else. You say, "Oh, now I'm somebody else. Oh, that's what it feels like to be like that." And so, to somatically experience a variety of different possibilities is extremely powerful. And again, through out the history of the world, people have used theater in order to deal with trauma.

[00:08:45]>> [music] >> Greek plays still, you know, they got it. 500 325 BC, they just held everything in their plays and you see all the tragedies of human beings being played out and even watching it that low playing the roles yourself, you get to really feel, "Oh, that's what it's like. Oh, that's what these people go through." And it's just a somatic experience.

[00:09:09]And so, I think theater is actually I >> [music] >> I I was in some school plays as a kid also myself and I remember that as being a very profound experience of playing a role which is different from the role that I was getting more and more locked into. All of us got playing our roles. And so, I think theater is very [music] very uh useful.

[00:09:33]The right brain, which is really where the trauma is sits, >> [music] >> is a non-linear, non-sequential non-time bound uh spatial brain. [music] Put your life out in space.

[00:09:48]Remarkable things that I I'm just so just blown away by it because it's it's not sort of in our culture and our thinking. And that [music] if you if you put your life out there in three-dimensional space >> [music] >> you have a very deep experience of where you have been, what you go through and so you really have very deep feelings about the reorganization of your life and how your internal world can be >> [music] >> portrayed out there. It's very emotional experience. And then you are so psychologically open, you can start inserting new possibilities. And so [music] as you confront your dad and say, "Dad, you always you never approved of me and you always were so harsh." [music] But then I found that you had an affair with somebody else. You were hypocrite about things and about my All these things come up.

[00:10:42]Which is very different from telling somebody else about it because there he is and you're really confronting the reality of your life. And then what you introduce is an ideal father.

[00:10:51]Who if I be your dad, I would have read you bedtime stories. If I be your dad, I would have celebrated the fact that you wanted to be an artist and not [music] a biochemist and I would have supported you. And from that time on, you know on a very deep visceral level of what it feels like to be a loved child.

[00:11:12]Or to be affirmed. Not to be ignored or neglected or be the idea of somebody else. And you get this very deep visceral experience of Oh, that's what it feels like.

[00:11:24]It brings about very very profound changes.

[00:11:28]>> If this video touched something in you, please be gentle with your body today.

[00:11:34]Maybe your body has carried fear, tension, [music] shame, or grief for years without anyone teaching you how to feel safe again.

[00:11:45]That does not [music] mean you're broken.

[00:11:48]It means a part of you has been waiting for gentleness.

[00:11:52]Healing may begin with one breath, one stretch, one moment of noticing yourself [music] without judgment.

[00:12:02]Your body is not your enemy.

[00:12:05]It may be the place where your inner child is still waiting to be held, heard, and brought home.