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WHEN EMOTIONS ARE PHYSICAL
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Bodywork for Trauma and Grief
Rev. Justin Terry, Pastor
It’s okay to be confident in yourself. ~Lady Gaga
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Palm Beach Edition
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by Marlaina Donato
assage is often activated in the presence of Like a perfect associated with danger or emotional distress, dance partner, a spa-like pamperthe body has one objective: skilled bodywork ing, yet it is also an effecget us to safety. Yet, many practitioner follows tive therapy for reducing times, the amygdala—the the nervous system part of the brain that plays a physical and emotional pain. Bodywork can lower and helps the client key role in this process—beblood pressure and reduce comes hyper alert and falsely access sources stress hormones, which in perceives danger when there of trauma. turn helps to balance blood is none. Trauma becomes ~Lissa Wheeler sugar and boost immunity. hardwired into the nervous A surge of the feel-good system. Pain syndromes and neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine tension are common symptoms. is also a natural perk of rubdowns. No matter what the pattern for han On the emotional level, massage dling trauma, it takes a lot of work for the therapy can offer profound benefits for anybody to repress emotions, and it will create one experiencing acute grief or the effects of tension in the form of “armoring” to defend a traumatic past. A Swedish study published against unwanted feelings. “Trauma is a in the Journal of Clinical Nursing shows that physiological experience. Body tension that bereaved individuals that received 25-minresults from unresolved trauma will not ute hand and/or foot massages once a week respond to only releasing muscle tension,” for eight weeks felt greater comfort and were explains Lissa Wheeler, author of Engagmore capable of coping with stress. ing Resilience: Heal the Physical Impact of Emotional Trauma: A Guide for Bodywork The Body’s Pain Language Practitioners. When the “fight-or-flight” stress response is Wheeler’s Medford, Massachusetts,
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