Use These Techniques To HEAL & Release Trauma From Your Body | Dr. Peter Levine

what would you say are the essential steps for identifying and overcoming ultimately one's trauma yeah um well first of all what do we mean by trauma the from the Greek it means wound or injury also in the in the old German TR means dream so these connections go together now then trauma is now mostly thought as PTSD I think of it in a much broader way because things happen that really injure our soul and they they don't cause symptoms like PTSD but they do limit our life force our expression or how we are in the

world um I could give you an example from from mine actually from my book uh is that um one I I must must have been about five or six years old I was really fascinated with electricity and electronics and so I was taken to a cousin's Electrical Warehouse in downtown in downtown uh New York and I saw a buzzer and a button and I I knew what I wanted to do with them and I grabbed them and I put them in my pocket and when I got home I went down to the basement uh looked

for a box and I found one the old TVs came in and I brought it up I carved out a door I carved out a window and I put the buzzer the the Bell on the door so if somebody wanted to see me they'd have to push that button well my parents must have of course figured out where that came from and they came into the room kind of ripped the door open grabbed my arm and and uh dragg me to the living room where they interrogated me one after another hid and and then the

other one would hit and it was really it was like it was nightmarish they were hitting you they were hitting me literally hitting I mean the hitting isn't the biggest injury the injury is really in I lost this betrayal said the world is not safe and so I was able to heal this along with many other things but uh but so to me again things happen you know like I remember I had a client and she they were going to visit I think the relatives maybe the grandparents and they came in and the table was

filled with you know things to eat and so um my client took the the because he couldn't resist took the the the uh tablecloth and pulled it and everything went crashing to the ground and they yelled at him and again again that just stuck and those are the kind of things that you might not think of as being traumatic in the sense of PTSD with flashbacks and hypervigilance and so forth but it's a wounding that many of us I would say probably most of us have experienced and I think the good news is that trauma

doesn't have to be a life sentence it may be a fact of life but it doesn't have to be a life limiting our life yeah the way trauma is often talked about I feel like there's this Duality where it's it's referred to sometimes as there's a a delineation sometimes made between I guess what's called occasionally big tea trauma and little tea trauma do you think that's do you think that's helpful I'm not sure but I mean the when person is really deeply traumatized they scatter they fragment they leave their body they dissociate and and that

and that has a a lasting impact of course in in many ways more than what I just described but it really um it's something that we don't recover on our own that we need some help and guidance in doing that H so you're one of the pioneers of I think what's called somatic therapy yes that's what they that's what they tell me what they tell you yeah well I'm I'm I'm really excited to get into it what would you say are what are the basics of somatic therapy and what is the difference how does it

differ from traditional trauma therapy okay well definitely it's definitely quite but let me let me start uh in a little bit of a different direction when I started developing my work in the 1960s and 1970s I was UN no I was fortunate I wasn't unfortunate I was uh fortunate to not know that trauma was supposed to be a brain disease a brain disorder or brain disease that at best could be managed by drugs or by helping people change negative thoughts and those both of those can in some way sometimes be useful but as a as

a for healing trauma it's limited for sure and um what I noticed is that when we see something that seems horrible like if you go out and you go out on your street and you see all of a sudden uh a car hits this child and the child is laying there and you see the injury and what happens your guts twist you hold your breath your heart rate accelerates these are all things that the body does it's a physical response it's a physical response exactly it's a physical response and um it's also um it's something

that that tells the brain that their threat so let's go back with again with this image with the person that's been hit and you go out and you see they're really bad badly injured so you run into Cola amulance and your guts twist even more and that there's a nerve that goes from the back of the brain stem all the way down through the diaphragm to all of the organs below the diaphragm especially the gastrointestinal system and but also to the heart and lungs and this actually um this nerve is the largest nerve in the

body by far but what many people even even uh medical people don't realize is that the great majority of that nerve are actually getting information from the guts and the heart and the lungs and relaying it back up to the brain so we see the injury our brain tells us injury is danger when I work with military people what often is the bigger trauma when they see something somebody who's been injured much more than when they're injured themselves so so anyhow and this nerv is It's the Vegas nerve right it's the Vegas nerve yeah just

going to and Darwin actually called it the pneumogastric nerve he was I mean he's brilliant in every way but he actually recognized that this nerve was responsible for gut wrench and heartbreak and couldn't have said it more saliently than the way he said it anyhow you see the accident you see blood your guts twist because the brain says danger and but then remember that the great majority of that nerve so it goes first from the Vagas nerve down into the guts but then the 80% of the nerve is actually sending information from our guts back

up to the brain so what happens is then this gets Amplified we go g and then that signal goes up from the guts back up to the brain stem and amplifies it and it's GH and when people have been exposed to continued threat they often uh uh have uh irritable bowel kind of symptoms and but again it's become more like a fixture now it's not just the sorry it's not just a temporary thing but it's something that really uh then is with the person for the rest of their lives until they change it again the

good news is because it's in the body we can access that through the body that's what somatic experience is about and change that information that's going from the guts back up to the brain and it just puts it to rest there's an exercise I don't know you or your uh viewers might want to um try and the idea is to change the information that's coming from our guts up to the brain that says things are okay things are good so if if you wish to do it with me or if anybody else wants to do

this why not we'll do a little experiential yep defin I love playing good so the idea here is to take an easy full breath and on the exhalation to make the sound of the Vu coming from the belly and just CU you're vibrating those receptors in the in the viscer in the gut so just let the sound and the breath go all the way out and then just wait exactly and let the breath come in filling belly and chest and then repeat once [Music] so good wait for the breath to come in on its own

filling belly chest V [Music] good and just scan your body just see what you're noticing Sensations feelings thoughts images oh definitely a lot more relaxed mhm um yeah definitely it has a it clearly I sense has a has a calming effect MH yes yes exactly cuz again it's it's a feeling of goodness not of trauma so again changing this feedback loop I call it a feedback loop a positive feedback loop but with NE negative uh you know uh negative consequences and what is it about the about the phrase Vu because v v Vu you're vibrating

it from the belly so you're sending a signal from the belly back up to the brain stem to through the vagus nerve that says everything's okay all is good so when you feel the calm I might go next to go what I call top down this is bottom up but also top down is maybe to just notice when you say oops sorry when you feel relaxed and you feel calm and I wonder if you're willing just to say these words and just to be curious and just to notice what happens when you say the words

and the words are I give myself this gift of deep inner relaxation they're my words so it might not mean anything but just to be curious of what happens when you say the words and just notice again what happens inside your body H I give myself the gift of deep inner relaxation and then just wait a minute just pause and sense your body sense your Sensations feelings thoughts images memories yeah it definitely feels like well for me when I'm recording a podcast I'm I'm very uh I'm in a state of arousal obviously not sexual arousal

which I think well arousal is arousal yeah um but uh but heightened vigilance um you know I'm I'm very uh much focused on on you on my guest not so much what I'm experiencing experiencing internally okay um but yeah it help I guess bring about a more relaxed uh parasympathetic mhm yes State yes right exactly exactly how does that work well you know again semantic experiencing is probably one of the first bottom up systems of therapy because we're really referencing our Sensations but also our feelings and images and thoughts and that's top down down that's

usually what most talk therapists do most um uh therapists who tend to be cognitively cognitively Behavior therapist that kind of thing so but that's fine to recognize this the the thought but to connect the thought again top down connected to bottom up and this is in a holistic response yeah it helped bring me back into my body I suppose exactly and it didn't take very much time it take a couple of minutes wow yeah you know um uh two or three years ago I was doing this event uh a retreat for military people lovely group

of people mostly mostly from Iraq Afghanistan and Vietnam I think there was one World War II guy there and um we were doing an exercise like this and then we opened some opportunity for people to share and he said he said you know I've learn because of my trauma I've learned to meditate and when I meditate for five hours I get from just doing this one exercise I get much more deeply relaxed because it goes it's surprising it kind of goes underneath the radar um that's amazing cuz I mean not everybody has 5 hours to

give to a meditation practice on a daily basis I don't even I feel like I don't even have 20 minutes to give right which is obviously not true like I definitely you know if I tried to find 20 minutes in a day to sit down to meditate you know it's interesting I did another recent uh webinar with somebody who lovely man he I think his podcast was called 10% happier and he describes Dan Harris I think yeah yeah former journalist exactly he very much in his head and he describes um you know his five years

of therapy or something like that and people have asked him well has that really helped and I think that's what inspired him to write the book 10% happier that he was happier but not that much so we did this exercise and all of a sudden he felt waves of warmth coming into his body and I think he and then we did a couple of other things worked with what he was holding in his shoulder and I think he really realized that things can change when you go to the body body as healer body as guide

It's fascinating at what point in your career did you stumble upon these ideas oh my gosh I actually began seriously in 1966 I think 6566 and I was working with a group of people of there men with high blood pressure and I was working on a series of relaxation exercises to work with the different muscles and and autonomic nervous system in the body and so a number of these people had blood pressure which was higher 10 points 20 points 30 even I think one or two 40 points higher and when we were doing exercises sort

of like that their blood pressure went to normal H wow so but then the more more interesting thing was that when they did these exercis also different Sensations and feelings and memories would emerge sometimes traumatic memories that might have happened in childhood in which they hadn't even known about until that very moment when it when it came up it's amazing I mean and high blood pressure is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease for Alzheimer's disease dementia risk yeah it's a risk factor for anything and everything really you know that's one of the things that um

Vincent Fetti uh he and his Andress was I think his partner they did a study that was called the ace study and it's a questionnaire of 10 there's 10 questions so for example was there violence in your home as a child uh was there any substance abuse alcoholism or drugs you know and uh if you have more than three and there things that are pretty pretty common but if you have more than three then you have not only a very much increased likelihood of having anxiety depression trauma symptoms but also illnesses so-called uh metabolic illnesses

diabetes uh you know diseases like this uh cardiovascular and um and again these are people that are really suffering from these diseases that are brought on by the by being tra traumatized in their childhood and there were two things that were left out of that and Vincent and I were being filmed together and I asked him this question I said you know to me when I work with people that of course all of the things you say in the questionnaire you know are predictive but you know I know a lot of people for example who

have had medical trauma you know and and uh fall and accidents and car accidents and that kind of thing and that also really adds to it so you can again you can see that I mean I'll never go out of business because there's always something going to be to do I mean I don't see clients anymore but I teach and I write books that's one of them the last one I don't think it's the last last one yeah it's the most recent yeah the most recent it's very revealing too I hear you talk a lot

about your own trauma I do I do and I talk about Chiron and Chiron is from Greek and it it's about it means the wounded healer and all of us have those wounds uh and especially therapists and it's essential that therapists do their own work heal their own wounds so that they then can be available to their clients wounds and uh one of the things that came up when I I I I'm at the age where I my life is pretty vital I have really good relationships mostly really healthy relationships and um I uh I

decided it was time because I have clearly less time to live now than I did in if I go back to my childhood obviously so I thought it was a time for good time for Reckoning and what I did is I started to write uh just like journaling and I kind of re remembered as it were a number of these things that had happened and I I just wrote them down and just see the look for the Arc of my life Follow The Arc of my life and I had no intentions of publishing it at

a book but a very good friend of mine said you need to write this as a book and I said there's no way if there you know there are part part of that story that would you know be difficult to read and she said well I think you should really think about it because I think actually it could actually help people in their own healing so again after much indecision I had the following dream and dreams are important in my life and I remember in the dream I'm holding in my hands these two large packets

of uh of papers and there obviously there's something written on them typew written and I'm just standing there in front of a a field and I look at one I look at the other and again and still I feel stuck I don't know where I should go and all of a sudden in that indecision a breeze of wind came from behind me and took all of these pages and blew them into the into the wind into the meadow and I realized that that's what I was going to do wow I was going to write the

book If I was absolutely sure that it would help people and I was and it to it took three years really to write it uh but it's finally done and and inner Traditions uh has really supported me that's amazing Y how much attention should we be paying to the content of our dreams a lot and not just the content but the feelings of the dreams because they can be really tell you so much I'll give you another example and this is also a dream that I write about uh I think it was like in the

early 1980s um I had well I had the following dream and in the dream a man in a black robe with purple sashes flowing down to his feet and he was definitely some kind of a a a uh a teacher uh a spiritual teacher and so then this man hands me this box and it's a box a wooden box with a curved top and then uh uh uh what do you call it with with a belt over the top a brass belt over the top and he hands it to me and I still don't know

why he's handing to me who is he but then somehow in the dream I know that I'm supposed to go through this door and then and then there's this other door and in that door is another room and in that room is at the end of that room there's a safe you know steel safe cast iron STA and somehow I knew that it was my task to put this box in there for safee keeping and when I woke I thought I couldn't make any sense out of the dream but then what I'll do sometimes in

the dream I'll take one part of the dream and I'll just look at it and see how it affects my body and so I'm looking looking looking and um I realized that what I'm doing in my work in developing somatic experiencing is putting a perennial a deep spiritual knowledge which the man it was clear he was a Tibetan llama as I continued to explore the dream and he um uh he was instructing me to do just what I did and the reason for this dream was that I was the way I was keeping it safekeeping

is not just as a spiritual uh tradition but as something that fits in with Western science and medicine so rather than something which wouldn't be accepted probably broadly I I it was my task to make it more broadly available and the last the final those 50 years was developing somatic experiencing and again at the culmination at this point is to share this knowledge of how I came to this and how others can heal and tell their own stories there's a saying uh I think it's a Jewish saying what is truer than truth the answer the

storying and that's what my story was about wow I love that are you capable of um manipulating your dreams are you a lucid dreamer um yes and no sometimes I have dreams that are so real it has its own Lucidity I don't usually try to have a lucid dream but when they come up I grab my pen and I grab my pad and I know to just jot down a few words because if I wake up and I don't do that it's likely going to be gone so yes you think it's helpful to have a

pen and paper by you know by one's bed y on the nightstand yep interesting yeah you also famously Albert Albert Einstein appeared to you in one of your dreams and and subsequently has become a spiritual guide for you right that is another story actually when I when I wrote the book I had a chapter on this and one of the people that they asked to write about this said he didn't want to write it because it was this was too crazy that he was having conversations with Albert Einstein but exactly what I was happy so

when I was working on my thesis in at Berkeley uh and I was also developing the semanic experiencing at the end of a working day I would go to my favorite restaurant on St Pablo Avenue called Beggars Banquet and the waitresses there they knew me and they always welcome me and I they knew that I would start with a vegetable soup with uh French rolls crispy on the outside soft and moist on the inside and so I'm sitting there one evening and then I notice a shadow and I look up and the man doesn't ask

for an invitation he just sits down and I recognize him as Albert Einstein so there's a thing called active imagination and Carl Yung talked about this and supposedly children have this ability but then we lose it and I disagree I think we lose it when we are not in contact we we don't enhance it so anyhow he he introduced himself as Professor Einstein and he said I think you have some questions you'd like to ask me now again I knew the science part of me knew that that wasn't real that he he wasn't actually real

but that this was a a an image which was in many ways realer than real so for at least a year we would meet and I would ask him questions and then he would ask me questions about my questions and this went on for good part of a year he he was a recurring character in your Dre yes exactly I would I would hurry down to the Beggar's Banquet to and sit at my table for two sometimes I would just order two soups and they would say well why don't you just wait and see if

you know have one soup first and then if you're still hungry and I said no that's okay I want two soups and so the soup was for him wow and so many many of these conversations went on especially having to do with the traumas that get passed on from our ancestors but also the great wisdom and knowing that comes that's passed on through our ancestors so again he showed me a got me on the right track for understanding how these energy patterns continue through and they go forward in time but also backwards in time and

of course Professor was an expert on time and time space moving in all directions it's not just the head so anyhow uh I sadly came in one one uh evening and he didn't show up for that time and I knew that that acquaintance was going to be gone you later found out that you have some yeah okay so again I'm knowing that this is not real that he's he's not actually there but that something he's somehow an image of him that's come to me so anyhow I'm visiting my parents and I uh I'm spending the

the day going to museums so I'm coming back on the train I come up to the apartment and I walk in and I notice on the bookshelf above where my parents are sitting there's a book by Einstein uh the theory of relativity so that kind of triggered that memory that happened some 25 years before 30 years before and I said I told my parents especially my mother uh of those encounters I had with Einstein and she in that moment stiffened but then something let go in her and she said and she revealed the secret she

said when your father and I were canoeing one day on this Lake in New Jersey and this strong wind came up wind again and and it tipped over the canoe and we struggled to write the canoe so we could get in but we were unable to do that and we were pregnant with you five month uh not eight months pregnant with you and then in that moment of Crisis a small sailboat came along and an older man with a young woman pulled them to safety and they introduced thems as Albert enstein and his stepdaughter wow

so he saved my life without Einstein I literally would not be here sitting with you wow and so it's like okay so I've said first this couldn't be real you know it's just my imagination but that's fine and then all of a sudden it was real and my mother reasoned that in that moment of Life threat and life save life saving he became a guiding guiding person for me and he followed me throughout my life and she'd never told you that story before no never told me the story wow never told me the story so

in a way I think if my mother would have been alive today she would have been considered a an intuitive or even a psychic but in those times those weren't things that you know that adults had with had and U yeah so that my life sort of works around these synchronicities dreams and synchronicities and again the original idea of writing the book was to kind of look at these synchron synchronicities and see how they came together how they worked the M themselves through and it was such a revealing Journey one of the things I kind

of jump back a little bit that I was concerned about when I wrote the book is because one of the there's a long story here but my family was um was being uh endangered life threat from the mafia and it's likely that I was uh violently raped by the Mafia to keep my parents from testifying against them and U and also it was a time when there was a lot we had such insecurity because we knew something was seriously wrong but they never talked about it and they never told us about it and um so

I was that was the first thing that came up when I started you know scribbling about my is this something that really happened it's yes oh yes you were raped yes by the mafia by the mafia yeah to keep my parents from testifying but I never told them about it and in a way I never told it to myself how old were you when this happened 134 wow yeah grow where did you grow up in New York Bronx New York wow yeah yeah that sounds like it would be difficult it certainly was it certainly was

but when I wrote about it I said I can't bring that to PE to the reader it's just too it's too difficult but then I realized in somic experiencing we don't go right to the person's trauma we find something that has a a relative similar body experience but that's a positive one and so what came to me when I started meditating on that is when I was about four or five uh it was my birthday and in the middle of the night my parents came in and they laid tracks underneath my bed out into the

living into the bedroom back again underneath the bed and in an oval and when I woke up the train was going around in that oval and I was just filled with excitement I jumped literally jumped out of bed I ran to the Transformer where I can control the speed and and make the horn go toot toot and I knew in that moment that I was cared for that I was loved and if we even once in our life feel loved by somebody and it doesn't have to be a parent uh it means we're going to

make it and so I worked with this image before we came to deal with that and again talking about Chiron I realized that this was time for me to really address that trauma my trauma and I asked one of my students to sit with me and to guide me into working through this what she did and she did beautifully she did beautifully and so the again the good news is that trauma doesn't have to be a life sense that given the right tools trauma doesn't have to rule and um and again that's what I wanted

to share with my readers to share that they have all also the capacity to heal their own wounds and to tell their own story and so this was this was my motivation for finally talking to a publisher that I knew and I said I'd like you to look at this manuscript he called me back the next day and he said wow I think this really at first I thought there's no way this could help people but then I realized it could really really help well everybody everybody has some form of some ofy psychosocial injury that's

right and again knowing that they could do their own healing and how to support them to do their own work their own healing did you ever confront your parents about that early episode when they were I did I did thank you for bringing that up that's a piece that I'm just kind of going to coming back to I appreciate you bringing that up I did talked to my parents both of them about it and my father said almost reflexively no that never happened that never really happened and my mother said no Morris it did happen

we were scared we really injured him we really hurt him we did it and and she didn't exactly say it as an apology but she did many many many many years later I mean just a few years ago uh I have a man that I know in in Brazil he's called a pyat which means a father Saint it's a kind of a shamanistic spiritual tradition and my mother died she drowned in the bathtub and I'd been trying to get her to move out to because she loved being in Berkeley to be there with my brothers

because one brother is one of the world's Authorities on pain a medical doctor and the other one does acupuncture and so forth and I for several years I read really Tred to kind of encourage them to move out and then when her her um uh partner called and said your mother's dead she drowned oh my God and I thought maybe she committed suicide because she just couldn't think about leaving her home that she'd been in for how many years I don't know 50 60 years and um so I went to visit en ring and I

he didn't know anything about this I didn't tell him anything about that oh so the first thing that happens we come and there's a group of these women surrounding they they're from Baya b b bayas and they're dressed in these beautiful robes and they just again had this incredible spiritual quality to them so they surrounded us I was with my friend and en REI takes a glass of water and puts it here on my head and then he leaves it there and he knows that if it if I if I don't keep steady enough inside

then I'm not ready for him to do a reading so I was able to just find that still point and then after that we went in we went in the house and then we walked around the fend this is a word for uh uh for Farm it's Portuguese word for farm and picking different leaves and picking them very consciously really being aware of what that looks like what it feels like taking it in my hand and bringing it into the room and we put it there in a in a big plate and then we went

in and they had prepared uh for us a beautiful meal so then after that we came back out and we sat together and the leaves had made all kinds of different movements like mandala almost and he he looked at me and he said oh Peter I'm sorry to hear that your mother died again he had no knowledge of it and she wants you to know that she's sorry for what she did again it just wave went through me it was like I healed that wound with my mother and he also said she want you to

know that any help you want from her she's ready to give it to you from the other side so again how the how I'm guided in these ways and meet these people is really kind of remarkable and when I think about my life it is remarkable but all of our lives are remarkable all of our Lives couldn't agree more a lot of your work integrates the work of Steven porges right poly vagel Theory actually no I actually did the work before I knew the poly vagel Theory wow yeah yeah but steveen I and I met

met in 1976 or 7 that was just when I was developing somatic experiencing and it was before he was developing the poly vagel Theory wow but we've been together for all these years we're like brothers I say we're we're we're brothers with other mothers we're very close and then when he developed the poly vagal Theory I just put my hand on his and I said Stephen this is the model that really Psychotherapy especially trauma therapy needs to know and so again we've been together for all of that time we'll be meeting this summer in Switzerland

and we're doing a very special event where we're sharing with the audience well sharing with each other and the audience uh the Arc of Our Lives of how we arrived to where we are now so to have him as a dear friend and we will often just call up and and say hello and and hang out with each other that's fascinating though isn't it it's sort of like uh the the simultaneous invention phenomena right where by two people in different parts of the world develop ideas that um yeah it's you know ideas for which the

time has come I suppose yes I think that's a good way to put it yeah I'm not super familiar with poly vagal Theory actually but uh became aware of Steven and his work through his son actually I'm friends with his son SE Seth yeah yeah yeah shout out to Seth yeah yeah that's fascinating what so I I love to uh you know keep things relatively actionable on the podcast and so what would you say are some of the core tenets of your work that people listening to this watching this might be able to take away

and integrate so that they can thus potentially heal trauma and reach their Highest Potential first of all trauma is is trauma no matter what happened how it happened it's not somebody has a worse trauma or a better trauma trauma is trauma like I said at the beginning c a an example of something that wouldn't be considered trauma as PTSD but did have a lasting effect on me um and so I think that the thing I would leave people again with this idea that trauma is not something that just well that just it's not something that

just what happened to us per se but rather it's what's happened to us in the absence of a present empathetic caring other and that's really important and that person was that for me when we excavated the trauma of the of the violence and the rape that we in sematic experiencing we guide people very gently never crashing into the trauma there are methods that do that that have people relive their traumas over and over again and I am definitely not a fan of that kind of prolonged exposure I think it can be ret traumatizing it's important

what I call titrating we just touch into these Sensations and then so they don't have this overwhelming power over us so I hope that kind of answers your question a bit it's really to know not to smash the people into their trauma that there are ways that trauma can be healed and can be healed without being overwhelming again because to the nervous system being overwhelmed really is not that different than being than when we were traumatized the nervous system sees that it's the same kind of thing so again that was I I think what I

would say that the TR the tools for trauma when we have those TR Tools we can really uh come to peace with so many of the things that have happened to us in our lives so if I may try to synthesize this type of therapy and and please correct me if I'm if I'm wrong but it's that psychological trauma manifests physically as a set of symptoms that may be different for every person yes so it's so what somatic therapy is about is rather than try to take that top down approach where you're or remember it

or yeah think about it yeah you address the physical symptoms yes the impact on it the impact yeah the impact on it you know can I read one thing here absolutely yeah okay this is also another brother from another brother with another mother and it's about and number of people have written really beautiful things when I started when I was actually going to uh talk about this book for the first time to an audience of several thousand people I got up there and again I like I was frozen and I didn't know if I'd be

able to talk but then I remembered all of the things that different people have written about the book and written about me and all of a sudden I was just filled with courage and I could really be present with the audience and talk to them sort of in a way similar to what I'm talking how I'm talking to you but anyhow this is from Bessel Vander and he's one of the leading people also in the field of trauma he wrote the book called the body keeps its score and he said Peter LaVine is a wise

and kind P Pioneer of somatic therapies who has been a beacon for clinicians all over the world for understanding and dealing with the physical imprints of traumatic stress and um and so again wide variety of people have written like Alanis moriset and Gabor Gabor mate the person I think you might want to interview it sometime he's been on the show yeah oh he has been on the show he's wonderful yeah yeah he's a really good guy big heart lot of Heart Light of heart so anyhow again I think the idea that trauma is something that

happens in the body it affects the mind it affects the psyche but it's something that happens initially in the body and that's where you have to go to resolve the trauma to transform I rather say transform our traumatic experiences and usually when people transform these experiences they're more connected to themselves and they're more empathic both to themselves and to others and more kind to others and I think part of it is when you realize what trauma can do you want to help other other people not become traumatized I have a I have several really wonderful

godchildren and one of my godchildren had a he was had to go to the emergency I don't remember if he swallowed a marble or had a smashed his head or something and so I went there with him and I did some trauma first aid and he was fine H and then his mother told me long time after that sometime after that that he saw a kid being bullied in the school and he went up to the bullies and said this is not okay and he sat with the boy and just sat with the boy so

he and that really prompted me to write one of my other books that I wrote with my really good friend Maggie kleene called trauma proofing your kids a parents guide for instilling confidence and joy and resilience so that when children get those uh capacities those those um tools then they carry them through for the rest of their life and so why not start early because I've worked with people for example that have had uh uh Trauma from from birth or even before birth and uh so when they learn that they don't have to be traumatized

then that gives them this capacity to help others and to help themselves so that they're not traumatized so yeah I mean so go so going back to you know the the physical symptomology associated with trauma I there I was watching a YouTube video where you were speaking to a warvet oh Ray yeah MH I guess that was his name yeah and every time he would think about try to recall his his experiences on the battlefield he would he would like shutter physically as if you were reexperiencing exactly reliving it reliving those traumas yeah and what

I did was I what I noticed they had diagnosed him with everything depression anxiety PTSD Tourette Syndrome because they would see this but you don't develop Tourette Syndrome overnight anyhow uh I knew it was something very very different because these movements are movements his his head and body would want to make to see if they could loc because he was blown up by two of these IEDs these explosive devices and so his head would have turned to localize the source of the threat but at that same time he was literally blown up into the air

and went up into the air and then down on his back and his body was Contracting to to protect himself as much as it was possible and so when I just work with him with this movement here but just very slightly titrated just move a little bit here into the movement then move back then moving a little bit more moving back and he felt waves of warmth and he said afterwards that that was the first time that he felt okay because and that that and and the next day 80% of those convulsions were gone wow

and you just see him how he comes whoops comes into himself and and then how he brings that gift of compassion to his uh wife and then the child they had together so he was just a also just a beautiful example of when you can when you see you know Archimedes said give me a place to put my lever and it'll change the and I'll change the world and I think the body is that fulcrum that can really move the world of trauma into into healing and into transformation you know most PE many people when

they I work with them the kind of experiences they have are more like spiritual experiences rather than you would think of psychological experiences uh I work with this one woman who had severe panic attacks and agoraphobia so much that this was in 1969 that you couldn't go out of the house so I thought that some of these exercises that I was mentioning for the men with the you know who had these uh high blood pressure problems I started to help her relax those muscles but she went right into a fear but fortunately this image came

of a tiger getting crouched in the wall full and jumping towards crouching and getting ready to jump towards me and without quite knowing it I said Nancy there's a tiger crouched it's going to jump you need to run climb those rocks and Escape so At first she I could see she was just stuck she couldn't she couldn't move but I continued to encourage her and I said that's it here I'm just right with you and hold your hand and then her body started to go into waves of gentle shaking and trembling with with full spontaneous

breaths and then I could see in her body that she literally was climbing those rocks and sitting on top and I asked her what do you see and she said I see the Tiger but it can't hurt me because I'm safe up here and she then reported Ed that when I mentioned the tiger that she was too scared to move but then when I encouraged her she could act feel her legs starting to run starting to move because and then on the top not only did she see the Tiger but she saw herself when she

was a four-year-old child and was being held down by doctors and nurses for a tonsilectomy with The Ether mask force on her face she was terrified and her body needed to run for 20 years she was 24 when when I worked with her but when she described what happened she said but you know when I was there and looking down I felt as though I were being held by warm tingling waves and by the way the because of the Tiger image I I did realize where it came from and that that also became the title

of my first book which was waking the tiger healing trauma and it came from really understanding that we are all animals we are all mammals we are all primates of course and that when we connect with our brethren we find that they have great wisdom to give us and you know because you know a prey animal is is predated upon sometimes several times a day maybe multiple times a day but if they survive um they're not uh burdened with carrying that trauma with them so there are things that they do which is this shaking and

trembling that I could then guide my clients to do and that would take them out of the trauma also at that time I had the privilege a lifetime dream of being a a stress consultant with NASA and I would look go over the squiggles the physiological squiggles as they went in as they took off and as they went into Earth orbit this was quite yeah and um when they did that uh some of them would get sick as they went into the into zero gravity and and would sometimes even uh vomit and and uh this

was not just unpleasant but it could abort the flight and could cause a disastrous outcome because it could get into the electronics and so but most of them were completely resilient so I'm putting together the work with an with the animals and also the work with um uh with um um with with my guidance spiritual guidance why is it that animals seem to be so uh easily able to shake off a traumatic experience I think because they don't overthink they don't overthink they don't overthink we overthink and that's our trap and that's but again at

first when people start to connect with their bodies it can be difficult you know there's one other thing I mentioned uh that in somatic experiencing it's not a therapy per se but it rather is to help people do how they do what they do so we have people in all kinds of fields from cognitive behavior therapists from uh um therapists who you know who are developmentally interested but therapists of all uh ilk uh are really supported by knowing some of these basic tools of referencing what is going on in the body it seems like visualization

plays a large role here like helping somebody to like like leading somebody through a vis a visualization um exercise yeah that's part of it to perceive safety yep yep that's part of it absolutely H absolutely I mean but just not images of just have an image of but images that come from inside like in a way like my image of of Einstein that these were really they're not just mental images but they're inner images they're uh what's another word identic images they're very lifik images wow it reminds me of the book um the difference between

how animals and humans respond to stress uh the the wonderful book why zebras don't get ulcers oh yeah by by seosi yeah yeah yeah fantastic yeah I know it's a good book fantastic book y yep um are there any misconceptions uh about somatic therapy that you think people Harbor that might be worthwhile to uh dispel on this show um H well I think that U people might think that it's uh that too much can happen if they feel in their bodies and if they're guided gradually to touch into these Sensations then we're not over they're

not overwhelmed so I think that's an essential component because the person I mean many people who are not connected with their bodies and may not have been connected for decades um they don't know what to expect and it's something new and when people are traumatized often anything that they experience even if it's a positive direction even if it's moving with the sensations moving through the trauma even if it's a positive Sensations they're afraid of those and they block them and by blocking them they block their access to these healing components and so it it it

feel any change feels like feels frightening for a person who's been traumatized so the key again is to have them touch into the sensations one small amount at a time one of the uh I mean it's it's clear that the the issues are in the tissues and I think one of the right that's right one of the more I guess obvious examples um that that comes to mind for me is women who have been sexually traumatized a intercourse is something that that is painful painful and scary painful and scary yeah a lot of sexual dysfunction

that's right among both men and women and very often even if the people like in talk therapy they know what happened to them or even if they have emotions about that but then they're they come home and they're with their CH beloved lover and they try to engage sexually but then often it's the woman she freezes and uh she feels even worse because she thinks now that I know what happened and I and my anger may be about it but even knowing that it still doesn't change because my body is just going into this protective

mode so again what we need to do is have new body experiences that contradict those of overwhelming helplessness and of arousal and um so um and this is a Birthright for all of us to be to be sexual beings to be Spiritual Beings emotional beings but to be very much sexual beings as well and so I think when people can then find a portal to open up in a safe way to their own sexuality and they may need some coaching for this even after working through what are called procedural memories body memories tissue memories and

um they um they their body still like the Vietnam the Iraq vet that I was talking about you know they they they go into this uh protective mode but you can't feel these pleasurable feelings when your body is in a protective mode so it's a matter of then again finding ways for people to learn to be with those Sensations and maybe even what their body wanted to do at the time like with Nancy her body wanted to escape from being held down by the doctors and nurses while while she was put had The Ether mask

over her so I think that's a another important part of somatic ther or somatic experiencing but in somatic therapy is that we really know how to uh help the person work with these body memories and and um again U many therapist many people and even therapist uh are don't understand U tra memory you know uh imp implicit memories procedural memories and actually that was the motivation for writing also one of my books called trauma and memory brain and body in the search for The Living Past because it's that's where it lives in US it lives

us in the past and these memories they're not cognitive they're not they may have emotional components but they're basically about what the body was trying to do to protect itself maybe Millennia before but is no but is now interfering with their life so again these procedural memories and some of them are important are beautiful memories you know think about the time when you first learn how to ride a bicycle so maybe you were with a a parent or guardian or an older sibling and they're with you and their hands are just kind of on your

back and you're going together with them and then all of a sudden parent the guardian knows that they're ready and they just let them go and then they ride off the expression which is completely true is you never forget how to ride a bicycle and that's because those memories are there in our bodies but what happens if when we're learning to ride the bicycle they're really not supporting us and we have an accident then thinking about going on a bicycle can be uh impossible and again that's because those memories get reactivated those body me memories

get re reactivated yeah yeah yeah it's it's a it's it's it's difficult you know how how recalling you know traumatic experiences and just seeing how how deeply embedded um those past experiences can be throughout our life that's right but but again the good news if we understand that they memories body memories then we can we know that we can work with them that we don't have to have our lives dominated by them and I think that's the key look bad news trauma is a fact of life good news is it doesn't have to be a

life sense but we have to understand its nature and how it gets rooted embedded within the body absolutely how does how might one integrate sematic therapy techniques into their daily life ah okay so well may me uh okay so something happens and we're frightened and uh and but then if we can say remind ourselves okay where do I feel the fear and what is the sensation of fear now fear if you deconstruct it it has three components component number one the main one is body sensation twisting of the guts uh you know uh upsetting in

the guts uh heartbeat accelerating heartbeat and so forth feeling constricted all are things that the body is doing so those are the sensations but then we have the thoughts about those Sensations and then also not only do we have the thoughts but we have pictures of that and so just again just noticing the thought and not getting hooked on to the thought so uh often when the person is having a thought a negative thought like we'll do a a demonstration when I'm teaching and I'll say to the person something like uh or they'll say say

something like how do I know if this is going to last so I'll say something well if you're willing I'd like you to preface that with the sentence I have the thought that is this going to last that way they recognize it's just a thought so this that's the second part and then again there may be an image of when this happened originally in our usually in our childhoods so when we can then kind of teas them apart sensation uh well Sensations feelings uh thoughts and images then we're able to move through them to understand

and most people in many different forms of therapy don't understand how Salient how important that is to understand what what fear is about and how to deconstruct fear yeah feelings aren't facts feelings aren't facts yes good good you g me some good things for my next interview yeah no feelings are't facts and I think but often times when we're mired in negative thoughts uh they can feel very real that's right weting real yes exactly they we they assume that they are real So when you say the thought I have the the if you breakfast it

with I have the thought that then the person goes oh oh it's a thought it's only a thought you know and that's kind of my version of cognitive behavior therapy but again we have people who are trained in CBT and CPT and when they take our training they get so much more benefit in you know in whatever that that approach is the cognitive approach yeah or yeah for listeners viewers that are interested in exploring these Concepts further sematic therapy further what advice or resources would you recommend I'll give you um my website it's a somatic

experiencing one word somatic experiencing. comom and then that also links to the nonprofit that I founded some years ago which lists uh trainings but also lists therapists and different parts and now I think it's it's been train training has been offered now in 44 different countries um and so if somebody's looking for a therapist is there like they can find it certification or something that yes one might look for that's right and and again go to our link and then link to traumah healing.org which is the organization that supports the healing the proliferation and thoughts

about or healing about trauma and who stands to benefit the most from this type of therapy oh I would say everybody really especially people who don't think they can benefit really fascinating isn't there some I mean some people tend some some people are more are higher in openness in suggestibility MH um what relationship does this have to for example hypnosis you know like it not everybody's able to able to be hypnotized for example sure sure um well I mean I think there are overlaps between this work and certain types of uh hypnosis particularly the eriksonian

type therapist uh hyp hypnotherapist uh and I I think they could actually also a number of our students were also trained in ericon and hypnosis and so forth uh it's a good way also to to work with uh these inner images so again any approach which relies on or which is supports the person's healing capacity will be benefited by sematic experience absolutely no question about it I love it well very important work thanks for uh thanks for doing it oh yeah good well it's nice having a conversation yeah likewise I've got um one last question

for you but before we get to that where can people connect with you on social media and where can they pick up your book oh my gosh well the book is now you can get that on Amazon and I guess Barnes and Noble uh you can pre-order it uh it's going to be coming out in early spring love it yeah me too congrats what number book is this for you about 10 or 12 I guess wow prolific prolific man yeah well again it's um you know it's a gift that I've been given and so I

have a responsibility to use it yeah I love it well super important and we definitely we've barely scratch the surface of your work but uh people should definitely go and check out an autobiography of trauma last question that a healing Journey a healing Journey yeah yeah very personal for you very very personal and you've got some fantastic endorsements mhm yes on the book very exciting yeah yeah I'm really moved by it and I say the people this number of people who wrote those endorsement that their support was really important for me in in in reducing

my fear of bringing it out into the world and now you're doing you're doing the rounds on all the podcasts I know I know what does that feel like it's kind of in a way weird I don't know what in the world is going on here what am I doing and and do you listen to podcasts no I don't think I've ever heard a podcast you've never heard a podcast no well actually I looked I looked up your podcast you did yeah yeah yeah and that's where I found out you did you like what you

saw I did yeah I did and you know and people that I thought you know W were kind of might be snoody or something like that like I did one uh last week with um uh with the oh gosh uh that um the famous uh Indian India you know Drew no no no um I mean Drew is famous to me I don't know if he's he's Niche famous he's on the public TV all the time oh Sanjay Gupta no no no no anyhow he's very famous guy and so I I thought that it wouldn't be

a nice connection but it was we really enjoyed our eles I'm here enjoying being with you yeah so instead of like saying oh my God I can't do this um it's I I look forward to it well because you're probably used to doing a lot of Television I'm sure where you go on and you give like these sound bite answers to questions yeah yeah I'm not so much a fan of that no yeah well long form nothing beats a long form conversation I think that's where yeah the art of podcasting really has exactly exactly risen

to the top and become a real value at to societ when I talked to their publicity people I said I the only television ones I want to do are with u Christin amanor or uh Anderson Cooper another one I thought about um that these are sincere people and that it would be really authentic discussion yeah yeah yeah I I totally get it and you're here in town doing Diary of a CEO right right we had to reschedule that yeah yeah shout out to Stephen good man over there that's what I've heard that's what I've heard

I got to do that show it was it was a lot of fun yeah now is is this live or is this is U something that's kind no this is going to this is going to air whenever yeah we slotted in this but we don't have a huge backlog we like to keep our episodes topical sure um we used to do one a week now we're doing two a week so we have a lot more volume but yeah it was a real privilege to uh to get to chat with you and the last question that

gets asked to everybody on this show is what does it mean to you to live a genius life what is living a genius life me to you oh gosh wow you got me on that one yeah you know I was doing an interview uh one of the SE teachers incredible woman uh she has a heal she's a a she comes from a tribe in Tanzania a very you know a very grounded woman she has a a a Healing Center in Brazil for for traumatized women and uh U is her name and she's from the snail

clan in Tanzania and she was interviewing me and she said something similar to what you you were asking she said Peter do you realize you're a prophet and I said you got to be kidding there's no way I'm a prophet and she was really Stern and her picture is in there also and she said Peter you need to accept that mantle and so I think in a way you know what is what does that even mean and I I I think in a way I'm a Visionary because I have had visions and I'm a teacher

an esteemed teacher so I guess in that sense maybe I am and I was thinking about the book The Prophet by kahil gaban and I thought I could not be a prophet compared to something like him and then I went and I got the book again and looked through it and many of the things he said were also about the body and so I said yeah I can begin to open into that that yes I'm a teacher uh I teach from my Visionary part and and that's it and that's it yeah leading with vision leading

with vision yeah yeah but I think in a way we all if we're given that possibility we all have that part of ourselves that are that have visions and that visions that are really worth knowing for ourselves and sharing with others I couldn't agree more yeah we say sometimes on the show that genius isn't born it's built you don't have to be born a genius to become one and um and I couldn't agree more that everybody has everybody has genius within them yes absolutely yeah well thank you Dr LaVine thanks for coming out oh sure

hey if you like that video you need to check out this one here and I'll see you [Music] there [Music]