Wild animals have a natural ability to discharge extreme levels of stress by completing fight and flight responses. Humans, on the other-hand, can be readily overwhelmed and override the nearly identical mechanisms that we share with animals born and living in nature. We do this by enlisting the rational mind, and the inhibitions are expressed as symptoms; some appear shortly after the event, others develop months and years later.
Fortunately, the very same instincts (and related survival based brain systems) that are involved in the formation of trauma symptoms can be enlisted in the transformation and healing of trauma. Therapeutically, this “instinct to heal” and regulate extremely levels of stress is engaged through the awareness of body sensations that contradict those of paralysis and helplessness, and which restore resilience, equilibrium and wholeness.