Attention to trauma
After a busy week of working, I make an appointment with Marlies Roosendaal, body worker with specialisation: trauma. Since yesterday I have a spot in my back that hurts. Marlies observes that it is not a sports injury, but that we have to deal with a trauma here. Traumas are not properly processed experiences stored in your body. To pay attention to the place where you have pain or which raises your attention for some reason, you can enter the trauma. That is what trauma work is for.
Contact with your body
Marlies invites me to take my attention to my back, and to feel what’s going on. By giving attention to the spot it turns into a warm spot and I feel that my heart responds. I experience images of moments of grief and loss, a theme where I’m working on lately. When Marlies puts her hand on the spot it starts to glow. Space and enlightenment appear.
What is a trauma
Marlies: “Your body is like a map. Everything what you have experienced in life is stored in your body. Similar with trauma’s; experiences that have made an impression and which you didn’t express through your body. Usually these are experiences of a small child, that seemingly didn’t make such a huge impression at the time, but had a great impact when you were that small. And that can bother you still when you are an adult. We continue to keep the stress, because we have a neo-cortex that tries to understand everything mentally. That is how the tension doesn’t unload and it stays with you. This often causes pain in the long term.”
At the end of the session the spot in my back feels a lot less painful. Also, my chest area opened up. In the night after the session I have a vivid dream with a clear message. The day after the pain is gone.
Do you want to give attention to your body by trauma work; check out Body work Amsterdam.
Photocredits: Jasper de Waal