Peter Levine's Secret to Releasing Trauma from the Body

So anyhow, we have PTSD here, which in some ways has been a profoundly important definition in that it gave a voice to people who are really suffering and who are otherwise diagnosed as, well, it's just in your head, or these people are suffering, it's not flashbacks, but paranoid schizophrenia and so forth. So anyhow, we'll see how I start to work with Ray with this explosion, with his shock reaction, so that we're then able to afterwards process the emotional components. And unfortunately, there are times when I'm talking, so you'll have to listen to me. In this video, you will see Ray, a Marine who was blown up by two explosive devices in Iraq. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And you will see how he moves from being really severely debilitated by PTSD and other issues. I don't like it when people take care of me. I can't stand it. So I mean, it. You want your independence. Exactly, I wanted my independence. So again, I want you just to see his body and to see how your body resonates with his, to notice his aversion, his hiding. And the first, I guess you could call it a now moment, was when I reflected back to him, and you want your independence. Because again, if you think about this, a warrior, one moment a warrior, the next moment, totally helpless. I didn't, you know, I didn't, I don't like the idea of being a burden to somebody. In the beginning, I had to kind of teach myself how to walk, talk, and think again. I guess every day it's been getting a little better, kind of. Kind of. What kind of medications are you on? Uh-oh. You remember? Uh-oh. They got me on like six or seven. Do you know what they're on? What they're for, supposedly? Pain. In fact, Ray had been prescribed a cocktail of powerful medications, not only for pain, but for PTSD, TBI, traumatic brain injury, Tourette's syndrome, and depression. By the way, Tourette's syndrome doesn't usually occur in a moment, you know, but. The involuntary movements that you make with your head and neck like this, when did that begin? I wanna say like a month and a half after the blast. That's typical, by the way. Now, I'm gonna give you an idea. Okay. And we'll see where we can go with it, okay? Okay. See, the movements that you're making are the kind of movements that your body would have made if there was an explosion. And what it's doing is it's kind of repeating those movements over and over again. And that's what the body does in trauma. It replays the trauma over and over as somatic signs and symptoms. That's really, really important. Really important. That it's not primarily about the memory, but of the recycling of what you could call a procedural memory, the body memory in quotes, and how it gets stuck. And how sometimes if we know that and we can access it, that something that's so severe can actually change literally in moments, as you'll see, because in the next session, the convulsions were really mostly gone. It's sort of like it got stuck there. I'd like to see if we can get you some tools so you can stretch this out. See the convulsion. These reactions are a little bit softer. I want to have you very slowly. And you see, now he's interested. He's making a little contact. Very gently, opening and closing your mouth, just the smallest amount, and then come back a little bit, and then just go to where you feel a little resistance. And what I'm doing here, because I could see when he would go into these convulsions, I could see that the jaw clenched first, and then that spread down the neck and the shoulders. I could also have worked with his neck or his shoulders as well, but this is the linchpin for that response. And if we can get underneath that radar, then it will dissolve. Trigger those movements probably, but we'll also give you a chance to feel what's going on before the jerks, okay? So let's just do that together, okay? Did you feel what happened that time? There was just a tingling sensation in my body. Exactly. What happens? And that's an indication of relaxation, tingling, warmth. When you're exposed to something like you've been exposed to, I mean, being in a war zone, and then having an explosion, it's almost like you get jolted right out of your body. And so what we're doing is calling it back into your body.