You know when you stub your toe really hard and you let out a huge scream of pain along with a few well emphasized "FUCKS"? It's actually been proven that this raises your pain threshold and helps the pain subside faster. But why does this trick actually work and how can you use it to heal your decades old trauma? This week I'm diving into the reasons behind how this somatic practice works and a practice for you to try on your own at the end!
Let's start with what trauma actually is. Trauma is NOT the incident that happened that caused the stress. Trauma may be caused by that incident, but trauma is actually the nervous system response that sticks around after a traumatic incident. You're no longer in the car accident and your body is fully healed, but trauma creeps back in when you start driving on the highway. Suddenly your heart rate spikes, your palms get sweaty, your driving becomes erratic, you assume all the cars are going to hit you. This response in your nervous system is trauma (post-traumatic stress to be specific), and it's a totally normal and natural process of the brain.
When the original car accident happened, you were probably not equipped to deal with that level of stress in the moment. Likely, your nervous system went into a stress response, like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Again, these are totally normal and natural ways for your brain to help you survive. When you need to react quickly with a straight head you don't need the stress of the moment interfering. The brain has learned many ways to help you survive and this is one.
The issue is that our society isn't really built for survival anymore. So, when a traumatic or stressful event happens, we don't go through the full stress cycle, which brings us back to stability. This means the cycle is left open and that can have some really devastating effects on our bodies and minds. The stress cycle ideally looks like this: start in parasympathetic nervous system (calm), traumatic event, activated sympathetic nervous system, stress response (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn), energetic expenditure to neutralize traumatic event, reactivated parasympathetic nervous system (calm). The one you're likely missing the most is the energetic expenditure to neutralize the traumatic event.
When your body goes into a traumatic stress response it is prepared to fight for its life in the sympathetic nervous system! It's turning on all your alarm systems, it's sending blood to muscles, it's slowing down digestion, it's preparing to do something big in response. But what happens when the stressful event is a call from your boss? Your sympathetic nervous system is activated, but there is nothing big to do. You probably tried to shove down the feelings and "be calm" so you can get back to work. After work you probably went out for some drinks to forget about it. The next day you forgot all about the talk with your boss, but your nervous system didn't. And these stressors get trapped in your body as energy waiting to get unleashed. This entrapment of energy is what causes the majority of our mental and physical health problems.
So, how does sounding heal trauma?
If your biggest issues in your mental and physical health are energy trapped in the body, then moving that energy would help heal it. Energy is a vibration, a frequency. Sound is also a frequency. And the throat chakra (the energy center at your throat) is specially designed to let energy out. That's how your voice works. You convert your energy into a frequency that travels through the vocal cords and makes a noise. The energy escapes the body as this frequency. And you do this all the time! It's so easy and natural to make sound most of the time.
So, if you were able to unblock some of this energy stuck in your body, then you made sound, the energy would be liberated through your throat! Sound is one of the most potent ways you have to rid this energy from your body. That's why one of the main principles of Tantra is sounding. Tantrikas have understood for centuries that sound is integral in liberation, and that when we hold back sounding, we are holding on to trauma in the body.
Sounding helps us complete the stress cycle and move the energy out of the body so that we can reactivate the parasympathetic nervous system and move back into the joy of living!
INSPIRED ACTION: Here's a practice to help you liberate yourself using sound! The next time you feel stressed or overwhelmed by an emotion try this. When you have privacy and can make some noise in peace, then drop totally into the stress or emotion. This only works if you allow yourself to go there. Don't hold back. Don't try to calm yourself or be politically correct. Really go for it. Feel the entirety of your stress, or emotion. Then allow yourself to make noise. Yell, scream, cry, laugh, just make any noise that wants to come out. Fake it at first if you must, but then drop in authentically when you can. Breathe with the noise. Move as you make noise. Kick and punch the air if you need to. Let yourself feel anger, shame, guilt, or judgement. And keep making noise. Dropping in fully will help liberate the stuck energy, but sounding will help move it out of the body! If you're not sounding, ask yourself why you don't feel safe enough doing this practice, then try it again when you feel safer.
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