Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma

Our feelings and our bodies are like water flowing into water. We learn to swim within the energies of the (body) senses. Tarthang Tulku

In the myth of Medusa, anyone who looked directly into her eyes would quickly turn to stone.

The neo-cortex must elaborate on instinctual information, not control it.

All of us have had experiences that lose something in the telling.

The condensation of an entire event into a single image is characteristic of trauma.

What happens then is that the intense, frozen energy, instead of discharging, gets bound up with the overwhelming, highly activated, emotional states of terror, rage, and helplessness.

Though Marius’ healing was full of myth and drama, the key to resolving his trauma was in acknowledging and regaining his heritage as a competent, resourceful human being.

Perhaps the best way to describe the felt sense is to say that it is the experience of being in a living body that understands the nuances of its environment by way of its responses to that environment.

Because of the nature of trauma, there is a good chance that the cathartic reliving of an experience can be traumatizing rather than healing.