Susan Tait | CPTSDfoundation.org

Poets Lie, Bodies Don’t: Movement Journaling with Mindy Levine

Susan Tait — Mon, 09 Sep 2024 09:29:23 +0000

If “the moving finger writes, and having written, moves on,” as poet Omar Khayyam wrote, then I wonder if the moving body also writes in its own way. I think it must, for I see that trauma-informed yoga does exactly this. When we are not curious about the sensations in the body, we don’t know what we could know about the stories told there. Writing gives us what’s in our minds—very useful, but not everything. And sometimes a distraction, a refusal of part of our story.

Movement journalling is an experience of a relationship inside the body. I roll my shoulder and say, “This is my ‘Rice Krispies Pose’—Snap! Crackle! Pop!” I make light of this new language that I lack words for, although it has a name: interoception.

I consider Khayyam again. “Poets lie. This is important.” I feel something reliable in these words, but I don’t know what. Trauma-Informed Yoga (TIY) instructor Mindy Levine reacted.

“I wanted to stretch up, open arms, reading this,” she said.

Body-Brain Conversations: inside and outside your nervous system

“It sounds like your body’s response to my brain’s output,” I said.

“Yes…’Poets lie. This is important. I think when folks believe something as ‘truth,’ it’s without room to change perspective; it’s so limiting. I don’t think poetry or movement has a responsibility to truth. Neither reason nor logic are hinged on truth.”

This shocks me in several ways, and musical memory intercedes. “But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths—are mine the same as yours?” sang Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar. Andrew Lloyd Weber’s lyrics challenge the notion of One Truth.

I don’t like the idea that truth isn’t absolute reality, and for the same reason, I don’t like the notion of “moral relativism.” It sounds like anything can be justified if it serves personal convenience. I long for a standard. Mindy’s next remark helps.

“Am I Doing This Right?”

“Often, ‘truth’ gets connected with, ‘am I doing this right,’” she said. “It’s so…limiting.”

Biomechanics, one of her interests, would appear to be limiting, too, I think.

“My practice with yoga evolved into a fascination with biomechanics.” I look puzzled. “It’s laying the groundwork for personalizing yoga to the person, not the pose.”

Oh. Trauma-informed yoga rejects the perfect pose and, with it, the power to declare whether a given body is “wrong.” That judgment is about someone else’s body, from a brain that doesn’t inhabit it…and from an entitlement that doesn’t exist unless we, the students, give it away. The movement is the perfect expression of truth for the person making it.

Trauma-informed yoga finds power in the body that moves, not in the mind that judges nor the critic that watches. Authority belongs to the body and the ongoing conversation it has with its own brain. In a typical Western yoga class, authority rests outside the body-brain system you have and awards it to the critic who can’t feel the difference between pain and growth in your body. And who will tell you that “pain is your friend”—as my Aikido instructor remarked—and that the perfect pose is The Truth? Being the author of a good throw changes a reality, but it’s not “true.” It changes what is true.

Maybe truth must be relevant if it is to matter. That’s subjective, but “relevance” describes when that particular truth matters. Something could be true but inapplicable to your body.

What Does Your Body Want Now?

“What does your body want now?” Mindy remarked. “Stillness? If stillness isn’t comfortable, then movement. Movement’s purpose is to open more possibilities for movement. But it isn’t a reason for movement. It just is.”

“A body in motion wants to stay in motion,” I said. “A body at rest wants to stay at rest.” I chuckle. “Unless it’s like yours. You like motion.”

Mindy laughs. “It’s conversational. If a situation has left me doubtful or unsure, I explore balancing. If a situation has left me panicky, I lift weights.” She pauses. “That’s not advice.” Even in this conversation, the subject-matter expert declines the authority to declare what I should do. I appreciate this. The approach applies to much more than yoga—it attacks the whole idea of entitlement, of authority delegated to someone else, or taken by someone else, over me or you. The root of trauma. The thing that brings us here.

An Invitation to the Dance: Biles, Ballet, and Basketball

“Dancers may be more interoceptively aware.” Mindy looks up a study. “Dancers are often expected to work while injured. It’s an ideal and a culture.” I frown. Lipizzaner horses dance, but if anyone ever tried to force these Spanish School horses perform (Lipizzaner Stallions | Videos | Viking Cruises (vikingrivercruises.com) injured, the persons responsible would be shunned, shamed, and prosecuted for animal cruelty.

“Gymnastics, too.” I think of Simone Biles, of her experience of “the twisties.” A gymnast who doesn’t know where she is in space, moving at the speed of Olympians, could kill herself landing badly. And yet the rage directed at Biles for daring to self-care, to assert her own authority over her own body, was astonishing, infuriating. People who don’t get off the couch felt entitled to attack her for failing to entertain them. Football players get carried off the field and fallen basketball players get huddled even by members of the other team. Horses get cared for. But not gymnasts?

The gymnastics audience doesn’t own, train, or even know Simone Biles. And that yoga instructor tapping your elbow into “position” may have injured you to get a perfect pose that will get broken in a moment’s move, and pain you for days.

I wince. I want to get happier. “Did you see that Chicago news story about the black cat who fell five stories and was video-recorded landing on its feet and walking away?”

“That’s interoception.”

“And the feline spine’s extra vertebrae.”

What Yoga is for: Ethical Living

“Yoga is about you,” Mindy said. “Yoga is not ‘to feel better.’ It’s not outcome-based. It’s about being in your own life, it’s about being in charge of yourself, it’s about being autonomous. It doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen to you. It means they don’t have to define how you think about your choices in the Now.” I consider this. The event may have removed a choice for me, but I don’t have to think of myself exclusively in the context of that event. Now it is history, and while it may change my choices, it doesn’t take away my ability to make choices. It’s not as if I have died. It’s acknowledging that I have changed, and the change is reflected in my current choices. How I look at my history—my judgment—my interpretation—it can change how I choose to apply the events and what I learned from those events.

“Trauma is what happens when autonomy is taken away,” I say, slowly.

Mindy nods. “Yoga is ethical living: not investing authority outside of your body, over your body.” Despite what happens.

Not Just Journaling: Harnessing Healing Power

Susan Tait — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 10:45:09 +0000

I was cautious, but hopeful, about attending a professional seminar by Erena DiGonis for clinical counselors about clinical journaling in general, and in pursuit of one particular approach: Pennebaker’s storytelling method.

I picked up more, so much more than I expected. Getting informed this way is safer than just charging into Pennebaker’s method—or anybody’s method. Moreover, this education and experience made me better at evaluating therapists for myself.

How I “Met” Trauma Journaling via Pennebaker’s Method

A friend who had known Pennebaker at college asked me to try the Pennebaker method. He’s using it to see if it would move his complex trauma. He sent a link about the Pennebaker method from podcaster Alex Huberman. After listening to it a couple of times, my friend and I penciled out the steps for trying it out. We began an eight-week test, writing at least one story weekly about a childhood trauma.

I suspended my effort five weeks in. I was struggling with what was coming up for me.

We had the steps, essentially, but what we didn’t have were the prerequisites. Both of us come from science/tech education backgrounds, and we regard protocols seriously. We didn’t expect results if we didn’t follow the defined protocol. Our combined notes laid out the steps, but not the safeguards. And I did not exercise my choice about engagement until I had to quit Pennebaker’s method outright. Making the choice of breaking the protocol I was testing…didn’t make sense to me. But neither did hurting myself.

We continue to work on this privately. That said, I completely understand and agree with one of the key learnings I took from Erena DiGonis’s class: Pennebaker is not the method I should try first if I want to intentionally journal for trauma, especially if not supported by professional help. There are easier starts, and alternative approaches, and Huberman’s podcast ends with a fine list of resources for more information.

Seven Sentence-long Summaries and Safeguards

These are not just about Pennebaker; he is one of many. Journaling assumptions may not work if a client with a stroke suddenly finds she can’t spell or write any longer, but can read. So, the first rule emerges:

1. Spelling and grammar/don’t matter.

If you are not a good reader, writer, college graduate, or a verbal personality, you can still benefit from journaling. Writing lyrics worked for people whose gifts aren’t academic. Lyrics are accessible; they have a beat. “Many of our clients are creatives that are suppressed,” said one attendee. “They may well be coming for help with that.” Think of quote journals, the scrapbook approach, “memebooks,” haiku, poembook collections of your favorites, and deliberate musical choices to listen to, feel, or write.

2. Complex cases may not be appropriate for clinical journaling. (Consider the Kate Adams Journal Ladder instead.)

I can speak to this one personally: it’s like the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” or spring cleaning your house after 20 years of neglect; there’s always more stuff, more associations…more stories. That is one of the shocking things about Pennebaker’s effect on me: I found deep relationships among trauma stories I thought were disconnected. I have since realized just how much danger I was in when I was surviving the events that came up. This has been retraumatizing. I would have started there first, knowing what I know now.

3. Keep it to yourself.

Adults have profound and justified fears about having a journal’s privacy violated. I posted my efforts to protect my journal at college.

Horrifying stories emerged from attendees. Erena said, “Privacy violations compound the trauma.” The journal has only one reader, and that’s the author. Clinicians follow up on whether the homework is done, as a safeguard.

4. “You need to shift from judge to scientist.”

Being very purpose-focused, intent on the journal as data, helps. Don’t just rehearse the trauma by witnessing it again.

5. Affirmations, IF-firmations, and Gratitude: Attitude guides discovery.

We briefly discussed the Smyth study: Positive Affect Journaling and related approaches.

“Affirmations” don’t mean anything to me. I just think I’m lying to myself. I’ve used “IF-firmations”—“What if ?” The “IF” opens possibility in a way that the uncritical affirmation doesn’t.

Gratitude comes when you have enough time to see what the terrible experience left as a gift. “Trauma works like an initiation,” said Janelle Innerarity, a counselor in private practice. “It cleans you out, but it leaves debris.”
You can’t be expected to be grateful that bad things happened to you if you never found the benefit. Gratitude comes with time and distance; it has its own geometry. It has made sense to me to pair trauma journaling with the gratitude journal and measure the gap between the hurting and the healing.

6. “Put it on the prescription pad. There’s an insurance code for that.”

Dollar Store supplies work fine: cheap notebooks, colored pens, stickers…I often journal with photographs and found items. Talk with your therapist (if you have one) about what they can cover.

7. Journal with media you like.

Visual and audio journaling also work. Just capture the story in the medium that’s easiest for you. Mind maps work too, scattering words on a page and making connections that feel right; there’s a free online tool from Lucid if you like digital tools.

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Susan Tait