May 2025
Trauma can feel like a rupture — a shattering of the trust we once had in ourselves, others, or the world. But within trauma, there is also wisdom. Not because suffering is noble, but because our pain holds clues to what we needed, what was taken from us, and — most importantly — what we still deserve.
This post offers pathways to reconnect with your body, your inner self, and your right to live free from shame and fragmentation.
🌀 Safety and Connection: The Foundation of Healing (Judith Herman)
In her groundbreaking book Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman reminds us that healing from trauma is not a solitary journey — it is built on connection. Safety is the first stage of healing, and it’s not only about the absence of danger, but the presence of support. You deserve to feel safe in your body, in your relationships, and in your community.
Recovery is not linear. But knowing that you’re not broken — that your reactions were survival — can begin to dissolve the shame that trauma often plants.
🧠 The Body Remembers: Somatic Wisdom (Pat Ogden)
Pat Ogden, founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, teaches that trauma lives not just in memory but in the body. You might notice tension in your shoulders, a clenched jaw, or a racing heart in situations that don’t seem dangerous — that’s your body protecting you, long after the danger has passed.
Through gentle awareness, movement, and curiosity, somatic practices help you complete the survival responses that got stuck. Instead of fighting or fleeing, you learn to feel, observe, and reclaim your body as a source of truth and safety.
💬 Listening to All Parts of You (Internal Family Systems – IFS)
Sometimes healing feels impossible because we feel at war with ourselves. Maybe one part of you wants to move forward, but another is frozen in fear. IFS, developed by Richard Schwartz, offers a hopeful perspective: all parts of you are trying to help in the only ways they know how.
Even the parts that self-sabotage or numb are not enemies — they are protectors. In IFS, we learn to meet these inner parts with compassion, curiosity, and care. As we build trust with our inner system, healing happens from the inside out.
🧘🏾♀️ Reclaiming the Body Through Choice and Presence (TCTSY)
For many survivors, traditional yoga can feel unsafe or triggering. Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) changes that by centering choice, interoception (feeling from within), and non-coercive language.
TCTSY doesn’t ask you to perform — it invites you to notice. What does it feel like to raise your arm? Do you want to move or rest? In this approach, your body becomes yours again — not a battlefield, but a place where you get to choose.
🌱 You Are Not Alone. You Are Not Broken.
Trauma can isolate, but healing reconnects. The wisdom of trauma is not in the pain itself, but in what that pain shows us: our deep need for safety, autonomy, dignity, and love.
If you’re a survivor, know this — your symptoms are not signs of weakness. They are signs of strength. They show that your body, your system, has been fighting to protect you all along.
There is no one way to heal. But as Judith Herman reminds us: recovery unfolds in relationships — with others, with your body, and with the sacred, complex inner world you carry within.