Comments on Trauma and NSEW
There will eventually be a bit more information on our approach on the website. Belleruth is publishing a book on imagery and trauma which will also describe our work. Until then, I'll try and offer a brief description.
We have developed an energy healing approach based on the work of Bill Gray which works directly with the nervous system. My colleague, Carol DeSanto, and myself are both psychotherapists as well as healers and the Nervous System Energy Work (NSEW) is the most specifically effective and useful energy work we have practiced for psychotherapeutic concerns because it links so directly with the bodily system in which so many therapeutic concerns are based. The natural route for awareness is through nervous system tissue. Connecting to bodily experience, grounding, and so on are best accomplished through opening the nervous system to awareness.
Work with the auric field and chakras alone, while very useful and the kind of work we have been deeply trained in, has a more indirect impact on physical process and experience, on emotion, and on the patterns of trauma response which are based primarily in the nervous system.
Over the course of our learning to work directly in the nervous system we began to identify patterned energy responses spread throughout the nervous system whenever trauma clients thought about or evoked recollection of their trauma. We developed some ways to loosen these patterned energy responses from the nerves and clear them from the nervous system and clients reported significant diminishment of their trauma responses. One of the advantages of this process was that it specifically required the most minimal stimulation of the recollection and so is much less retraumitizing in nature than techniques which require stronger evocation of the trauma response. It appears to have significantly lasting effect for trauma survivors.
It does, however, require more training and skill in energy than other "energy based" trauma techniques out there, such as the Callahan technique and so on.
Some other areas of application of our NSEW work in trauma:
- Clearing frozen/stored emotion and sensory impression from peripheral nervous system tissue-- many chronic pain states and somatic triggers for trauma response are due to local, peripheral, encapsulated sensory impressions which when activated re-create the trauma experience.
- We have developed a range of processes which work directly with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to reduce sympathetic reactivity, increase vagal and parasympathetic response, and facilitate self calming and self soothing.
- Work in the nervous system, especially in the spinal cord and nerves of the legs, creates and access route for abuse survivors to find their way to the ground and stay anchored into their body more. The route through the spinal cord is the natural route of awareness from the brain into the body, but has the advantage of not going directly through the visceral core of the body. For most abuse survivors the visceral core is where strong emotions are felt and stored or contained, and connects them to the front of their body where they felt intruded on and so trying to ground them through the core tends to be restimulating. Many survivors can find connection to their legs via the spinal cord without going into their visceral insides, to the sciatic nerves and down.
by Jim Kepner