Peter Levine – Peter Levine PhD on Trauma: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness

Outline

Child Development: The Signs of Trauma in Each Developmental Period:

• Pre-Natal
  • Hormonal interactions between mother and child
  • Birth Stress
• Year One
  • Safety, affection and containment
  • Proprioceptive development
  • The Dopamine System
  • The space to explore one’s effect on the world
  • The formation of a self that is different from Mom and Dad
  • Testing boundaries
• Age 3-5
  • The Biology and balance of shame
  • The importance of shame in society
  • The signs of overshaming
  • The signs of undershaming
    • The initial forays into sexuality
      • The importance of flirting
      • How these sames stages replay themselves out in later life

The Naturalistic Mechanisms of Trauma

• Understanding our primary survival tactics and how they play out in the body: Flight, fight, freeze and collapse
• 500 million years of evolution: Our Polyvagal underpinnings
  • How the Dorsal Vagal System is related to shutdown and collapse
  • Fight or flight: Sympathetic/adrenal System mobilization, Returning to our Mammalian birthright: The Ventral vagal system and social engagement
• How we get “stuck”
  • Tonic immobility – The fallback to freeze
  • Freeze couples with Fear
    • Dissociation
    • Bracing and terror
    • Euphoric dissociation
  • Collapse
• Somatic and emotional – syndromes and complexes
  • Emotional – anxiety, depression
  • Somatic – chronic pain, fibromyalgia
  • Autonomic – migraines, irritable bowel

Resolving Traumatic Reactions

• The importance of “Bottom-Up” processing
  • The Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain
  • In an Unspoken Voice
• Somatic Experiencing©
• Renegotiation vs. Reliving
  • Restoration of self-regulation
  • Trauma isn’t about the event, but the body’s inability to process and integrate the nervous system charge
  • The importance of developing a felt sense
• The nine basic stages of trauma treatment
  • Containment of strong sensation and emotion
  • Pendulation – The dual opposites of sensation
  • Titration – going gradually
  • Completion
    • Renegotiation of active for passive responses
  • Simple exercises that you can use in your practice

Spirituality and Trauma

• Trauma as one of the 4 avenues to enlightment
  • Lessons from the Kundalini
  • A feeling of “okayness”, wholeness and trust in the world
    • And other side effects of effective trauma treatment
  • The importance of maintaining balance in one’s life