Healing Trauma — Allow Yourself to Shake
Dear Awesome Woman,
Ever find yourself shaking after a particularly stressful experience? Maybe you just had a conflict with someone or a near accident and your body starts to shake. Rather than getting embarrassed and trying to calm down and stop the shaking, just allow it. Your body is releasing excess stress hormones and bringing itself back to a state of equilibrium.
The incident could have been anything that was emotionally or physically disturbing to you. In the midst of the event, you may have argued, walked away or stood silent. But what you do afterwards is also important. Your body has just been in the sympathetic nervous system and a whole bunch of adrenaline has raced thru you. You were primed up and using your fight, flight or freeze response.Terrific! This is exactly how our body is programmed — this is a healthy mind-body system.
And our body knows exactly what to do afterward if we allow it to do its thing. Ever watch an animal after it’s been scared and has run off or fought or even played “dead”? Notice that it shakes. We, as souls in a body, also need to do this to prevent stress hormones from getting stuck in our cells. These hormones are here to help — to give the body the energy to respond to a potentially dangerous situation. But we don’t want the body to stay stuck in that state of being. One could remain “frozen” to a degree around particular situations and this makes it hard to move forward in a more empowered way. When we allow our bodies to discharge the excess adrenaline by shaking, we are decreasing the chances of emotionally remaining stuck.
The first time I heard of this, I was at a trauma release workshop at a coach summit. I attended the class because I was interested in body work, but was mesmerized by the instructor’s painful story of the physical and emotional problems that she experienced after a car accident. She was well enough to walk away from the collision, but as she stood on the sidewalk staring at her wrecked car, she recalls hugging herself tightly. Hugging ourselves gives us a sense of comfort after a traumatic experience, but if our body is shaking and we are trying to prevent it from doing so, this can lead to problems. The shaking is the body’s way of releasing adrenaline and bringing balance back to our system. The instructor told us that she had stopped her body’s natural tremoring response because she was embarrassed and was just trying to “be ok” in public.
Unfortunately, she suffered emotionally and physically for many years after the accident and she attributes it to the suppression of this release response. Her healing came when she got treated by Dr. David Bercelli, author of The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process. His work teaches people how to allow shaking in the body to help heal from being stuck in the fight, flight or freeze response.
Anytime you find yourself or anyone for that matter shaking after an intense experience, no matter how big or how small — allow that response. It’s the body’s G-d given wisdom.
Miriam Racquel (Meryl) is a Somatic Healer, Clarity Coach and Writer, helping to empower women to trust themselves through the wisdom of their body and intuition. Marriage tune-up, toxic relationship healing, career decisions, goal setting, emotional and physical pain relief, and trauma processing can all be accomplished through an integrated somatic process in person or over the phone.Through learning to trust the wisdom of their bodies, emotions, and intuition, women can discover a clear, healthy path to empowerment, vitality and joy. Sign up for Love-Yourself-More Monday newsletters and other freebies atMiriamRacquel.com or schedule your Free Clarity call.
