Nature is a potent healer. Turning to nature for healing is a free way to pour into yourself daily. As humans, we need to be in nature to be balanced. And when you’re recovering from trauma, being out in nature during the day is even more important.
What’s behind the healing benefits of being outdoors in nature for your trauma recovery? It’s the circadian rhythm.
Read MoreWhen healing from trauma, grounding and reconnecting with your center is not the only thing that matters in order to move forward. If you can’t move, or release the stress from a perceived or existing threat and the resulting trauma, that energy and stress is stored in your body. This is why moving the energy is an essential part of healing and trauma recovery.
Read MoreAs 2021 is coming to a close with policy makers worldwide urging for the individual to take responsibility for the health of others as a sign of solidarity, the question that echoes is: Is health a personal responsibility or can we expect others to endeavor healing for us and make us healthy?
Let me be so bold: The healing journey is a personal endeavor. Health is a personal responsibility. Here’s why.
The world can be a triggering place and for the past two years our collective is going through a potentially deeply traumatizing time. One organ that is involved in navigating your response to the world is the polyvagal nerve (or vagus nerve). While your polyvagal nerve influences your nervous system response and in turn, your body’s response to what is happening to or around you, there is way to integrate your body in your healing work and work the opposite way around: Various bodywork techniques allow you to stimulate and influence your vagus nerve and consequently can help you calm down whenever you are triggered or experiencing episodes of anxiety and panic attacks. A brilliant, free and accessible way to do this is humming.
Read MoreSleep is essential for healing and wellbeing. During your sleep your body gets to regenerate, heal, detox, recover from the day. Cell regeneration, promoted by the so-called “growth hormone” mostly happens during the REM phase of your sleep, which is the deepest sleep and the time you are dreaming. Under normal circumstances, your brain processes your day and everything that happened during your sleep. It makes new connections and transforms negative thoughts and sensations into lessons learned during the deep sleep phase (called REM). But why is sleep an issue when you’ve made traumatic experiences? And what is the role of sleep in trauma recovery?
Read MoreFood is an often overlooked link in the realm of mental health, especially when it comes to trauma and recovering from trauma. But what you eat during recovery can make a difference: Research that goes back as far as 1982 shows that the sympathetic nervous system responds to changes in caloric intake. Certain foods can trigger your nervous system acitivity and along with it your trauma response.
Read MoreIn this day and age, we have become fond of the term “mental health”. There’s a mental health awareness month and celebrities engage in openly sharing their mental health struggles online. The bravery to share is applauded, but the focus on mental health as a disease is still incredibly narrow.
So, what exactly does mental health mean? How do you “have” it? How come someone does not? How can you really heal?
Read More“Vulnerability” has become a popular topic among entrepreneurship, leadership and mental health discussions. It is a term that is omnipresent these days: We are encouraged to be vulnerable in order to connect, to succeed, to attract what is (good) for us. Yet, what we exclude from this narrative of vulnerability and its benefits is that boundaries are part of being vulnerable, too. Vulnerability does not translate to sharing our most painful trauma with the world in detail. It means sharing it with those who deserve to hear our story.
Read MoreWhen I follow the dots of my life, I can see that they are what got me here. Life is our greatest teacher. My experiences are where I am from.
Finding purpose in what we have been through and seeing the beauty, resilience and strength that is within us due to both our joyful and our traumatic experiences makes room for acceptance and gratitude. And gratitude is healing. Crisis has the beautiful potential to transform us into our true selves, if we don’t run away from it.
Read MoreEmotional Time Travelling can be referred to as travelling to past experiences in our memories and to possible future scenarios in our imagination inside of our minds. In other words, focusing on what has already happened or on what might happen. This kind of reflection on the past or the future directly impacts the way you feel now.
Read More
