Patterns of Hypervigilance and the Use of East Asian Medicine

Traumatic stress trembles through the body down to its primal core. 

These impacts do not just happen on the physical level but instead ripple out through our entire system as a profound vibrational disturbance. Sometimes traumatic stress is lightning quick like a violent rattle through our tissues, while other times it might be slow and sneaky, sliding under our surfaces without any conscious awareness. By its very nature, traumatic stress is messy, multi-faceted, and deeply complex, and our responses to it are some mysterious amalgam dependent on the depth of the trauma, its persistence or regularity in our lives, and how we individually, constitutionally, respond to it.   

Being able to move with the ebbs and flows of our human experience, to contract and then expand again, is a sign of a nervous system that feels capable of reacting, then settling and refinding homeostasis. On the other hand, the trauma spectrum response is an expression of an energetic system that is stimulated beyond its ability to cope: physically, psychologically, or/and spiritually. This is a place of overwhelm that we can not immediately process or recover from. And also, it is an entirely appropriate and intelligent part of our self-preservation hard-wiring. We are designed to self-protect and withdraw from unsafe situations. 

The true trouble arises when this place of contraction and hypervigilance becomes our unyielding norm. Even when safety is available and consistently present, our bodies can become locked in a perpetual withdrawal strategy. Consciously or unconsciously, it may just feel too unsafe to move from this guarding place. Ultimately this keeps us tight and small in our inner lives, as well as in our interactions with the outer world. 

From a clinical perspective, the impacts of traumatic stress arise through a vast array of manifestation and intensity. Beyond anxiety, depression, and insomnia, these impacts often affect multiple physiological systems, including cardiovascular, neurological, digestive, immune, and endocrine, not to mention all of the musculoskeletal guarding patterns in the body. I think of these like quiet sentinels in the tissues, always on guard, trying to shield us from the worst of life without us realizing how they are always, always on.

Because of the complicated, energetic nature of trauma, East Asian medicine is particularly useful in restoring regulation to our energetic infrastructure. By its very nature, East Asian medicine meets each individual exactly where they are without rote prescriptions or set protocols. As Alaine Duncan describes in her book, The Tao of Trauma, "rather than treating only the symptoms of traumatic stress, East Asian medicine allows for a broadened perspective that allows access to the deepest parts of not just the body, but also the psyche and spirit, which are possibly the places where trauma makes its most profound and persistent imprint.” 

Gratefully, just as we are naturally predisposed to feel overwhelmed by traumatic stress, we are also hardwired to heal and transform traumatic experiences. Our reactions to trauma are “highly evolved, biologically dictated, and a life saving response to an overwhelming situation (Duncan).” Also the effects of trauma are not set in stone, they are not a life sentence, and they do not mean a forever brokenness within us.

As a practitioner, it is my hope to continuously make contact with that place inside each person that can never be broken, that unalterable sacred space of their true nature. My intent is to create situations of trust and safety, where each person can make frequent contact with an “anchor of resilience” inside of them (Duncan). Our bodies don’t just need healing, they need connection. But when we experience trauma, our bodies learn to replace connection with protection (Lexy Florentina). 

These are some of the ways in which I support people in reestablishing connection and remembering what is fundamentally resilient and malleable within them. It is my hope that these ways of being become increasingly normalized and expected within our healthcare paradigm and beyond:

• Consent, consent, consent: For many people trauma occurs during childhood, at a time in their lives when they had no choice; they were stuck with the dubious or even hazardous choices of the adults around them. Part of reacting and living from our adult-self and not our child-self, is being able to purposely choose what feels most safe, and to seek out experiences of autonomy, agency, and exercising our own power. It takes practice and purposefulness to speak to what we need or to ask for something different. And also something truly profound takes place everytime we do. 

QUESTION: Do I feel like I have the ability to ask for a change or take a pause, in order to feel safer right now? 

• Slow: Because trauma often comes in a fast, overwhelming way, inviting in a sense of slowness is a necessary, soothing counterbalance. Trusting in ourselves, our bodies, and other people happens in its own time. Identifying and seeking out what feels safe to us can not be rushed. We can practice inviting in slow, soft titrations of opening or shifting in our guardedness, while regularly feeling into our zones of resiliency and restoration.

CONTEMPLATION: How has our hustle culture convinced you that your worth is only proved through your doing and that busyness reigns supreme over your natural rhythms and needs?

• Touch: Intentional, slow touch with a sense of presence is an easy way to bring the body into coherence. The more coherent, or well regulated, one area of the body is, the greater the possibility of this spreading to other areas as well. An example of coherence is when our respiratory and heart rhythms harmonize and then that resonates outward to support other systems, such as our brain rhythm and blood pressure. One of my favorite touch techniques is compression. Something about the gradual introduction of weight and gentle squeeze to the tissues is deeply nourishing and reassuring to the body.

REFLECTION: How can you introduce more safe touch to your body on a regular basis?

• Deep listening: When we hold space for another without interruption (and drop our need to fix, solve, or make ourselves feel more comfortable in the discomfort) it allows that other person to finally hear themselves speak. Their thoughts can become clearer, their guts more talkative, their dreams more perceivable. They can learn to hold themselves with as much grace and rock solid confidence as you hold for them. Feeling truly seen and heard is the bedrock of trust and deeper healing.

ACTION: As a regular practice of self-listening, ask yourself “what do I need to feel more resourced in this moment?”

• Grace: We have so much cultural training in the belief that it must feel hard to be worthy. But what if healing could be a practice of calling in what feels good or easy, and finding more of that over time? What feels doable or accessible in this moment, even if it's in small titrations of more difficult emotions? Often we don’t need to be calmed down or better regulated, we just need to be met where we are, in the anxiety, in the fear, in the grief. We don’t need to be fixed or changed, we just need to greet this moment with a little more grace.

QUESTION: How or where do you feel most safe? Can you go there more often?

• Self-sovereignty: Often in moments of traumatic stress, we felt small, inadequate, shut down, or unequipped in our ability to make the situation better. Even after the trauma has passed we may keep ourselves small, invisible even, as a strategy to avoid future harm. In some ways, the size of our life is a direct reflection of our nervous system’s capacity, and with time we can actively rebuild that size and capacity. This could mean our capacity for change, imperfection, intense emotion, instability, disagreement, even a capacity to to feel bigger and more visible. Growing our ability to find safety even in life’s natural disruptions or emotional activations, means we can experience anxiety, anger, even our own power, and still connect back to the anchor of resilience within. 

VISUALIZATION: Where in your body does this anchor of resilience live and what does it feel or look like?

• Gratitude: Your body did (and does) amazing miracles to keep you alive every single day, including its highly evolved responses to traumatic situations. Your body is always doing its best in each moment. Inviting in daily reflections of gratitude lightens our load, brings us into the present, and gives us a delicious pause. This is not a forced happy face, but a true connection with the everyday gifts that surround you, even on the smallest level. 

QUESTION: How have you been doing your best, even in the most trying times of your life?

• Joy: Traumatic stress can leave us, consciously or unconsciously, waiting for something bad to happen. This makes it particularly confusing when we actually have true experiences of bliss, awe, or nothing bad happening. How do we hold ourselves, without being too tight or too loose? We might hope and long for joy but our hypervigilance has this way of yanking us back to being an ever-ready soldier. In these instances, we might practice allowing for slow titrations of goodness with no strings attached, and with time, this allows our system to see that not all joy comes with some kind of backlash suffering.

ACTION: Earnestly looking for the everyday joy and beauty all around you.

It’s unfortunate that for many people, their only association with acupuncture is needles. The ancient art and science of this medicine is so much more vast than that. Of course even the thought of a “needle” for some folks brings them right back to some long ago pediatrician’s office. This is why my primary clinical focus is on increasing experiences of safety and often using non-needle or non-insertive techniques, like flower essences, essential oils, moxibustion, East Asian massage, and other kinds of therapeutic touch. Non-needle techniques settle expectations and build regulation in the period of time before someone is ready for acupuncture (really they are not needles at all but hair-fine tools)! Treatments are nuanced, individualized and slow to enhance that deeper sense of connection and trust.

I love to return folks back to this question: How do I feel most safe? 

It’s amazing how much of a stumper this can be. And for good reason. We just haven’t really had much practice in seeking it out. I leave you with this question and hope that what arises for you is perhaps more simple and available than you realized before. Here are some of my favorite answers:

Letting myself “mindlessly” watch the clouds pass overhead…

Placing a hand on my heart, feeling skin to skin…

Putting a heating pad on my belly after a long day… 

Giving myself a hug and/or compressions…

Music (all kinds!)...

Book recommendations:

• The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk
• Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
• In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Gabor Mate
• The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Mate
• The Tao of Trauma: A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Treatment by Alaine Duncan and Kathy Kain

“The ancient Chinese Daoists believed that our spirits are like gold- a metal that doesn’t ever corrode or break down. You can bury it in the ground, dig it up, and when you polish it, it hasn’t changed a bit. Even if you heat it or freeze it, it doesn’t change its essential qualities. It’s as beautiful as it has always been. We humans are like this, but we just don’t know it.”  ~Leta Herman & Jaye McElroy