The Body Keeps the Score: Book Summary
praxis.fortelabs.co
praxis.fortelabs.co
I started experiencing a complex combination of physiological symptoms in early adulthood (actually in childhood in some ways), that gradually got worse into my 30s.
All kinds of treatments were suggested and tried over several years, but nothing really moved the needle until I started regular practice of subconscious emotional healing techniques. I've been doing this type of work for about 7 years now.
There is improvement in a lot of areas, though the process is not complete. I still have some anxiety and muscle tension/pain, and evidence of inflammation in my body. But it's not nearly as bad as it was before I started the emotional work. And I keep finding new emotional baggage to heal. So it's a long journey, but the results are clear.
It's hard to talk about with peers, as there's a general attitude among scientifically-minded people that the notion of a link between emotions/thoughts and physiology is absurd.
Yet the very same people will generally insist that there is no mind-body distinction, and that consciousness is obviously just an emergent phenomenon of brain matter/chemistry.
Apparently it doesn't occur to a lot of people that if mind and body are one and the same, mind activity must surely be deeply interconnected to physiology.
Anyway, that's a little of my story.
AMA.
Defining symptoms have included chronic muscle tension/pain, slow digestion, immune system dysfunction, enlarged/painful lymph nodes, unrefreshing sleep, always feeling under-oxygenated/undernourished even when having a very healthy diet, a constant sense feeling "tired and wired", or "spinning the wheels"; i.e., at-once feeling exhausted, but also like your body/mind is working at full speed, but not being able to get much forward momentum in life.
"unrefreshing sleep, always feeling under-oxygenated/undernourished even when having a very healthy diet, a constant sense feeling "tired and wired", or "spinning the wheels"; i.e., at-once feeling exhausted, but also like your body/mind is working at full speed, but not being able to get much forward momentum in life."
Completely, utterly on point. Thank you!
I exercise (primarily weights and yoga, plus cardio here and there) 3-4 times per week, eat incredibly healthy (lots of greens and lean proteins), get enough sleep (7-9 hours). My blood pressure, weight, and BMI are great. I have sleep apnea and am allergic to wheat but have treated those as best I can (the former is difficult, the latter is quite simple).
And yet, I feel sort of "removed." Constantly fatigued. Kind of like being in caffeine withdrawal (and no, that's not it). Don't feel as strong as my exercise and age (late 20's) would have you think. Always dehydrated. Very little "vitality."
Around the same time period, I was "floxxed" by Cipro, and got Mono. My best explanation is that it has something to do with one or both, but no doctor has ever figured it out. By all accounts, I'm very healthy. I just constantly feel like shit.
From these comments, it seems actually not that uncommon. Yet given the vagueness of the symptoms / inability to diagnose accurately, it doesn't really have a name and is not considered seriously by the medical profession.
chronic muscle pain (and believe me, pain means pain, like a knife in your articulations), immune system dysfunction (asthma, arthritis), enlarged lymph nodes, unrefreshing sleep, tired and wired.
Current solution : see the doctors often (it makes me feel safe), tai chi twice a week + chi kung routine every day. When I'll be in better shape, I'll start swimming and running again. But the more you spend on yourself, the less you spend on family which is quite a dilemma. I eat vegetables and much less meat but can't stay away from sugar :-). I don't drink coffee/alcohol, I don't smoke (so the usual quick fix don't apply for me).
Believe me : don't ever get in that kind of problems. Every day is like half a day : you don't enjoy your life and it's borderline depression/burn out for months.
Can you include your family in your workouts.
(Yes, some extreme trauma uncovered and at least partially resolved, that I won't elaborate on here.)
I still consciously think the EMDR technique is "magic", as I am otherwise a very staunch hard science person, but I swear by its effectiveness now, and if I feel like I'm experiencing any further emotional blocks or 'knee jerk' reactions, I'll do it again in a heartbeat.
Forty years of much of the symptoms in the book, and nearly destroying my 17 year marriage, is easing to an amazing degree, and I feel like I actually have a life now.
I am surprised to hear that's the case, and also it absolutely does not match my experience of the scientifically minded people I know, all of whom are familiar with both the placebo effect and the term psychosomatic.
Sure, but those concepts are more often regarded with dismissiveness in the context I'm talking about.
Try proposing to such a person that chronic auto-immune illness, that has resisted treatment by conventional medicine, could be remedied via non-mainstream subconscious healing techniques.
It's notable that zealots end up tying themselves in knots over these topics. In attacking homeopathy (which, to be clear, I’m not into), Science Based Medicine [1] goes as far as claiming that the placebo effect doesn't bring about any actual physiological improvement, but rather just brings about a feeling of wellbeing.
This seems to contradict the way in which it the concept is used in mainstream medical trials.
It also presumes that "feeling good" and physiological healing are unrelated concepts, which would be surprising from an evolutionary perspective.
But hey what do I know? I'm no doctor, just a poor shmo trying to make sense of it all while trying whatever means possible to get well.
[1] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-myths-debunked/
Just to pick one particularly interesting study from way back in 1978, Levine, Gordon, and Fields [1] reported in the Lancet that naxolone (better known now as Narcan) can actually block placebo pain relief (in this case, in the context of dental surgery), implying that the placebo analgesia is mediated by actual physiological release of neurotransmitters (in this case, endorphins).
This isn't the place for an extended discussion/debate about this stuff, as I've long learned that it's driven far more by ideology and ego than actual science.
But I've heard it said by a leading proponent of mind-body health hypotheses and practices, that there's a pattern the debate so often seems to follow when discussing this stuff with materialist hardliners:
You start by suggesting that physiological illnesses can be (at last partially) treated with emotion-based therapies, and they scoff, "that's preposterous".
You then carefully explain it using known, established science, to do with factors like cortisol, the fight/flight response, priority resource allocation, etc.
They then respond "well of course, everyone knows that, there's nothing novel about this at all".
Yet after many years of people talking about, actual practice of this kind of treatment is still confined to the fringes and beyond.
The point that they make constantly is that there are too many shysters selling sham treatments, that when studied turn out no better than the placebo baseline.
I do think it's pretty well established at this point that stress causes inflammation [1]. Chronic inflammation looks like it wrecks havoc on the body and can turn up as all sorts of symptoms. Addressing the psychological issues that are causing the stress absolutely should help. Where the skeptics get caught up, and I believe rightly so, is when practitioners start talking about woo or chi.
[1] https://www.everydayhealth.com/wellness/united-states-of-str...
The way I think about it is that we are missing a bunch of words for things that we don't have a very good handle on. We could spend a ton of time analyzing and categorizing, and come up with dozens of new words with satisfyingly precise meaning. Or we could (ab)use qi to mean whatever we want it to mean in a particularly context, and be horribly sloppy about it. From a theoretical mindset, the former is obviously superior; it's the only way to ensure you're making forward progress in understanding. But from a practical perspective, lots of people who aren't hung up on definitions are improving their lives every (well, most) days.
And that's not coincidental. It turns out that one of the biggest barriers to progress (in "life cultivation", but also elsewhere) is insisting on fully understanding every single thing before making use of it. It's a good way to avoid looking at the uncomfortable parts of yourself - just keep insisting "I don't get it. What exactly do you mean by '... sentence involving qi....'?"
We don't do that with power tools or computers. We have to take things on faith somewhere. Which is not to say you can't screw up by being too loose about it. There are plenty of people who say deep-sounding and nonsensical things while everyone nods wisely and knowingly. (But not all of those listeners are fooling themselves, either. Some are ignoring the details of the gibberish and are instead mapping it to what they think the person is trying to say based on what they know to be true from examining themselves.) And because of the imprecise language used, you're limited in what you can use to distinguish people who really have something to say from idiots parroting nonsense. Look at outcomes, if you can.
So it doesn't bother me too much when people say speed instead of velocity, or qi instead of the 100 different things it might mean: energy, blood, nerve impulses, the flow of cause and effect, change, rate of change, acceleration of change,... If someone has something to say but no shared words to say it with, I can't blame them for using a placeholder.
All that being said, 99% of what you'll read that mentions qi is really and truly nonsense. The imprecision is too good a place to hide bullshit, and there is an overwhelming quantity of bullshit to be hidden.
Casually speaking, it might seem easy to wave off such body changes in response to emotion as a temporary thing. That would be premature. Cortisol is another hormone associated with stress and people with stressful lives show elevated cortisol levels which may be related to weight gain and obesity [1].
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1038/oby.2009.76
If you don't hear from me, hit me up again; I'm intending to prepare a doc that explains the approach I've used. I don't want it to be too long, but I just need to find the time to do make it adequate.
But if you can't wait for me to do that, reading/watching content by Bruce Lipton is a good start.
"The subconscious mind is operating at a vibrational frequency of theta". What? That's the kind of nonsense I get from the stoners down in my local pub.
If his techniques work, they work, and I'm happy for you that you have improved your life. I, however, find such language so off-putting that I can't imagine ever trying anything like this
His presentation style is not for everyone, sure. Nobody’s is. He talks in pictures and metaphors, which for many people is the most effective way to receive information.
Not you? No worries!
But consider that you’re only talking about persuasiveness of language/presentation for yourself, not science.
The very quote you picked out to mock is perfectly valid science.
So if you know someone who communicates the same ideas in a different way, I'd really appreciate it.
For what it's worth, I come from a mainstream scientific background, and my own view on this subject is not heavily based on Lipton's.
You said "Apparently it doesn't occur to a lot of people that if mind and body are one and the same, mind activity must surely be deeply interconnected to physiology". People aren't rejecting the logic, they're reacting against the language, because it sounds like the language of a group that are an out-group for science-y people
Most people who reflexively dismiss the mind+body link haven't heard of Lipton.
Rejection of this concept is the default for conventionally-minded people in western society, because we've been conditioned over generations to see the mind and body as separate entities (likely due, ironically enough, to religion), and consequently it's a largely unquestioned assumption in medical orthodoxy.
People who are enthusiasts for modern science (i.e., devotees of Richard Dawkins, staunch atheists, etc), seem particularly resistant to questioning this orthodoxy.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. My own worldview is not heavily based on Lipton's. I just suggested it to give people something to start out on, in case it takes me some time to write my own doc.
Like everyone else here, you're welcome to contact me for a copy. I'd welcome your constructive feedback.
In 2014, while Liberia battled it's new enemy, the Ebola virus, I battled mine - Debilitating Anxiety. It had brought me to my knees, and I was angry and fed up. Two months before reading that quote, I had been thinking about "lasting change", "radical self-transformation", but just didn't know how to go about it. Change! change! change! That's all i thought about.
I was following the news on the Ebola crises when i read the article and saw the quote. It got me thinking, and i immediately knew what i had to do to change myself. I knew viruses evolved, but i had never deeply thought about how it worked. Like me, this 'nasty' organism simply wanted to survive. I guessed that to change itself, it had to have low level access to the workings of it's internal structures. What if i could also do that? The more i thought i about it, the more i got convinced that it was a path worth exploring. And that's i began hacking my body through yoga and meditation.
It was a very solitary practice for me as most of the people around me ( mostly religious christian folks ) considered it wired and 'demonic'. I did a lot of googling, and read books ("The body keeps the score" included) and I am happy that i had the insight to be patient and give it time. I don't know if my healing and transformation would have happened faster if i had seen a professional, but on hindsight I think my relationships, physical well being, mental health and career are in a better place now because i gave it time.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-31019097
EDITED spelling mistakes
https://thecompletionprocess.com/
I worked with a practitioner I found on the site.
Here is a another that seems similar: https://www.human20.co/the-art-of-conscious-change - I haven't tried it though.
There are lots of strange physiological links that aren't necessarily logical, due to the imperfect nature of natural selection (it strives for the local optima and "good enough," over the global optima). For instance it's well documented that consciously smiling improves mood, even though the causality is "backwards."
It might also optimize for the community rather than the individual, I suppose.
As an analogy. When you’re stretching your muscles, you’re generally not actually elongating any part of your body, instead you’re teaching your nervous system that it’s safe to move your muscles in the range you’re stretching into.
Most people get to experience acute back pain in their life, and will notice how this can cause your entire back to freeze up, even well past the point of where the actual thing that caused the pain has been healed. This is the nervous system protecting your back from hurting itself. Making it a necessary part of rehabilitation to do stretches to show your body that the range of motion is safe again.
In the same kind of way, actively working on mentally overcoming symptoms that were your body’s reaction to real disease or trauma that has since passed, can have very real effects.
This could be in the form of meditation, therapy or even faith healing(!) [0]
[0] see derren brown talk about his experiences doing faith healing as a skeptic https://youtu.be/CCzzaDwUuDk time stamp 22 minutes 18 seconds
> Due to neurological safeguards against injury such as the Golgi tendon reflex, it is normally impossible for adults to stretch most muscle groups to their fullest length without training due to the activation of muscle antagonists as the muscle reaches the limit of its normal range of motion. [1]
> First, they end up mostly agreeing with a body of previous research suggesting that increased range of motion following a prolonged stretching program is mainly the result of increased tolerance to the sensation of stretching, rather than actually loosening the muscle-tendon unit. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretching
[2] https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a20811349/does-...
I had to do a lot of exposure and conscious challenging of the reflex in order to remove the anxiety connected to the reflex. I had to show my body my heart wouldn't stop if I played around with my chest muscles.
I still am working on this, but I am much better.
I am impressed with how much my body went along with my initial impression that my heart was at risk, developing this very strong defensive reaction!
The emotional trauma, constant tension, lack of meaning, depression, inability to learn anything, or learning very slowly, bad autobiographical memory, all symptoms listed in the article.
I truly believe if she were to do something about the mind that stuff would get better. And I'm a very hard-science guy that reads Cochrane and doubts everything. Although, problem is that CBT does not work for her, talking with professionals does not work too.
Obviously, the issues are that the bodies immune system is weakened from some stress that should not be there.
It was only learning to relax (and starting meditation) and stopping seeing my body as the enemy (thanks to the kind encouragement of my girlfriend as well as working with Alexander technique teachers) that I started to make any improvement, and this combined with appropriate physical exercises has meant that I've been fortunate to have nearly 2 years of normal life (which to me in the past would have just been a dream) - no spasms, no 'episodes', and now I can do normal things like go for a walk and not worry if I'll make it back, etc.
I was physically abused by my father when I was a child (fortunately he died when I was 8), and I really didn't think it had effected me much, but I now realise I spend most of my time out in public assessing who poses a physical attack risk to me, and it's only since talking my my girlfriend about it (she's training to be a counsellor and has this book by her bed) that I've realised that this is -not- normal!
My life is unrecognisably better since taking this sort of thinking on board. I'm definitely a 'science' person - lifelong atheist, try to be as rational as possible, etc - but we still don't know everything, particularly of how incredibly complex the human brain is, and how it can control so much of not only our experience, but our existence.
Alexander Technique lessons have been a revelation in terms of understanding how I move, and how much tension I was carrying in my body all the time, plus learning to use the 'right' muscles in the body for posture. There is also an element of meditative mindset present with both my teachers, which has helped with my default 'judgemental' mind-state. I think that Alexander Technique is hugely important, but it's subtle and difficult to describe - I think it's a case of going for a few lessons and seeing if it works for/with you, as it sounds like "woo" to a lot of people - it did to me until I tried it.
I think the combination of all these things has helped greatly to move me in the right direction towards a better way of living, and not fighting myself all the time.
The ACE study mentioned ([0]) suggests that about 2/3 of people have 1 or more ACE, but after looking at the definition of ACE they used, it appears to use a significantly weaker definition of trauma than even the expanded one given explicitly in the article: it includes having a parent with a mental health issue, having a chronic health condition while young, or being chronically separated from a parent (due to eg divorce).
Further, it looks like there is quite a bit of clustering: people with ACEs that qualify as classic traumas tend to have several.
Perhaps trauma is much more pervasive than I thought, but it looks to me like the definition of trauma was changed quite significantly to make the claim hold.
[0] https://www.aap.org/en-us/Documents/ttb_aces_consequences.pd...
There is more info on the wiki page here as well:
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experience...
Through the subconscious healing work I've done, few of the events/issues I've processed are ones that I would characterise as trauma. Little of it involves abuse, violence, separation or anything else that fits the conventional definition of trauma.
But it is a snowballing history of unpleasant life experiences, which all compounds and steadily amplifies one's underlying sense of anxiety, fear and distrust of themselves and the world, along with the severity of physiological symptoms.
This fits in so much better with my understanding of how humans learn other things as well: through many tiny increments, not in one sudden dramatic event.
Here's a list of universal needs I tend to refer to: https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory
Here's a list my friends are building: http://www.learnyourneeds.com
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_post-traumatic_stres...
this incomplete metabolization is trauma. the event or events are not the trauma.
developmental trauma is an epidemic in western society - this is what the presence of ACEs screen for.
I don't think 100% of humans are explicitly traumatized but most humans will have some degree of hypo- and hyper-arousal type activation of the central nervous system in response to different situations and their history. some much more subtle than others.
But after reading it, i felt a little... lost. I knew a lot about the problem space, and some solutions outlined, but it wasn't integrated within me, and all i had was a few therapies I could try out and hope the best for.
Luckily, the next book I picked up was Mindsight by Dr. Daniel Siegel, and that has helped immensely in applying the knowledge of The Body Keeps Score, to bring about a shift in focus and presence in our bodies.
One thing he talked about that i found of interest is a column of neurons, only 6 deep, that make up our perceptions of reality. the top 3, take on a top down approach from the cortex downwards; while the bottom 3 come up from the limbic area of our sensory inputs - and it is in the middle of space of the column that reality appears - a mix of our past perceptions and preferences, with what we are observing in the here and now.
So, What happens with PTSD? There is a shift towards the top-down thinking, and a muting (or overriding) of limbic signals. In the tug of war of 6 neurons, the top down wins out over our perceptions - allowing people to experience and truly relive flashbacks of traumas like war in their bedroom - they are detached from their limbic signaling.
Which is why - mindfulness, meditation, and being more present in your body matter so much. What you pay attention to matters - and allows us to hone/reshape firing patterns.
https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New-Science-Personal-Transf...
For what it’s worth, Bessel Van der Kolk is not without issue himself. Here’s a partial transcript that I wrote up (so any mistakes are my own) when listening to a podcast episode about trauma and abuse. The relevant part is around time code 30:00.
https://www.probablypoly.com/post/episode-25-interviewing-sa...
Trigger warning: trauma, gaslighting, and abuse
Mandee Conant: Well, I think it’s important not to discount the book, More Than Two, because we know that Eve had a lot of input into this book, but as a whole, just because someone writes a book about something does not make them an expert in it, and I think we kind of… as a community we kind of took that because their book was one of first how-to manual what to do, what not to do resources fo us, so he must be an expert. And we just took that, we took that too easily, and we need to learn to not do that.
Samantha Manewitz: And sometimes even when when people are experts they can still be terrible people. For example, Bessel Van der Kolk, who founded The Trauma Center in Brooklyn, which is my back yard. He wrote wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which is required reading in any grunt school and required reading for anyone who ever wants to go into trauma work. Period, full stop.
I was initially applying for a job at The Trauma Center, and then it came out in The Globe that his co-writer and co-founder and CEO was horrifically abusive and he created a toxic work environment, and the way he responded was just textbook gaslighting, and then sort of [wrote this letter] why these people didn’t come tell him to his face. Yes, why would someone with 1 or 2 years under their belt make ever make a criticism about this person who the luminary of trauma work. If anyone should know better, it’s Bessel Van der Kolk.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/08/meet-world-rekn...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/07/allegations-emp...
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famous-trauma-therapist-fire...
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/famed-trauma-therapist-respo...
The reason I mentioned the controversy around Bessel van der Kolk and The Trauma Center that he co-founded (and was fired from) is that his book is basically required reading for many people entering the mental health field. I strongly believe people deserve the right to know about what happened so they can form their own opinions.
I'll definitely listen to that podcast, thank you for taking the time to type that up. I definitely appreciate you and the effort you've put in to that response :)
sad as it is, the state of modern yoga, and the bullsh* * of lululemon, 500hr certs, and instagram etc, people had it figured out so long ago, how to go underneath the conscious layer and heal trauma through moving meditation.
I wonder how the future parents of this generation will reduce trauma being carried in their bloodline or add to it?
This sounds like me but with programming. It's the one thing I can always do and focus on no matter how the rest of my life is going. But outside of it I constantly need to push myself to do anything.
But they won't.
I don't know what fantasy land the author and reviewer live in, but here in America in 2019, the world is a dangerous, knife-edged, and pitiless place where it's a constant fight of all against all. Anyone you meet, even immediate family members, is your enemy by default, and usually an ally at best. Everyone ruthlessly exploits everyone else to survive, everyone kills and dies by inches to eat tomorrow.
I've no idea where these people come from saying people love and support one another. Out here, others are either threats or exploitation targets, not partners.
Very good article nevertheless, helps to sort out adaptive things from maladaptive things.
You may be living in a story, but the rest of us have to live in the real world.
"Everyone" is a strong word. People are very different. Some are evil, some are admirable and kind, most have a mix of good and bad traits.
To me, a random internet commenter with no horse in this race, this comment sounds really disturbing, it sounds like you're having some problems warping your world view(or maybe you're just hanging out with the wrong people). I'm not usually the one to diagnose random strangers, but what you're saying sounds pretty extreme. Biased, or influenced by some psychological thing, I don't know. Either way, not factually accurate.
Do you have at least one person that you like, that you can talk to about this stuff?
I don't really know what advice to give you. I'm just gonna say that even though it's easy to see all the ugliness and flaws in human nature, there's a lot of goodness and beauty in it too.
Make an effort to see good in people, or to seek out people that are good. There are plenty.
It seems like a spectrum of course, but it is hard to tell what region of the spectrum is being focused on.
trauma is a collection of symptoms, biomarkers, and behavioral adaptations.
Claims pretty much every psychiatric inconvenience (distraction, laziness, stress, restlessness) can be caused by "trauma." Proposes "trauma" is so blanket that anyone/everyone can have it.
This would all be terribly interesting if there were links to scientific studies validating any of this. Let me know when there's a "cure" for trauma that treats distraction/laziness and a double-blind study finds clinical significance for it.
I'll let the FDA vet my panaceas for me, thank you very much.
This is not how logic works.
Chemotherapy is a permanent, long-term solution for cancer, and yet cancer has not become a minor issue in society. Anti-depressants are life-saving medication for many many people, but not everyone gets the right dose, not everyone continues taking them, and in some people they plain don't work.
Claiming that they're somehow not a solution for depression because they don't work for everyone, all the time, is logical fallacies all the way down.
> Yet it has not made a dent in hospital admissions
This is a stupid sentence. First, it's not sourced. Secondly, in the hospital admissions of whom? New patients or admissions of patients on anti-depressants? The first is an absolutely pointless statistic because -- who knew?! -- medicine that hasn't been administered doesn't work.
If he's claiming that over the group of people taking anti-depressants, their rates of admission post anti-depressants doesn't decline, that's still a shitty statistic, for a whole range of what should be obvious reasons, but I can spell out for you in a further comment if needed, but start with the fact that most people _develop_ mental health issues as they get older, and almost anyone who's hospitalized for a mental health issue will get medicated at that point moving forward, and anyone who's been hospitalized once for depression is dramatically more likely to be hospitalized again.
Unless the exact statistic being cited here is that there's no difference in readmission rates for patients who have been hospitalized for depression between those who took their medicine and those who didn't, it's absolutely ridiculous to be using to support his argument. Did I mention he didn't cite it?
> The number of people treated for depression has tripled over the past two decades
So? It seems like "common sense" that as a society we're better at talking about mental health than we used to be, and referring (rather than simply jailing) the mentally ill than we used to be. I bet his source (oh look, he didn't fucking cite it again) attributes this to many many many other factors rather than the non efficacy of anti-depressants
> and one in ten Americans now take antidepressants.
Again, this has nothing to do with his argument
It also doesn't inspire confidence that he made statements on their efficacy without even trying to address confounding factors (say, rising rates of depression due societal/economic conditions).
All told, it wasn't very well thought out.