How the Living, Sensing Body Resolves Trauma, Establishes Safety and Restores Resilience: Clinical Implications – Peter Levine

Therapeutic work with traumatized individuals, and those suffering from deeply distressing emotions, can be greatly facilitated by utilizing bottom-up (body awareness) in concert with top-down (“psychological”) processing. We find that a potent fulcrum for long-term change resides in accessing innate body movements and sensations associated with the “true-self.” Then from that potent and enduring platform, individuals can be guided gradually to touch into, and transform, traumatic experiences. Effective therapy helps people move from shutdown (numbness) and hyperarousal (overwhelm) to “healthy aggression,” safety, and the capacity for intimate relationship. 

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” -Rumi

“Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world.”- Archimedes

• Differentiate between the multiple systems involved in explicit and implicit processing
• Utilize “bottom-up” processing to help patients resolve traumatic experiences
• Help their patients access the felt-sense experience of the “deep-self “in stabilizing traumatic processing

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