About Conditioning and Trauma

As human beings, being born in a specific place in the world, at a certain period of time, in a specific culture and religion, with a specific education we are a bundle of collective conditionings. Our life story and the events we went through also shape the way we are and the way we respond and interact in the world.

I like the word imprints while feeling the word conditioning. We are all imprinted and have our unique blueprint whether we are aware of it or not.

Being born in the West with Indian ancestry and being immersed in Ancient India at a young age, I could see with the eyes of my young self how different my family and cousins were from me.

Some spiritualities consider conditioning as a problem, but I don’t see it this way as it is who we are and is what makes each of us unique.

Some of our imprints can be limiting. Limiting our ability to feel at ease in our skin, to feel at peace, to flow into our life and to live our life as we want, to feel connected with others and the environment we are bathing in, leading to a sense of separation, isolation, insecurity and lingering anxiety.

These limiting imprints can feel like an internal oppressor preventing us from taking a deep breath and constricting our face, shoulders and belly causing chronic tensions and sometimes physical ailments. Interestingly, these are the symptoms of the modern aches of being stressed, functioning in an over adrenalized mode. Chronic anxiety and tensions, physical ailments are also considered to be the result of some of our trauma.

Even if I am trained in trauma release modalities, I viscerally felt the need to distance myself from the word trauma due to its overuse and trendy new topic flooding the internet. I am not diminishing the impacts of traumas here. I am questioning the way the word trauma is used and commercialized nowadays and how this word can also block healing and release from happening.

Trauma can be a loaded word which can frighten and tense our psyche/body even more. Acknowledging, being aware of and knowing about the physiology of trauma and how it can impact our way of being in the world, such as, being a pleasing person, having some fawn, freezing or collapsing responses can be tremendously helpful to know that there is nothing wrong with the way we are and that these responses are spontaneous and shaped by the events of our life. Learning the recent findings of the nervous system can be very helpful to take care of our being.

Besides its commercialization and its overemphasis, my body constricts as I am inundated by this word, preventing the flow of the release to happen, which is what trauma is about - an incomplete physiological responses leaving imprints in our body and psyche causing tensions, diseases, nervous system disregulation and limiting beliefs such as fears, insecurity and anxiety. Again, I am not undermining the debilitating aspects and the suffering generated by the traumas we may have gone through. Here my intention is to question this word and its use and to ponder for oneself that the overuse, the over cautiousness around our own traumas and the traumas of our clients can be an obstacle for the healing to happen. In my own practice, I am trying to de-load the word trauma, remembering that these are imprints and sacred portals.

By de-dramatizing the word trauma, the component of fear which is at the root of the imprints of the trauma can be released in an exhale, the body can soften and the flow of the interrupted physiological responses can be restored for the release to happen.

Finally, by shifting our definition and perception of the word trauma, we can actually experience that our traumas are a portal for our consciousness expansion. As Peter Levine said, traumas can be spiritual doorways. This can happen when we place the word trauma where it belongs: traumas are imprints, part of our human existence. The flow can be restored when one can hold the word trauma in a space of trust in the mind rooted in the Earth, in a posture of reverence in the heart while feeling its imprints in loving presence in the vessel of our body, knowing that our Body contains the intelligence of Creation for healing to happen and the flow of the Feminine Face of God (consciousness in the matter of our bodies) to be restored.