Stress, Acupuncture, and Body Awareness

We know via brain scan studies that when people are presented with material related to a traumatic event, areas of the brain that are responsible for locating us in time and space become unstable and go offline. ⁣⁣
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This is a way we manage our experience and/or why we have symptoms; we either dissociate away or get so pulled into the gravitational field that we lose touch with what’s actually happening here and now. ⁣⁣
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One of the tools we use to counteract this is learning to stay present in the body while contacting difficult experiences. It keeps us oriented and able to respond appropriately to the stressor; not solving the problem by leaving and not mistaking what happened then for what’s happening now. ⁣⁣
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We’ve also seen through brain scan data that acupuncture increases activity in these regions that register our present, internal physical state. Even more, we’ve seen that it keeps these areas stable when in the presence of aversive or threatening stimuli. ⁣⁣
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This gets really interesting because we can combine acupuncture (which acts as a passive body awareness stabilizer in the background) with Somatic Experiencing or other body-based stress approaches to double-leverage this reconnection of the body, mind, and how the stressor is cycling through the system. ⁣⁣
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The more we can stack relevant and specific messages to the nervous system through multiple channels (physical, psychological, internal, external etc), the stronger the response and adaptation. ⁣⁣

Often there are unexpected but powerful combinations out there that can be used when we appreciate the underlying mechanisms.