late summer and earth
Each season since fall, I’ve been writing about the connection between the western idea of our physiology’s five step threat response cycle and Asian medicine’s concept of the five elements. You can read more about the melding of these worlds of wisdom on my past blogs about Fall and Metal, Winter and Water, Spring and Wood, and Summer and Fire. This information is based in Asian medicine and acupuncture, as well as the work of acupuncturist and teacher Alaine Duncan, who created the book and methodology called The Tao of Trauma.
Late Summer and Earth is the last season in the cycle, until it begins again and we respond to the next stimulus with new wisdom. Fire creates Earth, just as heat in a compost pile creates rich hummus.
Each season and element is also associated with organ systems that are active in each step of our threat response cycle. The Spleen and Stomach are the organ systems of the Earth Element. They break down food so we can digest it, transform it into qi/energy and blood, and circulate aliveness and nourishment through our whole body. The Spleen and Stomach can do the same with our experiences, breaking things down into digestible bits so we can harvest life’s lessons and help prepare ourselves for future challenges.
The threat response cycle begins with an arousal that helps us orient toward a threat. We then mobilize to respond to the threat, which is associated with The Wood Element. In her book The Tao of Trauma Alaine Duncan writes, “In this stage of the cycle our digestion shuts down and our capacity to receive, transform, transport, and integrate nourishment is compromised while our blood and qi is directed to our muscles and joints to support fighting or fleeing” (250).
If this activated state becomes chronic, it may be challenging to soak up nourishment from both our food and our challenges. “We may embrace lessons that contract rather than expand our worldview and find ourselves unable to trust, forever feeling like a victim,” Duncan writes. "Our trauma story may go around and around, always seeking, but not finding, adequate comfort and understanding.”
When working with trauma resolution in therapy, we’re often searching for a more complete or expansive understanding of an experience. Not just in our brains, but in our bodies. As we reprocess a memory, we’re re-accessing the felt sense of the experience, but with greater safety, slowness and support. We’re helping both our brain and our body make sense of our response in the moment. We’re noticing all the ways our body and/or others protected us. We’re filling out the story with what might have gotten missed amongst our loudest danger cues.
The day I first received touchwork focused in my gut, I was at a large training with a lot of people I didn’t know. Due to my history and my social anxiety, I was noticing some chronic bracing in my body that was hard to let go. I also noticed I was feeling nervous about what people might think about me. After receiving this work, I felt unbelievably open in my entire chest, torso and pelvis. I felt taller and more connected to myself, my surroundings and other people. Someone at the hotel where the training was located saw me as I walked outside right after and literally said to me, “I want what you’re having!”
Trauma is something that’s too much and too fast, so when we slow the experience down with enough safety in therapy, our body gets to go through the threat response cycle at the pace it needs to get to completion. If we need to, we get to use our imagine to add in protection or support that might not have been there at the time. And then we get to land in completion for as long as we need so we can really feel it. As our body finds and trusts more ease, our story or belief about an experience can also change. We can believe we survived.
. . .
The archetypal questions of Late Summer and Earth are:
How do I turn life’s lessons into fruit?
How do I digest the gristle and integrate it into my flesh?
Yours truly,
Katie