Trauma is a reactive, physical tendency to contract in a part of your body, in response to environmental stimulus. There may be varied reasons for this trauma to exist in your being, but in this article, I’ll focus on how it exists presently.

Such contraction restricts your breath¹, obstructs the flow of life energy (prana), disconnects you from the Flow around you², consequently disconnects you from others around you³ and births Fear⁴.

The state of Nirvana–Buddhist Enlightenment–is the extreme opposite of this, where your Consciousness reaches the zenith of expansion thereby being connected to all–all parts of you & all beings in the Universe.

I don’t know the full path to Enlightenment⁵, but in this very physical world that we inhabit, steeped in materialism⁶, our perceptions draped in the illusions that Kali Yuga⁷ brings, Step 1 is to practice letting go of the physical contractions that trauma leads to.

Truths that can elevate you above your suffering–spiritual truths–have an intrinsically paradoxical flavor.

The great Quantum Physicist Neils Bohr recognized when he commented – “the opposite of a Great Truth is also a Great Truth”. The brilliantly devoted logician Kurt Gödel saw this folly in his peer’s Hilbertian attempts at squashing out paradoxes from the language of the Gods–Mathematics. He concocted a proof that leveraged self-referentiality and paradoxes to show that even in the simplest of logical systems designed to express no more than basic arithmetic, there exist unprovably true propositions.

Letting go of contractions can be accomplished in two seemingly paradoxical ways–

1. observing it & not reacting as it gently flows out of your body OR
2. surrendering to it & fully flowing with what the contraction is trying to bring to your body

The right hand spiritual path of Stillness observes & frees the energy, not getting attached to the contractive tendency thereby letting go of it.

The left hand path of Flow, surrenders to the tendency, becoming one with the wave that the contraction is the first trough of, channeling the energy & allowing its free embodied flow without needing to take it out on another human.

For a concrete example of how the left hand path might look, imagine all of your trauma-induced Rage flowing freely in your body without needing to scream at another, without needing to scream at all; without needing to punch a human or a punching bag; where you are fully one with the element of Fire, where you are Fire itself.

Both paths support each other. Stillness powered inner observational skills might help you better see when the trough of the wave becomes a crest, helping you not attach to either supporting your Flow. A developed ability to Flow in an embodied physical plane can allow you to move the Flow to your energetic body plane, thereby opening up space for subtler observation in the physical plane.

I’ll share 5 practical modalities I’ve encountered that will help you develop your own capacity to better work with trauma-induced contractions.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing will help you notice what goes on in your body in the moment of contraction. When trauma triggers, the body tightens up. How numbed out you are will determine how much you are able to spot the tightening. An SE practitioner can help you pause and slowly feel more into where the tightening is happening. Once you gain access to the spot of tightening, you can learn to release it and thereby reverse associated symptoms. I like SE because it doesn't require awareness of what the exact trauma event(s) from childhood is and neither is the actual trauma discussed much but you are working in the present moment in your body to release tightness.

I’ve done 4 SE sessions with Ariel Carson who I highly recommend. If you are not in NYC, you can find a local SE practitioner here.

Internal Family Systems

Also called “inner child work”. We carry wounds from childhood internally in specific parts of our psyche. IFS refers to these as "inner child parts". When we have intense traumatic contractions, it's often originating from an inner child part. When we don't know (not just intellectually but somatically) what this inner child part is and what it needs from us, it can hijack our entire experience and lead to confusing reactions or regretful actions–like going back to the same abusive relationships over and over again. You can read more about IFS here and I regularly make references to the model in my writing.

I've worked with and highly recommend Katie Rikkers. Once you have a good sense of what your inner part architecture is, you'll be able to listen better to what that inner part needs from you and then provide that internally so you are not helplessly & incorrectly attempting to fulfill that need outside.

Alexander Technique & Martial Arts

AT is a mind-body practice that'll train your mind to connect to all parts of your body and release tension to build more presence in your spine. Our traumas cause us to see many fears in the outside world, leading to a tendency to contract our physical body into the spine. For example, the muscle that starts in my lower back and wraps around to my hip running down the outside of my leg had tendencies to pull inwards, leading to chronic hip pain for me. AT helped me resolved that.

In AT, you train your body to trust your own spine so that it may hang off it more freely. The more you do this, the less is the tendency of your body to freeze up or hold tension thereby leading to (literally) a stress-free life. I also like this practice because it doesn't focus on past trauma and just works on the body. AT was instrumental in preparing my body to handle the impact of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.

I believe AT is critical preparatory & supplemental work for martial arts practices like Muay Thai or Kalaripayattu. Martial energy lives in the spine and AT is preparing your spine to be able to hold the energy. It is strengthening your spine for the Kundalini to effortlessly move up. With sufficiently cultivated martial energy in the body, you can channel it in moments of intense trauma activation into the places which are infested with the trauma and eject the infesting spirits out so they stop bothering you as much.

Worship of Goddess Kali

This is more esoteric than the other modalities–ignore it for now if it doesn’t fit your world view.

Abused people abuse. Trauma causes demonic tendencies (like the desire to hurt others) to live in your body. You might think you don’t have these, but remember that these tendencies are often outside of your conscious awareness, deep in the subconscious space – in your Shadow.

The Goddess Mother Kali is finally the one that destroys these demons inside you. When the demon inside you that wants to hurt others is destroyed, you are healed from your own pain. That’s why in Buddhism, they emphasize acting kindly towards others and to not react in moments of great provocation. Because you are disabling and slowly destroying the demonic tendencies in you by doing so, thereby healing yourself.

With sufficiently cultivated ability to flow the Rage in yourself, you prepare the steed of the Goddess Mother–the Lion. Whatever "practice" you do, at the end of the day, it's a manifestation of Her that kills the demons. You can start worshipping her.

I'd recommend starting with the Mahishasurmardini Stotra–read it, listen to it, dance ecstatically to it, chant it. Go to Ecstatic Dance practices–and bring your attention inwards to see what holds you back from fully flowing with the energy of the music. Use your mind’s inner observational skills to let go of any judgments that are blocking your connection to the flow.

Read the book Aghora I by Robert Svoboda to get a sense of what this might look like. Be careful on this journey, you might encounter more charlatans on this path than the other ones above.

Unfortunately, in my exploration of Abrahamic religions, I’ve not encountered an equivalent of the Goddess Mother of Destruction. The Abrahamic religions see God as the Creator and seem to not incorporate the Operator (Vishnu) and Destroyer (Shiva) aspects or at least rid these aspects of their divinity by relegating them to the nether world like Satan. There is no space for a paradoxically compassionate Satan, which also explains why western Science & Mathematics struggle dealing with paradoxes.

Ayahuasca

A properly timed (when you are feeling a clear stable YES) and properly conducted (with a good Shaman that you have taken your time to trust) Ayahuasca ceremony might also aid you in this process. Be careful and slow here, don't jump into it impulsively but really allow for the Grandmother spirit of Ayahuasca to call you in. I have worked with a shaman that I'd highly recommend and am happy to share contact details privately. Amongst guided psychedelic exploration, I’d highly recommend Ayahuasca over MDMA/Mushroom ceremonies, the medicine & the ritualized fashion in which it is traditionally conducted (in my experience) has a gentler effect on the body. I did some of my most powerful healing in an Ayahuasca ceremony.

Know that often trauma infestation doesn't want to leave you and you might experience lethargy or "laziness" in taking steps on moving forward on one of these paths. That's understandable. You could consider reading Existential Kink (or my summary) and doing some of the work in that book or working with an EK practitioner to understand the source of this lethargy so it can transmute.

In my direct experience, the compassionate wisdom of the Buddha was critical to the proper deployment of the left hand path. Knowing that at the deepest, subtlest level, there is no difference between you & the other–including the ones who have wronged you. Rooting yourself in this wisdom ensures that the left hand path builds channels of release in you instead of channels of indulgence⁸.

I needed both–the intellectual wisdom & the embodiment practices to rise from my Shadows.

MK Gandhi is a good example of the former lacking the latter. He slept naked (other details unclear) with his teenage nieces (arguably against their consent) under the delusion of experimenting with truth. Michael Jackson is a great example of the latter seemingly lacking the former–he raped many young boys, while deluding himself into thinking he was just playing with them.