slow. Feel your shoulders relax, your stomach expand as you
breathe. Feel your awareness of your environment heighten,
your focus sharpen. Feel your mind and body calm themselves.
mindful breathing you're actually engaging in a pioneering
form of somatic --or body-- therapy that is being used to heal
the devastating effects of childhood trauma. Using breath to
calm and control the central nervous system in order to man-
age anxiety and unwanted outbursts of destructive emotions
is becoming an effective tool in child therapy for healing from
chronic abuse.
physically, emotionally, behaviorally and socially. Research from
anxiety, cognitive difficulties, violent or delinquent behavior, low
academic achievement, and drug abuse as but a few of the
devastating effects that suffering or witnessing abuse in child-
hood can produce. The violence suffered by a child can create
an echo chamber of shame, anger, and unrealized potential.
If unresolved, the cacophony of trauma reverberates through
the life of the individual--and, ultimately, through our society.
a single breath.
a broad spectrum, including cognitive, language, motor, and
socialization skills, they tend to display very complex distur-
bances," writes Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, founder and director of
the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute, in the May
2005 Psychiatric Annals. Van der Kolk's extensive work with
childhood survivors of trauma and violence includes a host of
somatic experiences, yoga and breathwork among them, aimed
at returning a sense of calm and control to these young survi-
vors. Writes van der Kolk, "Children who have been traumatized
experience the trauma-related hyper-arousal and numbing on
a deeply somatic level. Their hyper-arousal is apparent in their
inability to relax and in their high degree of irritability."