Trauma Healing as Soul Recovery
Reclaiming Presence, Sovereignty,
and Sacred Safety
Trauma reshapes the body, distorts perception, and alters your relationship to safety, belonging, and joy. It’s not a memory—it’s a pattern etched into your nervous system, showing up in your breath, your behaviors, your boundaries, your sense of time.
Healing from trauma is not about erasing the past. It’s about reclaiming the present. About calling your spirit back from the places it had to leave behind.
Foundational Teachings on Trauma & Wholeness
This work is not linear—it spirals. It moves in waves and seasons.
It’s tender and holy and inconvenient and sacred.
It asks for slowness, softness, and deep listening.
Here are a few truths we hold close in this work :
✦ The Body Remembers
Trauma lives in the tissues—not just as memory, but as sensation, posture, breath.
✦ Safety is the Prerequisite
Without safety, there is no healing—only survival strategies and retraumatization.
✦ You Are Not Broken
Your patterns were adaptive. Your body did what it needed to do. That is not failure—that is brilliance.
✦ Gentleness Over Force
Healing doesn’t happen when we "push through." It happens when we stay with.
✦ The Nervous System Needs Ritual
Repetition, rhythm, and relationship regulate us. Healing is not a breakthrough—it’s a practice.
✦ We Heal in Connection
Safe others help us come back into rhythm. Co-regulation is ancient medicine.
✦ Your Story Matters
Naming what happened—in your body’s timing—is part of restoring your power.
Practices for Embodied Trauma Healing
Somatic Awareness
Come back to the body—gently, slowly, and in relationship to your own consent.
Orienting: Look around your space. Notice colors, light, textures, exits. Come into now.
Titration: Touch one emotion, one sensation at a time. Don’t flood the system.
Pendulation: Move between hard moments and comforting ones. Resourcing is regulation.
Tracking: What does your body feel like right now? Warm? Numb? Tight? Shaky?
Shaking: Let the body discharge stored survival energy, as animals do in the wild.
Daily Nervous System Rituals
Humming, gargling, or cold water splashes (vagal toning)
4-7-8 breath or box breathing
Gentle rhythmic movement: swaying, rocking, slow walking
Self-massage with warm oil, containment holds (hand on chest + belly)
Integration & Narrative Work
Journaling prompts:
“What is my body trying to say today?”Nonlinear processing:
Write lists, letters, dialogues with inner parts. Draw timelines—not to relive, but to release.Creative re-storying:
Use ritual to create new endings to old wounds.
Sacred + Creative Aids
Art journaling for grief, rage, or reclamation
Trauma-informed movement: yoga, dance, somatic flow
Nature therapy: Let trees, rivers, and sunrises hold what’s too heavy to carry alone
Books :
The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk
Waking the Tiger – Peter Levine
My Grandmother’s Hands – Resmaa Menakem
Healing Developmental Trauma – Laurence Heller & Aline Lapierre
The Complex PTSD Workbook – Arielle Schwartz
Permission to Come Home – Jenny T. Wang (on cultural/family trauma)
Practices & Modalities :
Somatic Experiencing (SE)
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing)
TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises)
Trauma-informed yoga, breathwork, and expressive arts therapy
Online Tools :
The Healing Trauma Podcast – Monique Koven
Nervous System Healing – Irene Lyon
Polyvagal Tools – Deb Dana
Body-based teachings – Dr. Nicole LePera
Final Blessing
Healing is not about becoming someone new.
It is about remembering who you’ve always been—
Your wholeness is not missing.
It’s waiting.
Patiently. Lovingly.
For your return.
May you be gentle with your spirals.
May your healing be sacred, sovereign, and slow.
