|
Juliet Mandelzweig
 In a situation of genuine or perceived danger, we activate an emergency response, "fight or flight." However when this response does not successfully avert the danger, the crisis is transformed into trauma. The normal human capacity for coping becomes overwhelmed by helplessness and horror. We become stuck in the traumatic event and the body then becomes a reservoir of trauma.
Although trauma stirs strong emotions, many of its lingering effects are physical: sleep disruptions, extreme panic reactions, numbness or excessive sensitivity to touch, headaches, limited movement, restricted breathing and altered posture. The body seems stuck in its response to the trauma and the physical experience becomes disconnected from the reality of daily life.Trauma Touch Therapy® offers an opportunity to understand and treat the body's response patterns that remain long after the trauma has passed.
In our culture, we are educated to value the rational and the mental, and place less value on physical and emotionally motivations. We could become people who live within our heads, who continue carrying our bodies only because we have no choice but doing this would cause us to miss the richness and completeness of our experience.
Consistent with the prevailing beliefs in our culture, many types of treatment for trauma focus on its psychological and emotional aspects, ignoring the physical or "bodily" components of the traumatic experience. Trauma Touch Therapy® was developed in order to fill this gap by offering a supportive, strengthening alternative for renegotiating old patterns of physical behavior.
 Top of the page
The Trauma Touch Therapy® Method
| Trauma Touch Therapy® is an integrated method for working with the body, which facilitates the patient's connection with his emotions. It allows the body to express those emotions in a manner that could not be achieved when the trauma occurred. The process is based on working with the body and is intended to strengthen the patient and allow him to return to living fully aware of his body, to create and maintain healthy boundaries, to build safe relationships based on trust and to allow a deeper level of communications. |
 |
For a person who has experienced trauma, it is a safe path to personal integration, one that is not meant to minimize the trauma but rather to observe and witness it. Trauma Touch Therapy® is an unhurried process, allowing for a gradual, integrated release of tension and pent-up emotions. It is important to emphasize that the method is intended to be a bridge to the psychotherapeutic community. We encourage all participants to adopt a holistic approach towards the therapeutic process, combining physical touch and psychotherapy.
Although a Trauma Touch Therapy® therapist is a highly experienced, senior massage therapist, he does not choose which strokes to use, as he would in an ordinary massage. The patient decides how to receive the touch – on his clothes or his skin. They may choose to lie down, sit, or stand. The quality, type and location of touch is also the patient's choice.
If touch is not desired, the meeting can focus on breathing, guided imagination and/or movement. Together, the Trauma Touch Therapist® and patient create an emotionally safe environment in which healthy boundaries can be constructed and trust can develop. The treatment always proceeds at a controllable pace, with the total respect for the client's sensitivities and limits.
The advantages of the method include:
Reinforces psychotherapy, reduces addictive behaviors, eases muscle tension and stiffness in joints, improves the ability to relax, reduces physical pain and symptoms, deepens awareness of emotions, enhances the ability to experience pleasure and improves the capacity for intimacy.
Top of the page
Suitable Candidates for Treatment
Patients who have a history of abuse or trauma of any kind, can benefit from this treatment method. In general, even those who suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse at some stage in their lives can also benefit. Similarly, people who were involved in or witnessed war, battle or terrorist attacks (military, police, and security forces, rescue workers, as well as witnesses in the general population), crime, accidents and natural disasters (rescue workers, medical teams), surgery and other medical procedures can benefit. Furthermore, it is likely that people who feel that they have experienced a traumatic event of a type other than those mentioned would benefit from Trauma Touch Therapy®. A trauma victim is ready for Trauma Touch Therapy™ when he or she has reliable social support and is developing relatively good self-treatment patterns, when the lingering effects of trauma are under reasonable control and circumstances permit him to focus on this type of task. In conclusion, recovering from trauma is, to a great extent, like giving birth. It takes courage in order to let go and feel the pain, to trust the hands that support you, open yourself to the intensity and power of a new life. Using Trauma Touch Therapy®, the new life you discover is your own.
Juliet Mandelzweig was one of the first to use Trauma Touch Therapy® in Israel. She heads the integrated programs in medical massage at several schools of alternative medicine, lectures at Tel Aviv University and leads workshops and courses. She is member of several assistance centers including the clinical staff of NATAL, and a senior member of the Association for Massage and Body Treatments in Israel.
Top of the page
|
