Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 742: Sound Vibration, Movement & Trauma with Paula Scatolini

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Episode 742: Sound Vibration, Movement & Trauma with Paula Scatolini · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five four,
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three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
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I'm thrilled to have back. Paula scott Alone. Paula, welcome back.
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Thank you guys. It's great to be here. It's good to see
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you again. It's a while. I appreciate that. So. Paula is
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a writer, educator, and thought leader in sematics, movement, and embodied
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consciousness. As a mentor, guide and fertilitator of experiential and transformative processes.
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Paula brings over thirty years of training and human behavior that she interweaves with her
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experience in the nervous system, therapeutic use of sound, movement, and bio
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energetic principles to support individuals in aligning the psyche, sommat and a heart.
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She's worked in the field of embodiment since nineteen ninety seven. She co founded
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it and as an online faculty member of the Embodied Recovery Institute. She's also
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provided a leadership at institutions such as Duke University. Her sematically oriented lens is
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featured in the book Trauma Informed Approaches to Eating Disorders. Paul, Welcome to
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the podcast. Thank you so much, great to be here. So before
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we going here, remind your listeners where you're from originally and where you are
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currently. Sure well, I grew up in southern California and spent thirteen years
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in Hawaii and then one way flight to the East Coast and have been in
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Durham, North Carolina for a long time since twenty twenty six. Wow wow,
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So all right, So when we got in touch, you had said
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there's some new things you were doing. But Blitz, talk to us about
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that transition. What were you doing and what did you transition into in the
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world. Sure, sure, yeah, I love catching up because I think
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I'm one of those people that COVID created an opportunity right for something different.
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And so at the time, prior to COVID, I was a sematic experiencing
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practitioner. Right, I was studying sensory motor psychotherapy. At the time,
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I was studying Kathy Kane's work using touch therapeutically for developmental trauma, and all
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of a sudden, I could not touch people, right, I could not
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use a lot of my stematic skills, and so I did a quick pivot
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to online work like most of us. And I had already been using acoustic
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therapy at that time for several years, but did not understand the potency of
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it. At that time. I was doing it in person. So it
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wasn't until I moved online that I began to study it and the phenomenology of
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it more closely. And so COVID was a gift in that way, and
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it opened up the door to understanding how sound can be used therapeutically and continue
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to utilize my se skills and my other skills, but it just opened up
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a whole new world for me. So I've been on a journey since then.
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That sounds really interesting before we get into that, and I'm really excited
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to get into that because I don't think I've talked about that on this podcast.
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You have not, I but let me let me ask, because it's
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really exciting to me to hear that you used COVID as an opportunity. Yes,
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how did that come about for you? How did those thoughts come about
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for you? And yeah, yeah, well I think it became an opportunity
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and I did actually speak about it on a public broadcast. So how did
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we do the things that we're trained to do, especially somatics online? Right?
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So I was already having to think creatively about that, right, and
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how people what props, what things can they use in their home to facilitate
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the same experiences as I was providing through touch, And so I ended up
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speaking about that because in semantics, we can use props and somatic tools to
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give the body an experience that's similar to human contact. That's that's what weighted
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blankets, weighted pillows, warm rice packs on your kidneys, right, we
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can work with the body through different mechanisms and facilitate the same processes. So
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I started to get very curious that way through the semantics. But then the
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sound, when I brought the sound in and coupled it with the semantics.
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I was getting the same effects and even better. So then I got very
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curious. So it was it was sort of blossomed from there. What is
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no I want you to kind of talk briefly about acoustics and acoustic therapy and
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treatment, but then I want to ask you how you got into that.
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Oh okay, so um. So sound healing is a broad term, right,
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and when you think of sound healing, you think of singing bowls right
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right, right, that thing everybody's going to sound baths, right, which
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has you know, it has some therapeutic effects, But I think then they're
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subsets, right, and so acoustics is a subset, right, And so
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people that studied more of the brain neurology and they study how acoustics, how
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theta waves work, how beta waves work, how sound waves work. Right,
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So that's kind of that was my doorway into acoustics and thinking about you
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know, sound apts, right, and frequencies and how to frequencies impact the
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brain? Right. So I knew it from that angle, but I had
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been introduced to it through doctor Porges from his development of this tool which stimulates
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the vagus nerve via acoustics. So my doorway into sound was that way,
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So we can think of it from the brain science of sound healing, the
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theta waves and beta waves and meditation. We can think of it through porges
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mechanism, which is going to be acoustics and frequencies because that's what his program
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has designed. But then I also went and got trained and tuning forks,
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which is a whole another subset of sound healing which works with resonance. Right,
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And in trauma therapy, we understand what resonances and this idea of entrainment
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and how do we entrain the systems of our physiology into more coherent tones.
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So those are in trainment, Yeah, these are. This is the vocabulary
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of sound entrainment is. You can look up Dan Siegel's work. He uses
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it a little differently. But this idea of you know, when a child
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is upset in crying, a parent with their own processes, their own physiology
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that's coregulated, will entrain the child out of dysregulation into regulation via the parents
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somatic resonance. Right, So we're using entrainment in interpersonal neurobiology when we think
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about corregulation, right, I use it a little bit differently because I'm I'm
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thinking about how this sound can train your system into a different into parasympathetic state,
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right out of sympathetic into parasympathetic. So it just means bringing along to
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create more harmony or coherence. The first thing that came to my mind when
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we when you started talking about sound healing and the acoustics was music. Of
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course, yes, I mean, of course music, yes, can often
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be healing for a lot of us. But so okay, so how do
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we want to talk about this? Because this is really interesting to me.
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Where where are we going to go from here? Where we're going to give
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from um? Well, for me, the most exciting piece is to share
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about Porge's program and then the potential possibilities that can happen with it, because
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I do think we're on the verge of some of the next possibilities after somatics
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for trauma healing, right we have psychedelics, and this is sort of parallel
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to psychedelics right now, I think psychedelic assisted therapy where we're going to see
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kind of sound sneak up on the side. And so that's why I'm bringing
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it to folks attention to start paying attention to this, because it's going to
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become more and more available and discussed. Okay, so let's back into that.
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What is what is poor just doing? I mean I think a lot
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of people associate poly beagal theory with him and so forth. Yes, So
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in two thousand and seventeen, I was given his program by another SEP that
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he had developed the initial studies and research we're on kids with autism. So
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it was developed for children with the autism to help shift physiological state and attend
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to some of their symptomology. Right, So he had a whole program and
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research, but the trauma therapist community got ahold of this program. It's called
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the Safe and Sound Protocol that I call it a program process which essentially it
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uses music that has been set to specific frequencies that elicit safety in the nervous
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system, and it's fed through the auditory pathway through acoustics. So you're listening
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to music and it's a legal nerve stimulator. So it's going to innovate your
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vegel nerve, bringing the safety into the auditory pathway and train or begin to
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bring the nervous system out of defense into social engagement. So pretty fun and
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powerful and also not all always a smooth ride. Right, because you can
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think about nervous system, especially those of us that are older, have built
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a lot of traction, constriction and defense, right, So you know,
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we have to train people in how to use it and consider the nervous system
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that's sitting across from them. But there's lots of support happening from the company
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that provides this program. But that's kind of the gist of it is using
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sound and acoustics and the frequency of safety that you can think about as um
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it's the frequency that would be similar to a mother's lullaby if we think about
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hurts and what's been captured in them, and that is fed to you over
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the course of five hours. So it's a particular type of music. I'm
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thinking king like meditation music or spa like music. Is exactly. It's more
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of a We think of it as an algorithm that has been set to series
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their playlists and there's five hours worth of playlists, and trauma therapists will use
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this will break it down into half an hour segment, so you would listen
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to a half an hour of a playlist with me and you'll be getting I
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think if it is medication, this frequency of safety for half an hour and
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then you'll have a week to integrate. And then you'll get the frequency of
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safety for half an hour, and then you have a week to integrate.
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Now a lot happens in that half an hour, and this is where we
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get to the psychedelic piece of it, because as more safety comes into your
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system, your defense is soften and subconscious material starts too. Nice. So
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this isn't just listening to music. This is, as you said, very
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similar to psyclodelic assisted therapy, where there is set setting so forth, there's
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a guide there or a mentor there. Well, that's how I'm using it,
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So I do have to put that caveat because this is being used by
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occupational therapists. It's being used by maybe coaches, I'm not sure. But
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there's a range of people using for different reasons and they're they're all getting different
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results and equally good results. But I am using it in the same way
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as psychedelics. And that excites me, right, because then that's what we
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want to get out to the termatherapist, right, because not everybody wants to
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use psychedelics, right. We want a range of options, right. They
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might want to have choices at some point I think people might be asking big
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combine these you know that that's potentially you know what we're going to see down
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the line. I think there's a brand new world that's opening, and so
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we just want to make sure that sound is you know, part of that.
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Can you give us an example, perhaps of a case study you worked
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with and what it looked like? Sure? Sure, So I have many.
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So traditionally, let me go back to at the beginning, my caseload
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was primarily working with seventeen eighteen nineteen year olds that were stuck at home during
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COVID miserable right because they're supposed to be launching right, So lots of anxiety,
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lots of trouble eating, lots of digestive troubles. And so we were
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going through this program and they were feeling better, they were feeling more regulated,
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they were able to eat, they were feeling more embodied, their anxiety
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was going down. So I knew from that population that you symptomatically, I
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was seeing pretty prevalent changes happening. And then I have applied it with quite
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severe situation symptomatologies of clients that have more developmental trauma, where there's more fragmentation
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and seeing more cohesion occur in the self and more resolution of split off parts.
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So I've gone that extreme now more recently, my clients are therapists,
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so they're coming for a deep dive into their attachment system. They're coming to
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explore their platforms for their capacity to feel safe, feel seen, feel heard,
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express their emotions, express who they are authentically in the world right,
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and to reconnect to their inner wisdom right, their access to their intuition and
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their access to knowing their path in life and what's next. Right, So
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that clarity that comes from a clear inner aception. So there's a range of
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people that I've used this with. So current client seeped in somatic experiencing norm
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you know, so I really done their own work, but can't get to
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the core issue. Is the core issue happened in the womb. So the
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way I facilitate this as I set it up similar to the psychedelic process,
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where we'll put pillows around, we'll get cozy, we'll put a blanket and
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will elicit and I work with different ways of thinking, holding, experiencing to
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consider what the ideal space would be like for you to feel safe and how
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would you like that structure, right, how would you like that to be?
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Then the sound comes in, So I'm coupling the sound with these somatic
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tools, and as a system softens, the material from the womb experience begins
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to emerge. Okay, let me play you for a second. So are
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you yourself also listening to the music? I am not the headphone. There
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have headphones on and I'm sitting across from them. And my role, similar
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to the guide, is to be as in my own present moment embodiment as
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much as possible, almost like I'm sitting next to an fit in a crib
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watching them sleep. That's the level of presence, right, and where my
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consciousness needs to be. Okay, I think that helps to facilitate, right,
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a more expansive experience for the person, right, because my embodied presence,
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they can feel that somatic right, So they've got that, then they've
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got the sound. Then they have the memory that starts to come up right
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where they feel. I know I am not small, but I feel small
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right now, right, and we know how semantic therapy works, right,
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so the consciousness starts to go in that direction. My clients have some witness
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capacity, so they know where they are and they know how to navigate it,
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and if they don't, they can open their eyes and find me.
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And then we can pause the music. But you can't do in psychedelic assisted
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can't pause, right, But we can pause, and we can regulate and
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we can elicit that present moment. I call it memory time dynamic that you
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need to navigate in trauma therapy. Let me just pause here. This is
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really my mind is a lit right now, hang on, but I just
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want to pause to thank our sponsors for two seconds here. Okay. So
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that that is a very interesting and I think key point is that you can
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pause. So I'm coming to you. I want to do this now.
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As I'm I'm listening to this. Is it music or is it sound?
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It's music, it's vocal music, pop music or children's music or the latest
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I've been using is the classical playlist? Just classical music, no vocals.
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Okay. So, and obviously I think it's important to point out here there's
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the intention also, right, So I'm coming in here with a specific intention,
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not just to relax. No, okay now, but now when I'm
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doing this and I begin to do this, and I start to feel something
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or experience something or remember something? Am I instructed to do? What?
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Yeah? So before we start listening, I'm going to do some coaching.
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The primary premise is that what you experience are your memories, whether they're somatic,
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whether they're emotional, whether they're visual, right, because they're going to
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come through all those channels. So if your heart starts racing, I said,
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okay, well that's a memory, right, or you're in the sympathetic
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pattern, right, if that's what it's listening? So can you feel that
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as such? Right? And can you feel me here with you? Because
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we know that trauma is not about always what happened, It's about not having
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the safe other to be with you while you feel what happened. Right.
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So as long as they can feel me there with them and know I'm there
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and be with their internal experience and be curious about it, it will continue.
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It will process. We don't have to always intervene. We can just
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let it go. Right. Wow, So are you will? Are you
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instructing or coaching your clients to open their eyes when they feel something or what
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are you? What are you coaching them to do? It's up to the
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client. It depends on their capacity. Right. So, somatic again,
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my clients were our therapists like yourself, right, So they may have the
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capacity and actually enjoy studying themselves, so they're not going to want to always
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open their eyes because they're they're fascinated with the process. Right. But if
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it was someone who wasn't my client and they experienced sensations that they were like,
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what is this? Something feels odd, they could open my eyes and
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we could make contacts so they could feel my presence, and then I might
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put up and say, okay, we'll put your thumb up if everything's okay,
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and put it to the side if you're kind of concerned, so we
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have some way of communicating. I also titrate, but we'll listen for ten
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minutes, then check in, listen for ten minutes, and then check in,
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so there is never any what I feel is over medicating during it.
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So there's lots of titration built in. And some therapists titrate even more than
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I do. They'll listen to two minutes of the song. Right. So
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for me, it is an in depth study of the physiological structures of your
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attachment and bonding system right as it's being brought out of defense and strategies,
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and you're coming back into more secure attachment is what we've said it. So,
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and why are you studying that specifically? Why? Because the program is
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influencing the social engagement system, which for me is the neurological structures of the
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attachment system. Right, So it's influencing how your social engagement system neurosepts safety.
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So it's influencing Am I safe enough? Do I feel safe enough in
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the world? Do I feel safe enough expressing my feelings? Do I feel
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safe enough? Being me? Do I feel safe enough? I mean,
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who of us has all that right? Word? Right? Right? Oh
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my gosh, this is so intense, it is Paula. Um wow.
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So this is so interesting that I've been doing this podcast for so long and
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this is the first time really that I've I've I've talked about this on here.
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So do people come to and I think, really again, the fact
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that this is somewhat reminiscent of psychedelic asist of therapy. Yet to me,
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it feels like there's a lower barrier to entry, right, I mean you
24:44
can pause, you can, yes, Obviously people are doing low doses of
24:48
psychedelic asist of therapy and larger doses, of course, But how does this
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differ aside from those characteristics? Okay, yeah, I mean I'm toying as
25:02
well as thinking a bit more in line with holotropic breathwork perhaps, right,
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UM So I think that, Um, it's it's for me. What I'm
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witnessing is it does allow the neural pathway that allows us to find safe connection,
25:22
be it with others, be it with the universe, be it with
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ourselves. Right. So that's very similar, right to psychedelic assisted therapy.
25:34
Um It it can elicit uncomfortable memories in a similar way, but we can
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we can titrate it. We can. Um how else is it different?
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I don't have and I don't have a lot of training in the psychedelics to
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refer to that, um, beyond the titration piece. I mean, I
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can't speak to you know, exactly what's happening in the brain, right,
26:23
um to compare them. But I think that if we're talking about states of
26:30
consciousness and shifting states of consciousness and expanding consciousness, they're both doing that or
26:41
allowing that process to occur. And um, it could be safe to say
26:48
that this is also you know, eliciting our capacity for you know access to
26:53
oxytocin, and you know some of those capitals that are it's our bonding hormones,
27:00
right right, right. One thing with psychedelics is that there are different
27:03
types that people use to elicit different states of consciousness, for example, MDMA,
27:10
psilocybin, etc. With acoustic therapy, are there different tools or elements
27:21
that you would use to treat specific symptoms or no? I think well,
27:26
I think of it as um if we has come down down to nervous system
27:40
health, right, the health of the nervous system. And when we have
27:45
a healthy nervous system, we have resiliency, We have capacity for resiliency,
27:52
we have capacity for a restoration, we have capacity for self regulation, we
27:57
have capacity for coregulation, we have capacity for um clearer interoception and cues about
28:07
what we want, what we need and um So I don't think it's this
28:14
symptom or that symptom. I think it's more of it could be more thought
28:18
of like dosage. If we take the same medicine and we think about a
28:23
particular system might need a different dose of that medicine, medicine in a different
28:29
way. But it's all going to feed into a healthy resilient nervous system,
28:36
right, which is going to have health effects in all different areas. Sure.
28:41
Now are you you mentioned that you're working with therapists. Are you how
28:48
does your protocol work? For example? Are you working in several sessions or
28:56
what does it look like? So I've moved to doing most of my work
29:00
in groups, and part of that is to facilitate a shared experience of our
29:07
humanness, right, and to start to to connect people to each other through
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um, yeah, through you know we nobody is without trauma at some level,
29:22
right, or stress response at some level. So to level the playing
29:27
field, we do it in groups. We meet for twelve weeks and so
29:33
we have a three month experience together and that's an hour and a half two
29:37
hours and there it's online. So I people all over all over the world,
29:44
right, So I can have people in Dubai, I can have people
29:45
in Europe meeting people who they never would have met, right, and then
29:52
sharing their similar experiences of being human, right, of their attachment dynamics,
30:00
of their ways of holding back who they are, of their realizations of what's
30:07
important to them. Many people after they do my group, they go change
30:11
their lives. They're like oh I'm not happy here. That needs to change,
30:15
or maybe it happens during the three months, but by the end,
30:18
you know, there's a lot of clarity about who they are. This sounds
30:22
incredible. As soon as you said the group process, I thought to myself,
30:30
wow, that sounds intense. But at the same time, like you
30:36
said, you're you're with other people who are in this process, not unlike
30:41
a normal group experience, but sharing the It sounds very intimate. Also,
30:49
you know, yes, very intimate. A lot of the time, the
30:53
groups want to continue to meet even after and so some of them might've continued.
30:59
So it was this once a week and for how long. It's a
31:02
three month group once a week for about hour and a half or two hours,
31:07
depending on the size of the group. They were about four people per
31:11
group, and now they're going to be about six, so it'll be about
31:12
two hours. But they're intimate. They're small groups, so you really get
31:17
to know the people in the group, and there's there's a strong container of
31:23
safety that's developed just from the beginning, and I work on it in each
31:27
group. So there's a sense of this is the place I can come and
31:32
be myself and kind of Unload the truth, right, Unloading the truth?
31:40
Yeah, So okay, as we kind of wind down here, who is
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this group? Four? So my groups are primarily for therapists or those in
31:52
the who have been in embodiment practices, so there's some level of understanding about
31:59
the nervousness, some ability to have witness consciousness because that if they don't have
32:07
that, then they kind of need a pre class on semantic tracking and witness
32:14
consciousness. And so so my groups tend to have folks who are have done
32:19
some yogurt or done some breathwork, or done some sematic therapy already, right,
32:23
so they're they're kind of along. They've witness consciousness for those who might
32:30
who don't. Another word for it is dual dual perception, where we can
32:36
hold our awareness of our internal state and the outer environment at the same time.
32:42
So guy, I can still feel you here, and I can notice
32:45
my heart beating fast, right, and I can do that at the same
32:47
time. Or I can see or send some memory of my childhood and I
32:52
know I'm sitting in this chair right. Because if I can't do that,
32:57
then I do need some coaching and skills on how to do that first,
33:00
because this is gonna can certainly whip up some memories, right, so,
33:07
so we want to know that people have that capacity now just quickly. This
33:15
is whipping up memories because it's that that specific frequency. It's whipping up yeah,
33:22
because well, because we're feeling safe, and when we feel safe,
33:27
if I think about it, from internal family systems, it's gently dismantling the
33:32
protectors to allow the exiles to come forward. Awesome, awesome, all right,
33:43
Paula, what's um the best way to get in contact with you?
33:49
And then when's your next group happening? Give us some info on that.
33:53
Great, so contacting me through my website, which is www. Paula scatter
34:00
Looney dot com. It's probably the easiest. I do also have a pol
34:02
Scataloney LLC Facebook following, and my groups start the end of July beginning of
34:10
August. I usually have a few cohorts going at the same time, so
34:15
folks can pop on. There is an application, okay that has to be
34:21
filled out. Okay, so exciting. I have to have you back.
34:25
Wonderful. I would love to come back. Yeah, You've got to come
34:28
back. There's not enough time to talk about all this, um so exciting.
34:34
Um, and yet in dance you know this is I love the way
34:40
you framed everything by saying, this is kind of a human you know,
34:45
a shared human experience, and I think that's really so important to put out
34:52
there, so I really appreciate that. Yeah. Great, great seeing you
34:59
again, Great having you on here, wonderful. It's lovely. Do see
35:01
you as well. All right, take care, take care. Bad life.