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From the archives: Staci Haines · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Today we even another episode from the archives with one
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Speaker 1: of my incredible guests. Enjoy Welcome to the Trauma Thepriis podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson, and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast.
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Speaker 1: My name is gy McPherson, and this is the podcast
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Speaker 1: where we interview master trauma therapists from all over the
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Speaker 1: world to learn about what inspires them and the steps
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Speaker 1: they've taken to become masters in their field. If you're
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Speaker 1: a trauma therapist, if you're interested in trauma therapy, or
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Speaker 1: if you're simply interested in helping other people, this is
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Speaker 1: it today.
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Speaker 2: I'm so excited to introduce my guest, Stacy Haynes. Stacy,
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Speaker 2: are you ready?
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Speaker 3: I'm ready. Thank you guys for having me.
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Speaker 2: You are welcome, all right.
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Speaker 1: So, Stacy is the developer of General Somanic and the
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Speaker 1: Semantics and Trauma Courses. Her work emerges from the sematics
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Speaker 1: tradition of Richard Strosie Heckler, Integrating polarity therapy gestalt of pisana, meditation,
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Speaker 1: and aikido. Stacy's a senior teacher in the field of
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Speaker 1: semantics and leads courses in somatics and leadership, semantics and
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Speaker 1: trauma as well as semantics.
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Speaker 2: And social justice. We're going to be talking about all
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Speaker 2: that today.
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Speaker 1: In addition, she's the founder of Generation five, a social
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Speaker 1: justice organization, and also the author of Healing Sex, a
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Speaker 1: mind Body approach to healing sexual trauma. All right, Stacy,
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Speaker 1: just a bit about you really on the professional side,
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Speaker 1: but kind of start off, tell us you know a
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Speaker 1: little bit about you personally, where you're located, and then
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Speaker 1: we'll jump in.
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Speaker 4: Excellent, all right, well, thanks for having me. I have
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Speaker 4: been in the field of sematics. I'm going on nineteen
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Speaker 4: years now, and like you said, I do. Over those
2:01
Speaker 4: nineteen years have done a substantial amount of one on
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Speaker 4: one work, healing groups work, and now do a lot
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Speaker 4: of training, both training of other practitioners and therapists and
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Speaker 4: then training in somatics and trauma of folks who do
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Speaker 4: social change work. I am located these days in Oakland, California,
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Speaker 4: which is where our offices are too, and probably an
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Speaker 4: important thing to say about me personally because this will
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Speaker 4: tie in as I actually grew up high in the
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Speaker 4: Rockies of Colorado, and anytime we talk about somatics where
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Speaker 4: we talk about trauma, at some point we really want
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Speaker 4: to talk about resilience and the resilience we pull on
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Speaker 4: to get through traumatic experiences. And growing up in those
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Speaker 4: mountains where nature was much bigger than people continues to
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Speaker 4: be a big source of resilience and also just something
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Speaker 4: that really in a funny way, also informs my work.
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Speaker 2: I love that.
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Speaker 1: So growing up in the Rockies where nature is bigger
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Speaker 1: than people, that's that's very powerful. And I'm really curious
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Speaker 1: as I'm sure our listeners will be to hear about
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Speaker 1: how that plays out, uh for you and in the
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Speaker 1: work you do. So let's kind of transition and uh,
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Speaker 1: you know, in our kind of pre recording chat here
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Speaker 1: we talked about a quote or whatever. But share with us, Stacy,
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Speaker 1: if there's a quote, if there's a mantra, something that's uh,
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Speaker 1: you know, driven you in this field. This podcast really
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Speaker 1: is a big about getting to know you and really
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Speaker 1: what's inspired you.
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Speaker 3: Thank you well. Two things really come to mind.
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Speaker 4: One is this is kind of a quote and a
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Speaker 4: saying out of the somatics field, and it goes like this,
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Speaker 4: we are what we practice, or we become what we practice.
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Speaker 4: We're always practicing some thing is what we're practicing deeply
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Speaker 4: aligned with what we care about and who we are.
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Speaker 3: That's a real guide and.
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Speaker 4: How I kind of look at people, look at the
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Speaker 4: world and also understand this work and how we continue
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Speaker 4: to grow.
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Speaker 3: And another one, and you.
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Speaker 4: Know, I have to say, this goes all the way
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Speaker 4: back to some of my own healing and transformation that
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Speaker 4: I that I was doing in my earlier days. But
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Speaker 4: it is that we are more powerful than whatever has
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Speaker 4: happened to us. And I find that deeply inspiring, especially
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Speaker 4: in the face of human resilience.
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Speaker 3: Kind of blows my mind.
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Speaker 4: Really, the people that I've worked with, I mean, any
4:45
Speaker 4: of us in the field of trauma, you know the range.
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Speaker 1: You know, it.
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Speaker 4: Ranges into the worst human behavior and people surviving and
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Speaker 4: sustaining some things that you think are not survivable.
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Speaker 3: And it is so beautiful to me. And also.
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Speaker 4: I have a lot of respect for human's capacity to
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Speaker 4: transform and be resilient through very very difficult and awful experiences.
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Speaker 4: So we are more powerful.
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Speaker 3: Than what happened to us.
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Speaker 4: To me, just says we have more a liveness, hope,
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Speaker 4: and resilience than some of the worst things people can
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Speaker 4: do to each other.
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Speaker 1: So, yeah, two really good quotes there, thanks so much so.
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Speaker 1: The first one was we become what we practice kind
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Speaker 1: of paraphrasing there, and the second one, we're more powerful
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Speaker 1: than what's happened to us. And when did that ladder
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Speaker 1: the second one there become resonant for you? When did
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Speaker 1: that become something that you know was charged for you?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
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Speaker 4: So I really started doing my own focused healing in
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Speaker 4: my twenties. So I must survive of child sexual abuse,
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Speaker 4: and I also grew up in a family as well
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Speaker 4: as a community where there was a lot of domestic violence,
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Speaker 4: and I think by the time I started learning that
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Speaker 4: that was not the norm or didn't have to be
6:16
Speaker 4: the norm, and that there was something really inside of me,
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Speaker 4: both as struggling with symptoms of those experiences, feeling disconnected
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Speaker 4: from people, feeling more depressed, feeling compartmentalized, right, all those
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Speaker 4: things that we have words for now that I didn't
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Speaker 4: really have words for then, feeling afraid a lot generalized.
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Speaker 4: Once I started getting into my own healing and feeling
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Speaker 4: that there was something kind of pushing from inside of
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Speaker 4: me toward healing. It's a very scary step when what
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Speaker 4: you know there is to confront are very very difficult
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Speaker 4: experiences or traumatic experiences.
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Speaker 3: But it became very live.
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Speaker 4: For me in my twenties that innate push for healing
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Speaker 4: was actually going to be more powerful than the things
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Speaker 4: I had to confront and face and work my way through.
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Speaker 4: And what's funny about this moment too, It's funny. I
7:12
Speaker 4: am my youngest daughter right now, who's twenty, is writing
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Speaker 4: a biography for one of her courses, and I feel
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Speaker 4: very honored she decided to write it on me, which
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Speaker 4: has just elicited amazing conversations between us that we haven't
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Speaker 4: had yet. And one thing I shared with her is
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Speaker 4: how important it was for me that I started doing
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Speaker 4: my own healing while I was also learning about things
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Speaker 4: like feminism. And what I learned is that people had
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Speaker 4: been really standing up for human rights, standing up for
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Speaker 4: the full dignity and full value of all human beings
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Speaker 4: long before I came around, and in many ways I
7:58
Speaker 4: was a beneficiary of them saying were more powerful than
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Speaker 4: what happened to us. And there's a bigger vision we
8:05
Speaker 4: can all work for together. So there's a way that
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Speaker 4: that social consciousness and my own personal healing co mingled
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Speaker 4: and in some ways co supported each other.
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Speaker 3: If that makes any sense.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And thank you so much
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Speaker 1: for sharing that. I mean, that's just so powerful. And
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Speaker 1: I think, you know, we kind of started out our
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Speaker 1: discussion before we're recording here about your the different focuses
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Speaker 1: in your your life and how they might come together
8:33
Speaker 1: in this podcast, and I think it's just there. There's
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Speaker 1: naturally you can see how these paths have you know,
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Speaker 1: to use your word co mingled. And also Stacey, you
8:45
Speaker 1: can hear.
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Speaker 2: The the the intensity and the passion in your voice
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Speaker 2: coming through.
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Speaker 1: I'm just picturing those those rocky mountains you know in
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Speaker 1: the background there.
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Speaker 2: Seriously, but.
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Speaker 1: It's it's very powerful, and I love the way you
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Speaker 1: put it. You said this, there was this innate push
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Speaker 1: for healing that just came through, and that is just
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Speaker 1: so so powerful.
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Speaker 2: So thank you.
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Speaker 1: And honestly, when you were talking about your daughter and
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Speaker 1: the book she was writing and the conversations that that's elicited,
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Speaker 1: I kind of got goosebumps, honestly because that's intense stuff.
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Speaker 2: So awesome. Thanks so much. Absolutely, So let's kind of
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Speaker 2: shift gears a little.
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Speaker 1: You know, talked a little bit about what got you here.
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Speaker 1: Let's kind of move into a specialization, but more specifically,
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Speaker 1: what got you into this field of trauma. You know,
9:43
Speaker 1: people get into this field for a variety of reasons.
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Speaker 1: I often talk about my inspiration. One of my huge
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Speaker 1: inspirations was my brother coming back from the Special Forces
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Speaker 1: from Iraq with PTSD.
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Speaker 2: And wanting to find out what he.
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Speaker 1: Did, and just pushed him and nudged him, and my god,
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Speaker 1: I just screwed it up. And you know, this was
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Speaker 1: a while ago, but I wanted to come back and
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Speaker 1: fix that, correct that if you will, So, Stacy, share
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Speaker 1: with us a story about how you got into this
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Speaker 1: field the specialization.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, such an interesting question because there's so many answers
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Speaker 4: to it.
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Speaker 3: I'm going to start young.
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Speaker 4: I think, like many kids, I was one of those
10:27
Speaker 4: kids where I hated things to be unfair.
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Speaker 3: I just I.
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Speaker 4: Just didn't like it, and I wanted things to be fair.
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Speaker 4: And I also think growing up witnessing domestic violence, there
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Speaker 4: was a way that I and again you might just
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Speaker 4: call this again that innate desire to heal, but I
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Speaker 4: remember watching my parents, and I thought, there just has
10:51
Speaker 4: to be a different way. This doesn't seem right. And
10:56
Speaker 4: so I think that was just in there from an
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Speaker 4: early age, which I just think is a natural empathy
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Speaker 4: that you know, sometimes we get trained out of, but
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Speaker 4: I think is really in us. And then when I
11:07
Speaker 4: really started focusing on, Okay, this is the direction I'm
11:11
Speaker 4: going to go, Really, the main impulse was I just
11:14
Speaker 4: really wanted to decrease suffering. And I didn't like seeing
11:18
Speaker 4: suffering in nature. I didn't like seeing suffering in people.
11:21
Speaker 4: I didn't like seeing suffering in my family. And the
11:24
Speaker 4: more I studied, the more I thought, well, what is
11:30
Speaker 4: driving so much of this is people re enacting the
11:35
Speaker 4: hurts that happened to them, and that can be both
11:39
Speaker 4: for survivors of violence, and that can also be for
11:41
Speaker 4: people who are perpetrating violence. So much of it as
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Speaker 4: a certain reenactment. And so I think that along with
11:50
Speaker 4: my own seeing how much my life changed when I
11:55
Speaker 4: engage in starting to heal from my own trauma, got
11:58
Speaker 4: me very, very passionate about the potential of healing and
12:02
Speaker 4: healing going beyond like people are less anxious or less depressed,
12:07
Speaker 4: but healing being much more holistic, like the people we
12:11
Speaker 4: can be in our families, in our workplaces, and in
12:14
Speaker 4: our communities really really changes when we get access to
12:20
Speaker 4: doing our own transformative work. So I really saw the
12:23
Speaker 4: ripple effects, I think, and that inspired me. I was
12:29
Speaker 4: also fortunate I had a good friend get into what
12:34
Speaker 4: at the time was called Loami School, which is a
12:37
Speaker 4: somatics training school, and she raved about it, and she
12:40
Speaker 4: kept saying, you should take it, you should go, you
12:42
Speaker 4: should go, and I remember probably got It was thirty
12:46
Speaker 4: five days of training in one year. It was a
12:48
Speaker 4: very intensive training, but about halfway through the trainers at
12:57
Speaker 4: the time where Richard, Josie Heckler, and Robert Hall. But
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Speaker 4: Richard was doing a demonstration with a person in the
13:04
Speaker 4: room who was the person I was convinced was not
13:08
Speaker 4: going to change, it was not going to heal. And
13:11
Speaker 4: I saw him do a piece of trauma work with
13:13
Speaker 4: that man that just blew my mind.
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Speaker 3: And at our.
13:17
Speaker 4: Graduation at the end of the year, his wife came
13:21
Speaker 4: and his wife said, listen, I don't know what happened
13:24
Speaker 4: here this year, but I want to tell you about
13:27
Speaker 4: the husband he's become, and the grandfather he's become, and
13:30
Speaker 4: the boss he's become because they had a family run business,
13:33
Speaker 4: and she basically did this testimonial about the ripples of
13:37
Speaker 4: what him doing that healing work had done for their
13:40
Speaker 4: entire family and family owned business, and then I was
13:44
Speaker 4: pretty much sold. I'm like, I'm in so wow.
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Speaker 2: What an awesome story.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I remember hearing about the Lonely School while ago,
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Speaker 1: and as you were, as you were mentioning that, I
13:55
Speaker 1: was thinking to myself that that was Richie Strosie Heckler.
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Speaker 1: But what a what an inspiring kind of pathway and
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Speaker 1: journey Stacey. Just you know from the beginnings you're talking,
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Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about as a young kid just
14:10
Speaker 1: hated thing, you wanted things to be unfair, you know,
14:15
Speaker 1: and then just being in that cauldron of uh, you know,
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Speaker 1: domestic violence and wanting things to change. And I love
14:24
Speaker 1: the way you kind of juxtapose or kind of maybe
14:28
Speaker 1: articulate the the healing that goes on on an individual basis,
14:33
Speaker 1: and you kind of juxtapose that with the healing that
14:37
Speaker 1: goes on in a in a more social basis, and
14:41
Speaker 1: and how those two are different, how they're similar. That's
14:44
Speaker 1: very powerful and I'm guessing that's obviously that's the work
14:50
Speaker 1: you're doing, and that's very profound, So we'll talk about that.
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Speaker 1: So let's before we do, let's kind of move in
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Speaker 1: to a clinical error. You know, we've talked at about
15:00
Speaker 1: your journey what got you into this field. Now Stacy,
15:03
Speaker 1: let's focus on, uh, you know, one an early clinical
15:08
Speaker 1: error you made, and what you kind of gleaned from that,
15:11
Speaker 1: what you learned from that, if you will.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
15:14
Speaker 4: I so appreciate you asked this question because of course
15:18
Speaker 4: any of us, who are you know, clinicians, practitioners, healers,
15:22
Speaker 4: whatever folks call themselves, we're human beings too, and we're
15:26
Speaker 4: learning and growing along the way and making mistakes. And
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Speaker 4: I just really appreciate you you really normalizing that.
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Speaker 2: Thank you.
15:33
Speaker 1: And uh.
15:35
Speaker 4: One of the things that I did early on, and
15:38
Speaker 4: I think, uh uh, you know how people can lean
15:45
Speaker 4: into being maybe too much of a pessimist or too
15:48
Speaker 4: much of an optimist. My leaning was being an unbalanced optimist.
15:54
Speaker 4: And one of the things that happened early on is
15:57
Speaker 4: I took on a very very uh complex client and
16:02
Speaker 4: actually more complex than my confidence was at the time,
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Speaker 4: and heartfelt wanted to help, had good training all of that,
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Speaker 4: But inside of it, what was really presenting was a
16:18
Speaker 4: combination of she wasn't living in a safe environment, so
16:22
Speaker 4: she wasn't physically safe.
16:24
Speaker 3: She had been in and out of.
16:28
Speaker 4: Drug use in a way that where she was managing
16:31
Speaker 4: her own symptoms in a way that was not good
16:34
Speaker 4: for her or the people around her. And fundamentally, she
16:38
Speaker 4: wasn't stabilized enough to enter into really the core of
16:42
Speaker 4: her trauma.
16:43
Speaker 3: Work.
16:44
Speaker 4: And the mistake I made because with people who are
16:47
Speaker 4: more resilient or resource or stable, this works, but I
16:50
Speaker 4: didn't make the right assessment with her is I moved
16:55
Speaker 4: us into some of the core wounding and the core
16:58
Speaker 4: of her trauma faster than I should have. And inside
17:02
Speaker 4: of that it was destabilizing for her instead of transformative
17:06
Speaker 4: for her. And you know, I did a bunch to
17:12
Speaker 4: clean up my errors and get the right resources in there.
17:15
Speaker 4: But it's something I've thought about very very deeply. Is
17:19
Speaker 4: you know, we can all have the will to help
17:21
Speaker 4: and the will to heal, but we really have to
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Speaker 4: What I learned is I really needed to make a
17:27
Speaker 4: very very sound assessment about things like safety in their
17:32
Speaker 4: home environment, how drug use might spike if we start
17:36
Speaker 4: touching certain emotions. Does someone have the right resources support
17:42
Speaker 4: friends in their lives to support the change rather than
17:46
Speaker 4: try to block the change? There s there's a lot
17:49
Speaker 4: of things to pay attention to in someone's environment and
17:51
Speaker 4: conditions before we go, let's head into the core of
17:56
Speaker 4: this wound.
17:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. And you know,
18:01
Speaker 1: not surprisingly, it is a common mistake that a lot
18:05
Speaker 1: of master trauma therapists have have shared.
18:08
Speaker 2: Because it's I mean, it's it's kind of.
18:11
Speaker 1: An easy one to do when you know you're one
18:15
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of experience. But so when when
18:21
Speaker 1: you were doing this, you well, you first started out
18:25
Speaker 1: by saying you were you know, you were eager to
18:27
Speaker 1: help this person, and later on, as you were sharing
18:31
Speaker 1: this kind of clinical error you were you said that's
18:34
Speaker 1: not enough. And I think that is a very interesting
18:38
Speaker 1: topic here for a lot of listeners. You know, a
18:40
Speaker 1: lot of listeners are just getting into this field. Some
18:43
Speaker 1: obviously have more experience. And interestingly, when I first got
18:48
Speaker 1: into UH or wanted to get into trauma therapy, I
18:52
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to do this, but there was like
18:54
Speaker 1: a hesitancy I had, And I think there's a there's
18:58
Speaker 1: a chasm in a sense that needs to be delicately
19:04
Speaker 1: crossed between you know, wanting to do the work and
19:08
Speaker 1: being able to do the work. And what how did
19:12
Speaker 1: you bridge that gap in a sense? Was it just
19:15
Speaker 1: simply more experience and you know the next client you saw,
19:18
Speaker 1: you did you did a more thorough assessment?
19:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, good question.
19:25
Speaker 4: Let me say something about this topic first and then
19:28
Speaker 4: I'll answer it for me. At this point in my
19:35
Speaker 4: work and also in training other people, I really hold
19:39
Speaker 4: a very high standard in how we assess our own
19:43
Speaker 4: competence and and help each other in that way, because
19:48
Speaker 4: of course good heartedness and right heartedness is a great
19:51
Speaker 4: place to start, but there's really a lot of deep
19:55
Speaker 4: competencies needed. And one thing that I ask therapists and
19:58
Speaker 4: practitioners is what promises can you make your clients that
20:04
Speaker 4: within six months or a year or two years, what
20:07
Speaker 4: transformation can you promise to help them make so that
20:11
Speaker 4: we hold ourselves to high standards and if we're I mean,
20:14
Speaker 4: of course, things always pop up that you don't know
20:16
Speaker 4: are going to happen, and you can shift to those
20:18
Speaker 4: promises or rearrange the timeline. But sometimes I feel like
20:24
Speaker 4: we don't actually articulate our own promises and our own
20:29
Speaker 4: uh you know, like we're offering a service, and the
20:33
Speaker 4: service have to have to have standards connected to them.
20:35
Speaker 4: So I'm I'm very diligent about those things now and
20:39
Speaker 4: feel like it's important for us as a field to
20:41
Speaker 4: do that.
20:43
Speaker 3: But but back to me the.
20:47
Speaker 4: You know, I luckily I love learning and I just
20:52
Speaker 4: keep myself in learning, and I do that in different areas.
20:56
Speaker 4: So I made sure that I stayed in really good
21:00
Speaker 4: quality supervision and got a lot of feedback and also
21:03
Speaker 4: worked the places where it was intersecting with my own work.
21:08
Speaker 4: I definitely keep myself in my own development. Like the
21:11
Speaker 4: more I internally transform, also the more competent I am.
21:15
Speaker 4: I just understand different terrains in terminal terrains differently. And
21:20
Speaker 4: then I also kept studying, and I kept studying not
21:24
Speaker 4: only in the trauma field, but I expanded it a
21:27
Speaker 4: little bit. So I made sure to keep my view wide.
21:30
Speaker 4: And one of the things that I studied a lot
21:32
Speaker 4: is how do I understand the impact of social trauma
21:37
Speaker 4: or social oppression? That was another place that I made
21:40
Speaker 4: some mistakes. So I really widened out there and then
21:44
Speaker 4: I really widened into resilience and what are different ways
21:47
Speaker 4: people build resilience. Nature as one, spirituality is another, arts
21:51
Speaker 4: and culture is another. So I tried to almost in
21:55
Speaker 4: some ways keep myself exposed and keep studying across a
21:59
Speaker 4: different areas so that I almost didn't get stuck in
22:02
Speaker 4: one set of interpretations. I think, when I get to
22:07
Speaker 4: the place that I am convinced I'm right, is the
22:10
Speaker 4: time to make sure I learned something that shows me
22:12
Speaker 4: that there's a lot more to learn.
22:16
Speaker 3: So was that good?
22:17
Speaker 2: Was that it?
22:17
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was that was kind of a perfect answer. Actually,
22:23
Speaker 1: your answers are multi faceted and the multi prongs that
22:27
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that brain. Yeah, so now we get
22:32
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite questions, Stacey. And you know,
22:34
Speaker 1: we talked about the challenges and what got you to
22:37
Speaker 1: this field. In a sense, I also believe it's important
22:40
Speaker 1: to really focus on why we're doing something because the
22:44
Speaker 1: answer to that really drives us along in our work
22:47
Speaker 1: and what we do. And this is a little different
22:49
Speaker 1: than you know, what got you here in the first place,
22:51
Speaker 1: But share with us, Stacy, your why you know, why
22:55
Speaker 1: do you continue to do this work on a day
22:58
Speaker 1: to day basis?
23:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
23:04
Speaker 4: I'm conscious that I'm going to give you a multi
23:06
Speaker 4: pronged answer again, but I guess I'm just being myself
23:10
Speaker 4: if I if I really give you the deepest answer,
23:13
Speaker 4: it's uh it It fundamentally feels like my calling. It
23:20
Speaker 4: feels like what I'm built for and the way that
23:24
Speaker 4: I can use who I am and my particularness to
23:33
Speaker 4: make the biggest contribution. So it's funny that I talked
23:38
Speaker 4: about the mountains in the beginning because the mountains are
23:42
Speaker 4: a real spiritual home for me, and that just kind
23:47
Speaker 4: of comes back as we talk about this. I think
23:51
Speaker 4: the other reason is that I, you know, I really
24:00
Speaker 4: for me. People are really amazing. Human beings are really amazing.
24:03
Speaker 4: I find us interesting, fascinating and odd all at the
24:08
Speaker 4: same time. But I feel like we in trauma and
24:13
Speaker 4: in violence, we use our energy in such a wasteful
24:17
Speaker 4: way when there's so many better ways that we can
24:20
Speaker 4: be using our energy, you know, toward connection, toward love,
24:25
Speaker 4: toward creativity. And it feels like trauma really drives us
24:29
Speaker 4: down a path of misuse of all that aliveness and
24:33
Speaker 4: healing helps move us toward a really great use. So
24:38
Speaker 4: there's something about that when I work with people and
24:41
Speaker 4: see them transform. It's like, oh wow, everything is becoming
24:44
Speaker 4: much more life affirming and that I don't know, that
24:48
Speaker 4: just seems good congruent, right, all those all those words.
24:54
Speaker 2: So tease that out a little bit.
24:57
Speaker 1: You kind of made a distinction between you said, you know,
25:00
Speaker 1: we who tend to do this trauma work, there's a
25:04
Speaker 1: kind of two paths where our energies can go.
25:08
Speaker 2: Can you clarify that a little bit for me? For us?
25:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, what I kind of meant is actually humans in general,
25:14
Speaker 4: not even just us who do trauma healing work.
25:17
Speaker 3: But you know, when I look around the world or.
25:18
Speaker 4: Turn on the news, I go, oh my, why do
25:23
Speaker 4: we use so much of our human energy and ingenuity
25:26
Speaker 4: toward destruction?
25:27
Speaker 3: That just seems like the wrong direction.
25:30
Speaker 4: And I again, I know that's kind of a big picture,
25:35
Speaker 4: but I think that's in some ways how my heart
25:37
Speaker 4: works around this, is that desire to have us use
25:40
Speaker 4: our ingenuity as people toward things that are more life affirming.
25:47
Speaker 1: Awesome, Okay, so let's kind of shift gears a little.
25:51
Speaker 1: You know, again, many of our listeners here are therapists
25:56
Speaker 1: who don't have or don't think they have, you know,
26:01
Speaker 1: experience working with traumatized individuals. Many individuals who are listening
26:07
Speaker 1: to this podcast are just beginning to get into the
26:10
Speaker 1: field of trauma therapy or trauma informed care. Stacy, what
26:15
Speaker 1: advice do you have for people just beginning to get
26:20
Speaker 1: into this field.
26:23
Speaker 4: Yep, Well, all advice, I guess is biased, so mine
26:28
Speaker 4: is going to be. What I would say is, if
26:35
Speaker 4: you're interested in this field, to get yourself exposed to
26:41
Speaker 4: holistic approaches, and for me, that sematics when we're looking
26:47
Speaker 4: at how high intensity experiences work in the psychobiology, so
26:53
Speaker 4: in kind of the mind, body spirit, they really get
26:57
Speaker 4: driven into the more automatic, reactive parts of us. And
27:03
Speaker 4: a lot of our what's called the executive functioning or
27:06
Speaker 4: the frontal lobe of the brain gets shut down during
27:09
Speaker 4: traumatic experiences. So some of the most effective ways of
27:15
Speaker 4: helping people build resilience and process through fight, flight, freeze,
27:20
Speaker 4: appeas and associative responses are actually through the body. And
27:26
Speaker 4: so if you're fascinated by healing trauma, I'd really encourage
27:30
Speaker 4: people to get exposed to somatic therapies to some of
27:36
Speaker 4: the great neuroscience and what neurosciences are revealing to us
27:40
Speaker 4: about why somatic therapies work, and to also get really
27:44
Speaker 4: fascinated about practice. And what I mean about practice is
27:53
Speaker 4: back to that first quote. It's like what we repeatedly
27:56
Speaker 4: practice builds our habits, and especially when there's been trauma,
28:02
Speaker 4: those repeated practices tend to keep reaffirming trauma survival responses.
28:11
Speaker 4: And so you know trauma therapist who like in my case,
28:17
Speaker 4: the form of somatics that I'm trained in is really
28:19
Speaker 4: informed by aikdo, but get really fascinated about practices like
28:25
Speaker 4: aiketo or tai chi or meditation practices that are holistic
28:31
Speaker 4: practices include the body, mind and spirit that actually help
28:36
Speaker 4: re set the whole psychobiology and move us toward more
28:45
Speaker 4: I'm trying to not to use too much jargon, but
28:48
Speaker 4: what it's called is more integrated states, more resilient spased states,
28:54
Speaker 4: because it really really helps understanding why we're reacting. Like
29:00
Speaker 4: acting only goes so far, and we really need to
29:03
Speaker 4: get into the whole holistic approach to go how do
29:07
Speaker 4: we transform how we're reacting so that I don't have
29:11
Speaker 4: to have those that fight response over and over again,
29:15
Speaker 4: or that flea response over and over again, even when
29:19
Speaker 4: the trauma is no longer happening.
29:22
Speaker 1: Great, yeah, I think awesome, awesome advice. You know, get
29:26
Speaker 1: number one, get exposed to holistic approaches in other words, somatics,
29:31
Speaker 1: and just get fascinated. Number two, interested in the neuroscience
29:36
Speaker 1: behind all of all of this and all you're talking about.
29:39
Speaker 1: And the third one, I just love it, you know,
29:42
Speaker 1: get fascinated about practice and you talk about Akto Taichi
29:46
Speaker 1: meditation and because they really speak to the how the
29:53
Speaker 1: trauma in a sense was ultimately set in and thereby
30:00
Speaker 1: you know, being able to heal that.
30:02
Speaker 2: I love that.
30:03
Speaker 1: You know.
30:03
Speaker 2: Where I went to school, akdo was.
30:05
Speaker 1: A requirement, so oh great, Yeah, I just I just
30:09
Speaker 1: love Aketo and I just love you, you know, bringing
30:12
Speaker 1: that back into the mix and conversation.
30:14
Speaker 2: So awesome advice, Stacy.
30:17
Speaker 1: How about to go to books besides Judith Herman's Trauma
30:21
Speaker 1: and Recovery, which maybe has had a major impact on
30:24
Speaker 1: the work you do or even your personal life.
30:27
Speaker 2: What would you say?
30:31
Speaker 4: That's a good question, Well, Richards, Josie Heckler just put
30:37
Speaker 4: out a new book this year called The Art of
30:39
Speaker 4: Somatic Coaching, and obviously coaching and therapy are different practices,
30:46
Speaker 4: but it's a really great overview of somatics and why
30:48
Speaker 4: somatics works also beyond trauma.
30:51
Speaker 3: I think that's a great one to pick up. And
30:54
Speaker 3: then there's also I should have had this right at hand.
30:58
Speaker 3: I might have to look it up.
31:02
Speaker 4: There's a great book of anthology that's actually about what
31:05
Speaker 4: we call social trauma. So what are what's the impact
31:10
Speaker 4: of living in environments that don't dignify all people?
31:16
Speaker 3: And I think we're.
31:18
Speaker 4: Gonna have to let me look it up and stick
31:21
Speaker 4: it on your website because I don't have it right
31:23
Speaker 4: in front of you. But I was just looking in
31:25
Speaker 4: an article from it yesterday and it's a really great anthology.
31:29
Speaker 2: Okay, awesome. So Richard Strosie Heckler's new.
31:32
Speaker 1: Book, The Art of us SMATA coachingtic Coaching, and then
31:38
Speaker 1: the next one we will definitely have up on the
31:41
Speaker 1: show notes page at West Coast Trauma Project dot com.
31:45
Speaker 1: So talk to us about what you've got going on.
31:48
Speaker 1: Talk to us about you know what you've got going
31:51
Speaker 1: on there down in Oakland.
31:53
Speaker 3: Awesome? Great, good. So, well, we have a lot going on.
31:59
Speaker 3: It's exciting.
32:00
Speaker 4: So we run year long programs called Somatics and Trauma programs,
32:04
Speaker 4: and those are for therapists actually, as well as coaches
32:09
Speaker 4: and including folks who are doing social leadership work or
32:16
Speaker 4: social change leadership work. What we really found is although
32:22
Speaker 4: social change leaders aren't inherently doing trauma healing work, they
32:26
Speaker 4: need to refer to people who do that more directly.
32:28
Speaker 4: They're interfacing with the impact of trauma all the time.
32:33
Speaker 4: So that's just a very exciting combination and something that
32:36
Speaker 4: I that I really my heart is really in. We're
32:40
Speaker 4: also later on this year going to launch basically a
32:44
Speaker 4: network of practitioners who want to serve do trauma healing
32:49
Speaker 4: with communities that don't get as much access or don't
32:54
Speaker 4: have as much access to that work. I'm sorry, I
32:57
Speaker 4: have a siren going by outside. I'm sorry about the sound.
33:00
Speaker 4: It'll pass. And that I'm excited about because I think
33:04
Speaker 4: one of the things for therapists and practitioners is often
33:07
Speaker 4: because we're doing so much one on one work, we
33:11
Speaker 4: are alone more often and being a part of other
33:14
Speaker 4: practitioners that are in a network that kind of have
33:17
Speaker 4: a joint purpose. And we've just gotten a lot of
33:19
Speaker 4: positive feedback about people desiring to do that. And last
33:26
Speaker 4: thing is we're starting a group this year that's for
33:30
Speaker 4: people who run a run somatic based trauma healing groups.
33:34
Speaker 4: So we're training folks to run those groups. So that's
33:37
Speaker 4: some of the fun stuff that we're up to in
33:39
Speaker 4: the future.
33:40
Speaker 2: Awesome.
33:41
Speaker 1: I love that. So you've got this year long course
33:44
Speaker 1: going on. That sounds awesome. And then the second thing
33:47
Speaker 1: you talked about was this practitioners practitioner network to help
33:54
Speaker 1: to get people into working with communities that don't normally
33:59
Speaker 1: or you usually get trauma healing.
34:03
Speaker 2: How's that going to play out? What's that going to
34:06
Speaker 2: look like?
34:07
Speaker 4: What that's going to look like is so we have
34:12
Speaker 4: a network of practitioners already interested. Basically they'll be kind
34:16
Speaker 4: of you become a member of the network, and the
34:19
Speaker 4: inside of that there will be different let's say workshops,
34:26
Speaker 4: CEU courses, things like that offered. The network itself will
34:30
Speaker 4: gather both in person and also online so they can
34:34
Speaker 4: actually talk to each other and do anything from just
34:37
Speaker 4: pure support to supervision. And then inside of it, what
34:41
Speaker 4: we're also doing is connecting trauma practitioners and therapists to
34:46
Speaker 4: community based organizations who serve people in basically poorer communities,
34:53
Speaker 4: so that link up is really important. And then any
34:56
Speaker 4: education people might need to How do they interact effectively
34:59
Speaker 4: with those communities if they're not from those communities?
35:02
Speaker 1: Okay, So now are these therapists and or healers? Are
35:06
Speaker 1: they students of the work that you do this point?
35:12
Speaker 3: Many of them are, but they don't inherently need to.
35:14
Speaker 2: Be Okay, awesome, Awesome, So we will have links. Is
35:19
Speaker 2: this up on your website?
35:20
Speaker 3: It's not yet. No, it'll go up about April of
35:24
Speaker 3: next year.
35:24
Speaker 2: Okay.
35:25
Speaker 1: We'll have links up to your website again on the
35:28
Speaker 1: show notes page and an addition contact information. So what
35:34
Speaker 1: is the best way for people to get in touch
35:36
Speaker 1: with you, Stacy?
35:37
Speaker 4: Great, So they can go to our website, which is
35:43
Speaker 4: generativesomatics dot org and you can find a link to
35:47
Speaker 4: me there. It's just Stacy at generosomatics dot org. Folks
35:51
Speaker 4: can email me or contact me there. Or also the
35:55
Speaker 4: website around my book and d around Healing Sexual Trauma.
36:03
Speaker 4: That website is Healing Sexthmovie dot org is the DVD website.
36:09
Speaker 3: So you can find me in those two places.
36:11
Speaker 1: All right, Stacy, you have been and continue to be
36:16
Speaker 1: just so inspiring. I'm so glad I finally got to
36:19
Speaker 1: you on this podcast. I know it was kind of
36:22
Speaker 1: rescheduling here and there, but thank you so much.
36:27
Speaker 4: And absolutely I just really appreciate it. You're really welcome
36:30
Speaker 4: and thanks for doing what you're doing. I just really
36:32
Speaker 4: appreciate how you're putting this out and giving a lot
36:35
Speaker 4: of folks access to different different folks.
36:37
Speaker 3: So thank you, well, thank you.
36:39
Speaker 4: All right, we'll take care, take care, ye bye.