Trauma Touch Therapy - Massage and Trauma Care for Women

Welcome to Massage and Trauma Care for Women
Carol Springer, RN, B.Sci. Nursing, lic. Massage and Trauma Touch Therapist TM

Trauma Touch TherapyTM reconnects you.

What is Trauma?

Trauma can be any event that overwhelms a person's normal capacity to cope. Traumatic events can take your breath away and knock you off your energetic ground.

In addition to injury,

the impact of trauma may leave a person in a state of heightened alert, and disconnected from the sequence of what happened. Trauma may dull or disconnect people from sensory awareness and emotions. Long after the event is past, these disconnections subconsciously interfere with activity, health, sleep and/or relationships.

Trauma Needs a Way Out!

Imagine that trauma is an unwanted force that lodges in the body and triggers knee-jerk, inexplicable reactions. For instance, many people report that a friendly shoulder squeeze, doctor's exam, dental work, intimate contact or massage elicits anxiety and/or a defensive reaction. They may rigidly bear up, "numb out" or avoid the above situations.

Despite a person's best efforts to over-ride these post traumatic reactions, few new responses are possible until the affected person shifts the entrenched traumatic force.

Touch is a basic human need. As a Trauma Touch Therapist I help my clients learn how to experience safe touch. The work includes a variety of non-touch modalities to help people work up to experiencing touch. The non-touch approach is also useful for therapists, counselors & clergy.

Clients learn to pace the work - and their lives - to avoid reliving traumatizing events. Clients learn to create experiences in which they get help to care for themselves in ways that were not possible at the time of trauma.

Trauma Touch TherapyTM clients initially contract for 10 weekly sessions. Their commitment creates a safe container to explore re-connection with their sensory self.

Trauma Touch TherapyTM creates safe space

to breathe
to slow down
to stay present
to communicate with the body
to suspend judging messages
to explore safe touch
to learn to let discomfort lead the way out
to encourage client directed process and integration
to experiment with joy and pleasure

What Might Traumatize People?

Invasive surgery
Giving birth
Childhood hospitalizations
Death of loved ones
Accidents (Studies show that after an auto accident, most people experience post traumatic stress symptoms.)
Experiencing or witnessing a crime or traumatic event
Physical, mental, emotional and/or sexual abuse
War; imprisonment
Natural disasters

traumatized

Trauma Touch TherapyTM is an important adjunct to talk therapy. While scientific understanding of trauma's long term effects is still emerging, it seems clear that, without body-centered intervention, the thinking brain just spins its wheels in a futile attempt to talk about and understand the trauma.

The body is a source of considerable information about dislodging the effects of trauma. Most people benefit from guidance, such as Trauma Touch TherapyTM and other body-centered approaches*, to utilize their body's simple messages.

Soldiers are returning home from the terrible ordeals of war. Families of soldiers are suffering the effects of war. Wars and terrorizing activities traumatize thousands. At this time of accelerated violence and fear, body-centered therapies are needed, more than ever, to provide help and support for learning life affirming ways of being in the world.

Trauma Touch TherapyTM helps people use their body as a resource to cope with the intrusive, often debilitating, influences of trauma by inviting them to

stay in present time, vs. reliving the experience
maintain communication during the session
stay in control by pacing what they experience
use movement to help trauma find a way out
move through the experience with help and support

Trauma Touch TherapyTM helps people with a variety of trauma histories. It interfaces with - but is not a substitute for - counseling.

If you don't live near northeast CT, contact Colorado School of Healing Arts to locate a local Trauma Touch practitioner.

•Stephanie Mines, Pat Ogden, Belleruth Naparstek and Peter A. Levine are practitioners who have also created body-centered approaches to trauma recovery.

Return to Your Senses Handbook

is a body-centered guide for

Growth after trauma

Compassion Fatigue

Vicarious Traumatization

Lives that feel too busy

It adds structure to the often chaotic process of post traumatic recovery, and helps integrate body-centered approaches with psychotherapy or counseling. I use it with my clients, and, it provides a format for workshops that introduce talk therapists, massage therapists, caregivers and other health care professionals to a body centered approach to trauma care. (see Classes)

Return to Your Senses Handbook

Caregivers

Cranial Sacral and Myofascial Release

Trauma Touch Therapy TM

Carol Springer
PO Box 43
Willington, CT 06279-0043

Phone: (860) 487-5506
Email: Carol@MTCWC.com