Healing Tools
摘要
Prolonged trauma leaves lasting imprints on the body, brain, and mind. Traumatic experiences are encoded in the survivor’s muscles, joints, breath, and nervous system. This is a primary complaint that survivors often express as chronic muscle pain, anxiety, or disconnection from themselves and others. TICBI is rooted in this understanding and social work’s person-centered approach, which includes compassionate awareness of the survivor’s somatic experience. The tools selected for this chapter are designed to foster healing by focusing on recovery-based activities. Each tool is carefully crafted to be experiential and interactive practices, such as meditation, gentle movements or stretches, and breathing and centering exercises, which engage the bodily senses, promote self-discovery, and facilitate healing. Some exercises in this chapter may seem similar, but are slightly different. They are designed for various purposes, exploring the multiple facets of trauma responses on the body, brain, and mind while promoting connection and integration. Therefore, each proposed approach aims to assist social workers and other practitioners in supporting survivors as they address underlying emotional or physical issues and develop culturally informed intervention activities that empower them to utilize the foreseeable future with the necessary skills and tools learned during TICBI. Each activity is based on the premise that maladaptive responses learned for survival can be unlearned in a safe space using the techniques outlined in this chapter.