Many people don\u2019t know that the instinct to preserve one\u2019s life has a default setting.\u00a0 When we\u2019re in a life threatening situation, our body gears up for a massive use of energy.\u00a0 There\u2019s a shot of adrenaline, the heart & breathing speed up, blood flow is shunted away from organs that aren\u2019t essential and pumped into muscle.\u00a0 If the person can run away, or fight for their life, that energy gets used.\u00a0 If they can neither flee nor fight \u2014 think of a possum threatened by a coyote \u2014 then instinct shuts down the body which falls into a death-like state.\u00a0 This is called \u201cplaying possum.\u201d But it isn\u2019t really \u201cplaying\u201d at all.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a conscious choice.\u00a0 Instinct has frozen the possum.\u00a0 If the coyote doesn\u2019t eat it, this instinctive response will save the possum\u2019s life.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve actually seen a video in which the coyote nosed the possum & then decided it wasn\u2019t interested in dead meat and walked away.\u00a0 The possum lay there for a bit, then stood up, shook itself off, and walked away.
\nAfter studying the behavior of animals in the wild, Peter Levine answered the question: \u201cAnimals in the wild, prey animals especially, risk death every day.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t they get traumatized?\u201d He found that shaking themselves off afterward discharged the energy that wasn\u2019t used to fight or flee, but was frozen in the body.\u00a0 Humans however, have largely lost touch with this instinctive release.\u00a0 We are also faced with situations that our biology never evolved to handle, like the swiftness of modern automobile accidents or the horrors of modern war.\u00a0 The symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress are the result of the energy built up in the body that was never released.\u00a0 Peter Levine developed Somatic Experiencing as a way to allow the body to release that energy, to in his words \u201cre-negotiate\u201d the trauma.\u00a0 There is a page on \u201cSomatic Experiencing\u201d on this blog.<\/p>\n
For more information, see Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many people don\u2019t know that the instinct to preserve one\u2019s life has a default setting.\u00a0 When we\u2019re in a life threatening situation, our body gears up for a massive use of energy.\u00a0 There\u2019s a shot of adrenaline, the heart & … Continue reading