The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are severe and can easily disrupt your life. When the world is a scary place, every day can feel like an uphill battle.
PTSD is caused by a state of heightened awareness that activates your limbic brain – the part of your brain that sends you into fight-or-flight mode. This continual state of high stress takes a major toll on you physically and emotionally and can lead to longer-term problems down the road if it’s left untreated. Thankfully, there are plenty of simple-to-use alternative techniques for addressing PTSD that have been shown to be very effective. Though PTSD can feel debilitating at times, it’s important to know that with the right treatment and support, you can learn to process your trauma and bring your body, mind, soul, and spirit back into a state of balance.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is one of the most effective known trauma interventions. During an EMDR session, you’ll create certain repeated eye movements while recalling your distressing memories. During this process, those experiences will be moved from your short-term memory, where they’re still actively affecting you, to your long-term memory, where they’re safely stored. EMDR is extremely fast-acting: studies show that over 90 percent of PTSD sufferers significantly reduced their symptoms after just three sessions.
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TSY)
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “Research on Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and chronic childhood abuse has revealed that traditional trauma treatments often fail to fully address the complicated symptom presentation, including the somatic complaints, loss of awareness of one’s emotional and physical being in the present moment, and overall lack of integration between the self and the body.”
Trauma-sensitive yoga mindfully addresses this by gently encouraging body awareness, reconnecting you with your emotions and physical sensations, and releasing stored tension, helping you ease into a state of relaxation.
EFT: Energy Medicine for PTSD
The type of energy medicine most commonly used for PTSD is energy therapy acupoint tapping, otherwise known as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT involves tapping meridian points (according to Traditional Chinese Medicine) on your body to restore a healthy flow of energy. This produces a calming effect that effectively reduces the symptoms of hyper-alertness associated with PTSD. And, according to psychologist Dr. Susan Heitler, “It (does) so faster, with less secondary trauma, with longer-lasting results and more comprehensively than most traditional treatment methods.”
A Wealth of Holistic PTSD Therapies, Right at Your Fingertips
Alternative approaches can often be more effective than conventional trauma treatment techniques because, rather than focusing on the internal experience of trauma, they allow you to process its effects through other channels – energetically, physically, and subconsciously. By releasing stuck trauma from the various parts of our being, we become free to reconnect with ourselves, the universe, and those around us – and live the life we’re meant to.
For more on alternative PTSD treatments, see our articles: The Alternative Approach: Natural, Holistic Treatments for PTSD.
To learn how we can help you shift away from trauma and step into your fullest self, call us at (866)750-0763 or email us at [email protected] today.
He is the Founder, Administrator, Counselor at the Sanctuary at Sedona.
He has a BA in Political Science and is currently Senior teaching staff at Four Winds Society, an international school of energy medicine. His credentials also include being an Ordained Minister; a Certified Shamanic Breathwork® Facilitator; a Founding Member Society for Shamanic Practitioners; a Member of Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology; a Member of the National Institute for Holistic Addiction Studies. [email protected]