JD Kalmenson interviews Gina Ross, MFCC, to learn about the latest developments in trauma treatment, including how trauma lodges in the body, how our nervous system can be reset for more resilience, and how to work with generational trauma.
Gina Ross, MFCC, is founder and president of International Trauma-Healing Institutes in the United States and in Israel and the co-founder of the Israeli Trauma Center at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem. An internationally known expert on the impact of trauma in conflict between groups or nations, Gina has specialized in cutting-edge healing methods that can be brought to the public. Also a pioneer in understanding collective trauma, Gina has integrated her wide expertise in cross–cultural issues and relationships and is currently working with Israeli and Palestinian societies and other groups to bring an understanding of the role of trauma in conflicts between groups or nations, how this role and cross –cultural misunderstandings relate specifically to politics in the Middle East. Gina and her institutes work diligently to place the issue of trauma healing on the global agenda, developing resources and collaborating with organizations to further healing at the community, national, and international levels.
Host Kalmenson is the CEO/Founder of Renewal Health Group, a family of addiction treatment centers, and Montare Behavioral Health, a comprehensive brand of mental health treatment facilities in Southern California. Kalmenson is a Yale Chabad Scholar, a skilled facilitator, teacher, counselor, and speaker, who has provided chaplain services to prisons, local groups and remote villages throughout the world. His diverse experience as a rabbi, chaplain, and CEO has inspired his passion and deep understanding of the necessity for effective mental health treatment and long-term sobriety.
Tags:
mentalhealth, trauma, somatics, body-mind, emotionalhealing, nervoussystem, bodyhealing, traumarecovery, israel-palestine, psychotherapy, bodymindconnection, stress, anxiety, managingstress, managinganxiety
Follow JD at JDKalmenson.com
JD Kalmenson interviews Gina Ross, MFCC, to learn about the latest developments in trauma treatment, including how trauma lodges in the body, how our nervous system can be reset for more resilience, and how to work with generational trauma.
Gina Ross, MFCC, is founder and president of International Trauma-Healing Institutes in the United States and in Israel and the co-founder of the Israeli Trauma Center at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem. An internationally known expert on the impact of trauma in conflict between groups or nations, Gina has specialized in cutting-edge healing methods that can be brought to the public. Also a pioneer in understanding collective trauma, Gina has integrated her wide expertise in cross–cultural issues and relationships and is currently working with Israeli and Palestinian societies and other groups to bring an understanding of the role of trauma in conflicts between groups or nations, how this role and cross –cultural misunderstandings relate specifically to politics in the Middle East. Gina and her institutes work diligently to place the issue of trauma healing on the global agenda, developing resources and collaborating with organizations to further healing at the community, national, and international levels.
Host Kalmenson is the CEO/Founder of Renewal Health Group, a family of addiction treatment centers, and Montare Behavioral Health, a comprehensive brand of mental health treatment facilities in Southern California. Kalmenson is a Yale Chabad Scholar, a skilled facilitator, teacher, counselor, and speaker, who has provided chaplain services to prisons, local groups and remote villages throughout the world. His diverse experience as a rabbi, chaplain, and CEO has inspired his passion and deep understanding of the necessity for effective mental health treatment and long-term sobriety.
Tags:
mentalhealth, trauma, somatics, body-mind, emotionalhealing, nervoussystem, bodyhealing, traumarecovery, israel-palestine, psychotherapy, bodymindconnection, stress, anxiety, managingstress, managinganxiety
Follow JD at JDKalmenson.com
JD Kalmenson:
Welcome to another episode of discover you our podcast exploring innovative and effective solutions to issues in mental and behavioral health. I'm JD Kalmenson, CEO of Montare Behavioral Health, a family of dynamic and comprehensive mental health treatment centers in Southern California. I am so honored and excited to introduce you to our wonderful guest today. Gina Ross. Gina Ross MFCC is the founder and president of International Trauma Healing Institute in the United States and in Israel and the co-founder of the Israeli trauma center at Hertzog hospital in Jerusalem. An internationally known expert on the impact of trauma in conflict between groups or nations, Gina has specialized in cutting edge healing methods that can also be brought to the public. A pioneer in understanding collective trauma, Gina has in integrated her wide expertise in cross-cultural issues and relationships, and is currently working with Israeli and Palestinian societies and other groups to bring an understanding of the role of trauma in conflicts between groups or nations and how this role in cross-cultural misunderstandings relates specifically to politics in the middle east .Gina and her institutes work diligently to place the issue of trauma healing on the global agenda, developing resources and collaborating with organizations to further healing at the communal national and international levels.
JD Kalmenson:
Welcome Gina. I am so honored and grateful that you've taken the time to be with us today and share broad and deep knowledge about trauma and somatic therapy.
Gina Ross:
My pleasure to be here. Thank you.
JD Kalmenson:
So my understanding Gina is that you had quite a colorful upbringing from Syria to
South America
Gina Ross:
Yeah
JD Kalmenson:
Would you say that the work that you do today with bringing conflict resolution trauma awareness specifically in the middle east is almost destiny. It's something that it was a part of your upbringing, and this is you giving back and making the environment a better and, and hopefully more peaceful place.
Gina Ross:
It was my love for Israel that got me going. I mean, I was in terms of a psychotherapist. I wanted to help people with their growth and their spirituality. And only then I realized that if you're traumatized, it's not easy to do that. So I got to trauma through really the back door. I didn't realize any of the connection. My parents, my, my family always moved without, without thinking that we were refugees and it was terrible. And there was no complaints about that. Uh, wherever we went, I think Judaism really held us together. There was a community that was there also holding us together. So I don't know that my experience was about trauma when we left. Right. It's just when I was in Israel. And then one day after I met Peter Levine, I'll tell you about it. And when he said trauma is at the root of violence, that's when I started thinking about Israel and the Palestinians.
JD Kalmenson:
Hmm. So clearly you're renowned authority on trauma as a whole and a somatic experience practitioner. And I would love to cover both of those topics today, but perhaps we can just start by laying a foundational understanding of what trauma really is. My understanding from conversations with you and others is that trauma's not just limited to the effects of a single devastating event, an assault or something like that, but it has a broader definition and criteria.
Gina Ross:
Right? So just, just as a little aside on trainer in somatic experiencing an international senior trainer and I introduced Soma experiencing in Israel wow. 22 years ago. So
JD Kalmenson:
Just 20, 22 years ago.
Gina Ross:
Yes. And I have been going there four times a year since then.
JD Kalmenson:
That's amazing. That's amazing. And we'll jump into that. It will into the somatic experience, what it is and, and, and a lot of the, uh, depth and details of that, which is, uh, super exciting. But if we, if we want to start with giving our audience a better understanding of a trauma or the proper criteria of traumas in general, how would you define that?
Gina Ross:
Yeah, so there is, um, a formal classic definition of trauma as, uh, making the people have PTSD, which had very specific, uh, symptoms like flashback avoidance, um, something like that. It was not, it was not generalized, but Peter Levine, the creator of, if I see somatic experience saying I had a very different understanding and we call trauma anything, anything that make us feel stuck in part or as a whole. So we call it small T trauma and big T trauma. So big T trauma is what you said. It's war it's attack. It's, uh, um, violence and small T trauma is a bad diagnosis of the doctor, a bite from a dog, a car accident, even if we're not hurt physically, we can be traumatized psychically. So the definition of trauma is, is actually anything that leaves you overwhelmed and unable to cope with the situation and digest it and just integrate in your own life.
JD Kalmenson:
So it's a very subjective experience. Two people can go through the exact same sort of circumstances. One can feel traumatized and one can feel absolutely
Gina Ross:
Nothing. Yeah, exactly. But there's a reason for it. It's not that it's subjective. Like, oh, I'm emotional, but as we will talk about it, it really, it has to do with a nervous system. So if my nervous system is in a good state, I'm balanced, I'm centered. There is no preoccupation in my life. I can encounter a traumatic event and be able to handle it just fine. But if I had a series of traumas or for some reason, I was either sick or something was going on with me are very angry, and then my nervous system is not stable. It's not balanced. Then I will get traumatized. And my nervous system will be disorganized with a lot of impact and we can talk about it.
JD Kalmenson:
That's very important. So I, I, I love how you just classified that. And you said it wasn't, it's not that it's, the trauma is a subjective experience per se, but it very much has to do with the individual's nerves, their system and what their capability and what their sort of general equilibrium of mental health is at that time when they experience that, which will dictate and determine whether they get traumatized depending on how frail or healthy they might be in the emotionally speaking.
Gina Ross:
And, and that's what Peter really came up with is like trauma is in the body. I call it trauma is the body mind actually. But when we talk about the body, we're really talking about the nervous system
JD Kalmenson:
Right now, there are two terms that you talk about trauma vortex versus says healing vortex. Can you elaborate on those terms?
Gina Ross:
Yeah. So Peter created trauma, vortex, healing, vortex. He doesn't use healing vortex anymore, but I do, and I'm allowed to do it. So the trauma vortex, it is really interesting because it really describes, describes what trauma is all about. Okay. First of all, the word vortex. So the vortex has to do that. It keeps developing. It doesn't stay stopped. You, you get traumatized and there's something that's not working in your life and that's it. No, it keeps growing and growing and growing and adding more energy into your life and negative energy. Now, trauma vortex is going to indicate all of the symptoms of trauma. If you have a few symptoms of what we call traumatic symptoms, then you are in the trauma vortex, meaning you're not centered. Your reasoning is not happening in the right way. Your emotions are very strong and exaggerated and not applicable to the situation, not relevant to the situation. Um, negative belief systems that really make our life handling our life, coping with our life, much more difficult. So that would be the trauma vortex. It's a kind of a state nervous system and state of mind, and also a worldview that we end up having, because it, trauma does change our worldview, how we look at the world. So that's the trauma vortex, the healing vortex. And that's what made me go to Israel.
JD Kalmenson:
Wow,
Gina Ross:
Take this to Israel. And I'll tell you what it is. He said that when the trauma of vortex happens, there's a natural healing vortex that's born in the system at that same moment to be able to cope with it ,so that there is an inherent ability to heal inherent mechanisms of being able to remain balanced. And that was extraordinary for me when I heard that, I thought, oh, wow. That means that I don't have to pass on everything to my client. It's enough to put out what they have in their essence, her ability to heal.
JD Kalmenson:
That is so beautiful. That you're, that, that healing vortex is basically conveying that for the healing to take effect. We don't have to stimulate and create it. We have to tap into that, which already exists. We have to uncover, and we have to bring that to the forefront, you know, there's. And when you said that sentence, that the, when the trauma of vortex is sort of generated, that's when the healing vortex is put into place available is available.
Gina Ross:
However, it's weakened. If, if I stay traumatized, the healing vortex is weakened, and I need to strengthen it so that it can do this. We call it pendulation this back and forth, like imagine a figure, eight lying down, or an infinite, uh, sign. And then we have the trauma vortex and the healing vortex. And if everything is fine, I can take a bad event and work it through my healing vortex. And I'll be fine. But if I'm not, and I'm not balanced, my nervous system is not balanced. Then I'm stuck into going over and over and over again in the trauma vortex,
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross:
Without accessing the healing vortex that they are waiting for me, but it needs to have the right conditions.
JD Kalmenson:
It's so it's such an empowering thought. It's an empowering thought because, you know, if you have, uh, people think of like, uh, trauma, you know, you've got, you've got your plane and the plane got bruised and smashed by some other plane or some other circumstance. And now you have to take it to the mechanic, to the expert, to the authority for healing, for outside external intervention. And here, it's almost like we have embedded in the sophisticated psychological faculties, the, you know, the healing it's there. We have to tap into it and access it. But we have that embedded into our psychological framework. So that's a, it's a very empowering thought.
Gina Ross:
It it's what I say is like, God built that into our system. In the autonomic nervous system, there are two branches, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic gives us the energy for action. And the parasympathetic relaxes us. And they work in a complimentary way. There's this nice little wave and unconsciously, I don't have to make any effort.
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross:
I'll stop, take a breath, have some water, whatever I'm doing, it's all natural without thinking about it. Uh, when there's a trauma vortex, they're not working in a complimentary way anymore. They're on at the same time. And so that's the trouble. So at the same time that we have this built in energy, like we're, it's inherent, it's innate. And, and it's manifested in the nervous system composition itself. This is what's extraordinary. If we've been overwhelmed, then we're not accessing the healing capacity. So we need, sometimes we need help from other people to be able to get us out of that. But it difference is now you can take somebody with a traumatic event and get them out of it in two, three sessions. You don't need six months, a year, two years, three years, because you're going, working with the, with the body, with the nervous system itself, you're working exactly where the trauma is located in the nervous system.
JD Kalmenson:
That's amazing
Gina Ross:
Changed everything.
JD Kalmenson:
Right. Right. It's a paradigm shift. Have there been neurological studies that were able to identify different actual sections of the brain where the trauma vortex is accessing
Gina Ross:
True? There's been, yeah, of course they know exactly. Um, I don't remember all the terminology of the brain, but they know exactly some areas. For example, the broca area, which is for language gets disturbed. Definitely you can, um, yes, you can measure,
JD Kalmenson:
You can measure it neurologically where the person is accessing and, and it's, it's so profound because all of our thoughts, all of our feelings, if we're operating in the trauma of vortex are all going to be motivated and biased, painted, and tainted by that operating system.
Gina Ross:
I call it looking life through the lenses of the trauma vortex.
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross:
Now, anything, you know, once I'm traumatized and I'm easily triggered any stimulus, that's not really a big deal gets me aroused right away.
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross:
And activated right away. So that's, and that's why people, you, you end up thinking that people are not good. This is not a pleasant person. Why are they reacting like that? That's absurd. And they themselves think that they're crazy. Because they're reacting like that. But it's all because of simply simply the dis-regulation of, of the autonomic nervous system that got off balance.
JD Kalmenson:
And it's so much more relevant today than ever. When you talk about the effects of the pandemic on society, the war in Ukraine, there's almost like this apocalyptic sort of feeling and sentiment that people are experiencing, which it's based on what you're describing can leave to a sense of collective small T trauma.
Gina Ross:
Yeah. Or big T trauma. So now there's another thing that I want to talk about. It's something called Emotion Aid, which is part of SE, but it's for the lay public. So let's say if something had just happened, let's say somebody just walked into my garden with a, with a baton. Okay. And it's scary. Like they are yelling. And then I realized that somebody was playing. In the meantime, my nervous system got all activated and then it comes down and then I can go and calm down my nervous system.
At that point, I can discharge all of these emotions On a daily basis, on an ongoing basis. And that we call it brushing your nervous system every day.
JD Kalmenson:
Wow.
Gina Ross:
Where you brush your teeth, brush, check, what's going on in your body. You're activated something happened that wasn't good or unfinished business or something that you keep thinking about or getting upset about. Then you take each event and you can take it through the body and discharge it.
JD Kalmenson:
So there's a constant maintenance
Gina Ross:
First of all is developing the resiliency and we can strengthen, exercise our emotional muscles, the way we exercise our physical muscles. So I can strengthen my capacity to handle anything that happens.
JD Kalmenson:
So how does one develop that on a sort of practice exercise level, this emotional awareness and this ability to release and be in such sort of sensitive, close contact with their inner emotional workings.
Gina Ross:
Yeah. So I'm going to give you a gift for your audience and, uh, you'll have available the video of Emotion Aid. The, it shows you how to do it. I'm going to talk about it now, but then they can go over it and all the details, and also have a book for the public too. The idea, if I want to heal trauma at a collective level at a world level, we need to take it to the public, right? Not be only in the hands, the professionals, we're never going to be able to handle everything that's going on. If we go one by one. So what happens, you have to understand a few basic concepts is that, as I said, the traumas in the body, it's a nervous system. And what happens is at, at the time of, of the trauma, a huge amount of stress hormones are delivered in your body so that you can act, you can do something about it. You can defend yourself or, or flee or whatever you need to do.
Now, if I cannot either flee or, or fight, then I go instinctively into the freeze, which means now that this tremendous energy is stuck in the body, and that's what becomes trauma symptoms after. So what I need to do now is discharge the stuck energy and how do I do that?
JD Kalmenson:
Wow. So if somebody actually fought or they ran, would that be a release of that energy?
Gina Ross:
Right? Most of it. Yeah.
JD Kalmenson:
Most of it. So it's, it's when we freeze that we're harboring it in the body, right.
Gina Ross:
If we don't discharge the freeze,
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross: If I don't let the freeze out and I keep freezing again and stopping myself from what needs to happen, and then explain what it is, then this energy becomes traumatic symptoms.
JD Kalmenson:
And do you just consciously decide that I'm going to release it? And then the body sort of accepts that as a consent and a signal, and then does its thing, or is there other
Gina Ross:
Kind of it's like, so now we're understanding the trauma's in the body, stuck energy in the nervous system, right? The language of the nervous system is the language of the body. But what do we mean by that? Is it movement not necessarily. The language of the body is the inner sensations that we feel. So for example, if I get scared, there'll be maybe pressure in my chest. It maybe in my stomach, and maybe I stop breathing.
My heart beating fast is a sensation constriction in my throat, constriction in my chest, butterflies in my stomach, tension in my jaws pain in my neck, all of those are sensations that are unpleasant.
And they reveal to me that that's where the energy is stuck in my body. Instead of looking at them as illness, you look at them as, oh, that's how you can access that stuck energy and discharge it. Now, here is the miracle, which is really amazing. If my heart is beating fast, very fast and I'm freaking out like I'm panicking. Cuz like if my heart is beating fast, it's not comfortable at all. I'm afraid that I'm going to die. Right? So it's a very high alert movement in the body. If I just notice it, it's all I need to do. No willpower, no knowing what to do, nothing. Just bring my neutral attention on my heartbeat. It starts going down and goes back to normal. It discharges the energy. Now how do I know discharges? There are a few signs I can tell that.
JD Kalmenson:
So the awareness of the sensation in and of itself is powerful to generate the release and the discharge.
Gina Ross:
Exactly.
JD Kalmenson:
Wow. That is mind boggling. Extraordinary.
Gina Ross:
Yes
JD Kalmenson:
Yeah. Yes. And part of this is also having that awareness. So to be able to be in tune and to be attentive, to listen to the different sensations in the body, which is, uh, a beautiful degree of mindfulness
Gina Ross:
And some of, many of us don't do that.
JD Kalmenson:
Right. I don't our society. Most of us don't
Gina Ross:
Yeah. Our society does not train us to speak the language of sensations. If somebody tells me, how are you doing Gina? I'll say I'm doing fine. I don't say, oh, I'm breathing really well. And my breath is deep and my chest is open.
JD Kalmenson:
Yeah. When somebody, when somebody gets into that level of detail, you know, my response is usually I'm sorry I asked, you know?
Gina Ross:
Or are you crazy? What’s going on with you? But you see that if you attract, for example, kids are very in touch with their sensations. And if you attract their attention to what they're feeling, it's in a second tick track, it's gone. It's amazing. Like kids can heal so quickly, because they're very close to their inner experience.
JD Kalmenson:
And in your experience from an international perspective, traveling across the world and providing healing, have you seen that different cultures and religions will respond to trauma differently and that the healing and that the intervention has to be qualified and individualized based on that ethnicity culture or religion?
Gina Ross:
Very much so. So here's, what's interesting is that cultures that don't have a very high standard of living, uh, kind of get less traumatized in the sense that their expectations are not very high, because trauma is a, is about really, um, whenever I thought life was all of a sudden, it's a shock, it's not it. And so the higher expectations I have, and the trauma takes away all the possibilities, the more I'm traumatized. That's one element. The second element, uh, they, there is a much more ability to cope and accept faith. Like if you are, uh, if you believe in faith as a culture, you handle it much better. Uh, people who are very religious don't get traumatized as much as other people because even if they're going through the same events, because they accept the notion of something bad happening as the will of God, for example.
JD Kalmenson:
Right. So they're able to ascribe meeting and purpose, and that helps alleviate the, the trauma. I think it was Christopher Higgins, the world-renowned atheist, who said that regardless of the theology of it, a religion is definitely an enormous psychological benefit, uh, to, to those who believe in it
Gina Ross:
When it's well conducted. Yes. Yeah. At the same time though, it's really interesting. If somebody is very traumatized, the requirements of religion can make it harder for them. So again, if the nervous system is more or less balanced, faith is extraordinary. It's the biggest resource there is. But if somebody, you know, has had a lot of traumatic events in their lives, which is going to shake their faith, by the way, even just the demands, normal demands of liturgy or what we actions or whatever we need to do, become more oppressive and they cannot handle it as well.
JD Kalmenson:
And you know, it's interesting, this really connects not in, not obviously in, an apples to apples direct way, but it does remind me a lot of Victor Frankl's logotherapy that when somebody is tapped in into a source of meaning and purpose in their life, they're able to weather the adversarial circumstances. There's a resiliencythat those who don't have that sort of anchor
Gina Ross:
For whatever reason. Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, I mean, um, the resiliency belongs to everybody, whether you are religious or not, that's
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross:
It can develop the resiliency and you can have a very balanced, nervous system. It doesn't depend on having a religion or not, or being religious or not. However, having a religion can be an extraordinary resource, or it can be more of an issue as you said.
JD Kalmenson:
Right. That's right. Something that has been talked about recently epigenetics and generational trauma. Now, when we talk about generational trauma, how do does one deal with it? If its origins are not accessible to conscious memory, if you haven't experienced it yourself, then the stuckness that feeling that the body froze, if the body never really froze, how does emotional aid and somatic experience intervene with epigenetics?
Gina Ross:
First of all, if there is epigenetic transmission of trauma, the, uh, oh, the people that have it, um, are feeling it second generation third, third generation, they may not have lived events. They may not have known anything about it, but they were already transmitted in their nervous system. So here's the beauty about somatic experiencing somatic experiencing tells you if you have the story, it's great and we can use it very well. But if you don't have the story and you have the symptoms, we can help you discharge that's, it's extraordinary. Because it's contained in the nervous system, it has been passed on to the nervous system. And so,
JD Kalmenson:
Right.
Gina Ross:
I can heal it because I'm working with the sensations in the body,
JD Kalmenson:
Right. And that's how we can recognize the signs of a traumatic reaction. Even if it's not based on an experience that we actually personally underwent because we're listening to those sensations. And therefore we can be able to detect that this, that we might in fact have this form of trauma impacting our nervous system that is emanating from generations prior because we're in tune those sensations.
Gina Ross:
We may have trauma that we disassociated from.That happened to us and we disassociated from it, so the lack of memory is not only the lack of connection to the original event, but also part of often of the trauma. It was too hard to remember. It was like too devastating, too horrifying, too. Disorganizing to people associate part of the memory. So that's where the symptoms themselves in the body. But I don't think it's only in the body because you may have somebody, um, who doesn't get in touch with their body, but they're very negative belief system. That's a sign of trauma too. So if you're going around thinking that everything is bad in the world, everybody is terrible. I remember working with the soldiers in Israel who was, um, he had chronic PTSD and he could not stand anyone, except for me, and the other person that was helping him.
JD Kalmenson:
Hmm.
Gina Ross:
Like everybody was at fault. Everybody was negative. Everybody did wrong thing. So it's, it's very, very strong disconnect. It really takes us to not have relationship, not trust people and not count on the people that are around us that are our friends or family or helpers or teachers or clergy, whoever is around to help us. We're not connecting.
JD Kalmenson:
Wow.
Gina Ross:
So the first thing I do when they have somebody who's very traumatized and isolated is to help them reconnect with different pieces of their background. Right. Because we need the resources, right. When we're going into the trauma, we need the resiliency of the resources there.
JD Kalmenson:
Right. And obviously it would seem that the best way to prevent us from passing on generational trauma to our children, to our students, or to people who respect us would be to engage in self-healing and to release it from ourselves.
Gina Ross:
Yeah. You got it though. It's a collective project. It's a collective project that's going to manifest through individual work.
JD Kalmenson :
Right. Right.
Gina Ross:
And especially, I think if we could imagine, if we could establish some kind of tradition where all politicians, for example, need to know their trauma before they become politicians, all media journal, all media personnel out, uh, has also to clear up their nervous system from whatever they have, because that's how we're passing it on.
The medical system itself can be extremely trauma. You're getting a diagnosis that you're not expecting and nobody is near you. And, um, today there is a certain, like we are going to be cool how we say that in terms of the doctor. And then there's like this total lack of support and it's real shock. And a person can be traumatized just from a diagnosis. They can be traumatized from going through interventions, medical interventions, whether surgery, or, or even like at the dentist test that you're not prepared for. You can be traumatized by it.
JD Kalmenson:
Right. Right.
Gina Ross:
So surprise bad surprises, right. Are a vehicle of trauma.
JD Kalmenson:
Yeah. I mean, I'll never forget the dentist telling me that, uh, there's just going to be a little pressure, which turned out to be excruciating pain. So I, I love what you're saying, just to unpack that for a moment that if anybody really wants to know how to solve all the bipartisanship division and the cynical hateful rhetoric, and in general, the sort of feeling that everything is going negatively, you know, let all those people who are in positions of influence, who are the mouth health pieces who are conveying and communicating the messaging, let them engage in self-healing and stop that process and end that cycle. I love it. I absolutely love it.
Gina Ross:
Everything will change. Absolutely. Right. Um, polarization, you know, I think, I think what we can tell ourselves if there is a group that we think it's evil and we hate them, and if they disappeared, the world would be just fine. Everything would be fine. We're polarized. We're in the, we're in a collective trauma vortex.
JD Kalmenson:
That is so interesting when we talk. So let's, if we can't reverse to Somatic Experience for a moment, even though we've been interfacing with it throughout, um, what's the history of somatic experience, how did it come into existence? Was it discovered by chance or through research
Gina Ross:
By chance. Well, Peter was doing stress release work. He was a Rolfer and the psychiatrist had sent him a woman who would get panic attacks and get very stressed, and Peter started helping her breathe deeply to, to relax and all of that. And she was laying down and at some moment she becomes very pale, and she says, I'm dying, I'm dying. I'm dying. Help me. She had something took over the breath connected to the trauma that she had, and her breath was cut off. So Peter first panicked and thought, oh my God, here's my career gone. And then he had an inspiration. Her name was Nancy. He says, Nancy, a lion in the room, run, run, run, she's lying down. She starts moving her legs. That's all she does. And with a few minutes, I don't remember how long it took exactly. She comes back to herself, and the panic attack stopped. So Peter went like, what just happened here? So he went and studied animals in the wild and recognized that they encounter trauma all the time that they don't get traumatized. They do something and they don't get traumatized. They continue if escape, they just continue living their lives without being disorganized or problematic. So that's when he realized that we had this inherent ability to heal in the system, which is what I call the healing vortex.
JD Kalmenson:
Wow.
Gina Ross:
And that, then he took it to people and then start analyzing why some people do and why some people don't. And how do we discharge? And to me, it's like, he was able to reveal God's gift to us, which is the parasympathetic and the sympathetic branch. The way they're working together is to help us heal bad events. And when we can't, when it's too much, too fast, too soon, then they don't work together anymore in the complimentary way. They get stuck together at the same time where the parasympathetic and the sympathetic are on at the same time. And that's what the freeze is.
JD Kalmenson:
That is so incredible. I can go on for hours with you there. There's, you're so fascinating and so much wisdom that you are sharing with us.
JD Kalmenson:
Thank you so much, Gina, for really taking the time to be with us today on the discovery you podcast, it was so great to learn about the wonderful work that you do and the insights and the relevancy of how we can each really integrate the sensation, the awareness and the mindfulness for more optimized living for everyone. How can people find out more about you and the, and your, and the work that you do?
Gina Ross:
So our website is www.traumahealing.org. I'm sorry it’s www.traumainstitute.org. And are you able to forward the Emotion Aid video?
JD Kalmenson:
Yes. We can put that up on the site.
Gina Ross:
Okay. So a lot of the information how to contact us is there. And, you know, I was planning to use it only for Israel as a Guinea pig, take it to the collective level. It's a small country, very much interested in healing. Uh, but then when COVID happened, I thought, no, the whole world needs it. So we freed it up for everybody. We were not, we're not trying to make any money out of it. Uh, even though we can use funding for sure in our work, but it's available for everybody. And the more people can send it out and have that language in common. And the less polarization we have and the less violence we have and the less suffering cause people really suffer from trauma.
JD Kalmenson:
I love that. Making the world a better place, one person at a time that's, that's so special
Gina Ross:
But use the collective, use the collective strategies, right? Like take it to the military, take it to the educational system. Right. Take it to the medical field, right. Not without them. Take it to the media.
JD Kalmenson:
Yes, yes. A prerequisite to running for higher office.
Gina Ross:
Wouldn't that be amazing?
JD Kalmenson:
I know it would. It definitely would. There's no question. Thank you audience for joining us to, to as well today. Hope you have learned something valuable in today's episode of discovery. You Montare we want you to know that you are not alone on your journey, and to find out more about our innovative treatment programs, you can find us at Montare Behavioral Health.com, and you can listen to our Discovery U podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wishing all of you wonderful health, and a safe and inspired day. See you next time.