#peter levine

You can watch an example of this process from beginning to end on the National Geographic video “Polar Bear Alert,” available at many video stores. In this video, a frightened bear is chased down by an airplane, shot with a tranquilizer dart, surrounded by wildlife biologists, and then tagged. As the massive animal comes out of its state of shock, it begins to tremble lightly. The trembling intensifies steadily, then peaks into a nearconvulsive shaking — its limbs flail seemingly at random. After the shaking stops, the animal takes deep, organic breaths that spread throughout its body. The biologist narrator of the film comments that the behavior of the bear is necessary because it “blows off stress” accumulated during the chase and capture.

Now here’s the interesting part: When the bear’s response is viewed in slow motion, it becomes obvious that the seemingly random leg gyrations are actually coordinated running movements. It is as though the animal completes its escape by actively finishing the running movements that were interrupted at the moment when it was tranquilized. Then, the bear shakes off the “frozen energy” as it surrenders in spontaneous, full-bodied breaths — just as I had observed with Nancy in her recovery from being overwhelmed as a young child.

As the evidence mounted, I grew increasingly convinced that the healing of trauma — whether it is called “re-association” or, as shamans refer to it, “soul retrieval” — is primarily a biological process or bodily process often accompanied by psychological effects. This is especially true when the trauma involved betrayal by those who were supposed to protect us. Additionally, I surmised that successful healing methods inevitably involve establishing a connection to the body. Those methods that do not enable people to reconnect with their bodies invariably have limited success.”]

In Japan on IG a passenger is filming a male airport luggage loader through a window, he is treating the luggage so gently. This man is laying each suitcase down on the conveyor belt that takes the baggage into the plane like an adult: slow, responsible, with perception, with agency, intentional, calmly, focused. He is a man not a boy because he is not exhausted, he is not rushing or stressed. The luggage doesn’t take on the energy of Picasso’s weeping woman. 

The curse is not being passed on (The Iliad, or The Poem of Force Simone Weil). We can make choices that create the conditions for this state to exist (a Sovereign State). I work in a box factory in Melbourne. I am weak and exhausted from metabolic syndromes, at 10am I say “time for mothers matcha” and spend $8 on a matcha. Often I buy two and slam them like an alcoholic, if people weren't watching I would buy two everytime. Ander watches and says “woah”. When Liam was alive once after school we drank together, he said “wow” after I skulled my glass bottle VB.

“It requires to be generally recognized, and above all by leaders themselves, that consent and not fear of punishment or hope of reward constitutes, in fact, the mainspring of obedience, so that submission may never be mistaken for servility.” Everything I do is in hope of reward or fear of punishment—over cleaning the house, working three days a week instead of two because I desperately want to protect my casual position to afford entrance to the bourgeois world of shoppers. I’ve never known a better job, and it rapes me of my life force. Fluorescent lighting manual labour and I’m a girl.

Karen Hurd’s no list (no sugar, caffeine, flour, dairy, exercise, cold drinks, preservatives, alcohol, soy, cinnamon, fruit, supplements, herbal tea, coconut oil, fatty meats, fragrances, cured meats, less than 9 hours sleep a night) protects the worker from the work and transforms the workers physiology into a site capable of choice, consent (responsive not reactive). The worker begins to be able to tolerate the work. The work stops registering on the worker (the worker and the works footprint is reduced). The cell that is a sponge stops being covered in wax (Traditional Chinese Medicine grease on the doorknob analogy).

After three cell mitosis (~9 months) I can place the JB Hi-Fi boxes on the scale precisely and with control. I lift the boxes and put them down on the pallet without a biological (and therefore emotional-spiritual) tax. I don’t pass on the Force. I pass on the Power (David R. Hawkins) I am an example of possibility, of expansion. It’s important to be the example. I didn’t write on this blog because negative marketing (death art) is the world standard and I wanted to point out pro-life positivity, change and transformation (Krishna), and Inspire, instead of highlighting what I reject. I was stuck under the line of courage on David R’s “Map of Consciousness” so I didn’t have the Vision to forge my attention towards what's beautiful. 

Millennials have smoothed our environment with homeless graphic design and when I mention it I amplify it. Where your attention goes, grows. Working against millennial-nation homeless graphic design requires turning towards what’s beautiful, turning your back on the problem. Painting with your back against the world (Agnes) applied to diet and routine behaviour. “It should also be realized that those who command, obey in their turn, and the whole hierarchy should have its face set in the direction of a goal whose importance and even grandeur can be felt by all, from the highest to the lowest.” Luis Mojica, Peter Levine's somatic experiencing (SE) and Karen R. Hurd’s “bean protocol” assist the goal of such grandeur we should all be faced towards, which is the goal of liberation and agency. Real Consent. Difference, novelty like Terrence McKenna talks of. Prison abolition.

When our physiology has space we can become Of Service like the Japanese plane luggage worker. There is separation between the job and the person. In the Separation between an action and its consequence lies Agency. I don’t have children or a boyfriend if I follow the protocol I tend to the land to create the conditions that would allow for that infrastructure to take if the building blocks (seed) present themselves, right now the land is arid and hostile. If sperm doesn’t come at least I ploughed the land so it could have happened if He did. Being adult means participating in preparation, with and through grief. I chose to drive to Ballarat to see a tree instead of going to Ikea to buy two pillows for my bed to replace the old ones from six years ago. 

I chose to go see Rex’s show at Strawberry instead of getting a gym membership to Ascot Vale Leisure Center. The Will to allow contact with disappointment creates the conditions to accept reality which allows the past and the future to transform into the present—I assume this is the process of grief (wouldn’t know). I wanted to buy Glamorama from Rainbow’s mobile library in Footscray I also didn’t want one more symbolic stand-in for what I actually want that isn’t here. You don’t consent to what you’re compulsed to do.

The pastor from Seventh Heaven being a pedophile activates my sex drive for the first time in two years. “An employer who is incapable or guilty of an offence against his workmen ought to be made to suffer far more, both in the spirit and in the flesh, than a workman who is incapable or guilty of an offence against his employer. Furthermore, all workmen ought to know that this is so.” We recreate our formative traumas. We are looking for a corrective experience. It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility. Looking good in clothes is about your body not about the clothes (clown meme level one). Looking good in your body is about your self-relationship—self-acceptance and acknowledgement of reality—not about your actual body (clown meme level two). I don’t join Essendon Canoe Club. I do nothing. I ask God to relieve me of my eating disorder and I carry on with the day.

I’m laughing because on Twitter someone said “be there now.” Terrence McKenna said no one escapes, I know that some people enter. Duncan Trussell and Dr. Bruce Damer say the fruiting body of caffeine was skyscrapers and trains but coffee is a taxman and everything has a price—now I’m on chemotherapy and don’t even have cancer (just a spiritual disease with no known cure). Ones quality of life is improved when insulin levels function within nontraumatic scales and then one’s sex drive is returned.

We don’t need to use people-places-things to “secure” our “safety” and we move from a life of nonconsensual self-reliant reactive pattern behaviour to a creative responsive autonomous interdependent God-reliant life. You can love more, you can feel more love, you can give more love when you aren’t dependent on Perception to survive. I’m trying to become an Aboriginal capable of Service (before Socialised Patterning, before the wax all over the sponge).

In the myth of Medusa, anyone who looked directly into her eyes would quickly turn to stone. Such is the case with trauma. If we attempt to confront trauma head on, it will continue to do what it had already done - immobilize us in fear. Before Perseus set out to conquer Medusa, he was warned by Athena not to look directly at the Gorgon. Heeding the Goddess's wisdom, he used his shield to reflect Medusa's image; by doing so, he was able to cut off her head. Likewise, the solution to vanquishing trauma comes not through confronting it directly, but by working with its reflection, mirrored in our instinctual responses. . . . In dreams, mythical stories, and lore, one universal symbol for the human body and its instinctual nature is the horse. Interestingly enough, when Medusa was slain, two things emerged from her body: Pegasus, the winged horse, and Chrysaor, a warrior with a golden sword. We couldn't find a more appropriate metaphor. The sword symbolizes absolute truth, the mythic hero's ultimate weapon of defense. It conveys a sense of clarity and triumph, of rising to meet extraordinary challenges, and of ultimate resourcefulness. The horse symbolizes instinctual grounding, while wings create an image of movement, soaring, and rising above the earth-bound existence. Since the horse represents instinct and body, the winged horse speaks of transformation through embodiment. Together the winged horse and the golden sword are auspicious symbols for the resources traumatized people discover in the process of vanquishing their own Medusas.

Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine (italics and boldening by me)

“Trauma is about thwarted instincts. Instincts, by definition, are always in the present. When we allow them their rightful domain, we surrender to the ‘eternal now.’ With the full presence of mind and body, we can gain access to the source of our own energy and enthusiasm. “As we resolve our traumas, we discover missing parts of our beings, those that make us feel whole and complete. Our…