By Michael Lear, Trager® Instructor
Written in 2019 as a chapter in a book about Veterans and PTSD
This article is Part 3 of Michael Lear’s 4 part series: Relieving Post Traumatic Stress Related Symptoms with The Trager® Approach and Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness.
Part 3
During the time that I spent in post-tsunami Sri Lanka, I worked with numerous disaster survivors who still experienced pain and limited mobility long after the apparent healing of the initial injury. Self-medication, sometimes imprudent, did not help with their pain. The Trager® Approach greatly improved their conditions, almost always decreasing or even eliminating pain and restoring greater degrees of function and enhancing ease in mobility.
One specific client experienced arm swelling a year out from the tsunami. She had been pinned down by that arm when a cabinet fell upon it, trapping her as the waves were rushing in. She nearly drowned before she was rescued. After her first Trager® session, the swelling reduced by about 80% and subsequent sessions relieved the situation completely. In this particular case, it was the artifact, the memory of the experience that had remained frozen in her mind and body and produced a physical expression long after the original incident. Through the gentle touch and inquiring movements of Trager®, her mind was able to experience safety and eventually release the pattern holding the physical expression.
Similarly, the effects of sexual abuse are present long after the trauma takes place, sometimes producing a fear of physical contact altogether or a dissociation with bodily identity. Through the Trager® Approach I have been able to help such clients to acknowledge their physicality and reset their level of comfort with healthy normal contact with others.
The touch dialogue that the Trager® Approach sets up can be compared to the approach of “Non Violent Communication” as described by Marshall Rosenberg in his book of the same name. For example, if you were yelled at, how long would you listen? In the same way, to force the body to do something that it is not ready to do sets up a similar resistance-push back.
It’s important to emphasize that Trager® is not a form of psychotherapy or “talk” therapy and references made to the “touch as a language” or “touch dialogue” pertain to the use of hands to engage in a conversation with the unconscious mind. Trager® practitioners feel/listen for resistance patterns and honor their set points. They do not attempt to move into muscular resistance or change what is true for the body-mind.
Instead, the Trager® Practitioner will emphasize ranges of motion that are acceptable, safe and comfortable so as to invite the client’s letting go of such patterns that may be no longer relevant. As the body feels safe and “heard,” it can choose to let go of valid but outmoded patterns that may have projected into the tissue as pain or limitation. For Veterans experiencing pain, this non-intrusive process may be of particular benefit.
Like any learning process, success requires repetition and continuity of practice for a new pattern to establish itself. The restoration of optimal sensorimotor patterns through neuromuscular re-learning, or through the choice of the body-mind or on the nervous system’s terms, contributes greatly to the health of the body by improving joint mobility, circulation, and reducing pain and functional limitation.
Trager®’s gentle and subtle approach may also serve those suffering with phantom limb pain associated with amputations. The initial trauma to the body usually produces a variety of protective bracing patterns and subsequent compensatory patterns to aid the body in healing. If these patterns persist after the healing is completed, the potential exists for there to be excessive limitation and sensitivity near the point of amputation. The Trager® Approach in general, helps the body to experience greater integration, helping it release such patterns. This may also assist the nervous system at its subtlest level to decrease the triggering and sensitivity of the portion of the nerve fibers associated with the lost limb.
Painful muscle spasms may be reduced using The Trager® Approach. It was shown that 20 minute sessions of Trager® Therapy three times per week had a significant impact on the level of spasticity within Parkinson’s patients in a study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, September 2002 (“The Effect of Trager® Therapy on the Level of Evoked Stretch Responses in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Rigidity,” by Christian Duval, Denis Lafontaine, Jacques Hebert, Alain Leroux, PhD, Michael Panisset, MD, and Jean P Boucher, PhD) .
The relaxation response of The Trager® Approach is also profound. The practitioner him/herself cultivates a state of deep relaxation from which to do the hands-on table work so that the relaxed state can be imparted to the client. This relaxed state after only ten minutes of Mentastics® is measurable in Heart Rate Variability studies. (Dr Gebhard Breuss, Heidi Stieg-Breuss, Dr Alfred Lohinger, www.autonomhealth.com). The Heart Rate Variability of the client is also measurably changed. Heart rate variability is a well-known measure of emotional resilience and relaxation/stress measurement. Shifts in mind states to enhance relaxation increase levels of comfort whereas stress is known to exacerbate pre-existing painful conditions.
Dr. David Hubbard, formerly Medical Director at Sharp Pain Rehabilitation Services, Sharp Health Care, San Diego, CA published studies in Spine, 18, 13, 1803-1807, 1993 that showed that intrafusal muscle fibers that figure prominently in fibromyalgia were innervated by the sympathetic nervous system. It was found that painful muscular conditions were exacerbated by sympathetic nervous system arousal. Dr. Hubbard used The Trager® Approach in his clinic to facilitate the release of these sympathetically stimulated mechanisms that were causing pain. He found that The Trager® Approach, with its invitatory touch dialogue which includes compressions and elongations of the muscle spindles, elicited relaxation responses.
Muscular changes may also be elicited through the mental movement explorations, Mentastics®, of the Trager® Approach. Utilizing self-inquiry, Mentastics® helps to keep a moment-by-moment awareness of what is occurring within the framework of the body, the mind in relationship to the environment and how that is feeling to us. An important component of these movement explorations is to stay within pain-free ranges of motion to reinforce movement without painful consequence. The range of motion expansion should remain acceptable and comfortable. Much like the table-work explorations performed by Trager® Practitioners, who move the body while maintaining the body’s comfort, Trager Mentastics® help the nervous system drop anticipatory contraction patterns that can exacerbate painful conditions. Once anxiety over possible discomfort is relieved, the body mind can make a truer assessment of what is happening.
This article is Part 3 of Michael Lear’s 4 part series: Relieving Post Traumatic Stress Related Symptoms with The Trager® Approach and Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness.
For more information about The Trager® Approach, or to find a Practitioner in your area, please contact The United States Trager® Association.
United States Trager Association
3755 Attucks Drive
Powell, Ohio 43065
Tel: (440) 834-0308
Books on The Trager® Approach:
Trager® for Self-Healing: A Practical Guide for Living in the Present Moment -Audrey Mair
Mentastics: Movement As A Way to Agelessness, Dr. Milton Trager and Cathy Guadagno
Moving Medicine, The Life and Work of Dr. Milton Trager: Jack Liskin
Additional information can be found at. http://www.tragerfordailylife.com
For more information on Trauma-informed Yoga and Veterans PTSD, the following books and organizations may be helpful. It has been reported that Veterans tend to prefer Yoga teachers who are also Veterans as they better identify with those who have shared experiences.
It is always best to find a Yoga teacher with whom you resonate, one who is interested in empowering the student to perform on his or her own.
The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma - Bessel Van Der Kolk
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in Therapy: Bringing the Body into Treatment - David Emmerson
Best Practices for Yoga with Veterans Editor: Carol Horton, Ph.D - Yoga Service
Council PublicationNon-Violent Communication: Marshall Rosenberg
The Pocket Guide To Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power Of Feeling Safe:
Dr. Stephen Porges, (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
Organizations:
Veterans Healing Veterans from the Inside Out http://veteranshealingveterans.com/index.html
Veterans Yoga Project www.veteransyogaproject.org
Warriors at Ease http://warriorsatease.org/
About Michael Lear
Michael Thomas Lear is an internationally-recognized Senior Trager® Bodywork Practitioner/Instructor and Ashtanga Yoga Instructor with a client base spanning five continents and including a few Academy Award and Grammy winners as well as many figures prominent in business and industry.
For over 25 years, Lear has been at the forefront of mind-body medicine, yoga and meditation. He has studied Yoga with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the founder of Ashtanga Yoga, as well as with many of Ashtanga's foremost instructors. Holding a Yoga Alliance RYT 500 Certification, he teaches Yoga Anatomy for Yoga Alliance Teacher Certification courses and conducts workshops internationally.
Lear is also a seasoned Vipassana meditator in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Kin as taught by S. N. Goenka. He was recognized with a cover article in Massage Therapy Journal for his work introducing Trager® to physical therapists in post-tsunami Sri Lanka, which he also has done in Japan. Lear who is on the management team for Instructors for Trager® International, also holds Plant Based Nutrition certification through Cornell University, taught by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, author of “The China Study” and “Whole.”
While working as Director of International Relations for Real Medicine Foundation and working closely with UN Agencies and foreign governments, Lear was an integral part of many international relief programs to improve primary health care service in disadvantaged areas of post-conflict, disaster affected and poverty-stricken countries, including Sri Lanka, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Armenia and post-earthquake Haiti. South Sudan’s Medical Journal/JubaLink has cited Lear as a principal in establishing the country’s first College of Nursing and Midwifery.
In addition to his international service, Lear serves locally as a founding board member, trauma recovery yoga instructor, and lead trainer with The Shanthi Project a non-profit organization which conducts trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness classes at the county prison, juvenile justice center, Boys and Girls Club, and area school districts for grades K-12.
A life-long musician playing drums, Lear feeds his soul behind the kit. He has many years’ experience playing professionally and in a variety of genres. In addition to playing professionally, he developed an entire on-line yoga and mindfulness program specifically for drummers www.yoga4drummers.com to help them access their full potential. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Finance and International Management from Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J. and has worked extensively in the corporate world. A native of Easton, PA, Lear makes his home on the East Coast when he is in the United States where he enjoys visiting with family, friends and his cat Sayagyi.