Healing Arts Modalities & Sexual Trauma

Incorporating healing modalities that address the impact of sexual trauma on one’s body, mind and spirit allows survivors to fully address the fullest depth and scope of their wounds, while regaining a deep sense of wholeness that enhances ongoing resilience. The wide variety of holistic healing arts approaches we offer align around a core belief that our systems gravitate towards wholeness and that these approaches can serve to support the whole person in returning to balance by fortifying the body’s natural ability to heal. With a passion for sustainable healing, our practitioners offer multilayered support that allow survivors to re-establish a sense of comfort within their physical shape, to non-verbally process feelings and sensations that transcend language, and bolster the survivor’s innate healing capacity. Intrinsic within the healing arts modalities we offer is the opportunity to honor the body as a sacred space, trust one’s intuition, and experientially explore how body, mind and spirit integration can be a powerful tool for long-term healing. Since each survivor is uniquely impacted by sexual violence, we offer healing methods that can encompass the diverse impacts a survivor might experience after violence and can support them in their ongoing physical, mental, energetic and spiritual journey towards healing and self-discovery.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture treatments enhance health and diminish illness by stimulating certain areas along “meridians” or channels in the body through which energy flows. Traditionally, these areas are stimulated by fine, slender needles although many additional forms of stimulation can be incorporated, including herbs, electricity and lasers. The aim of each approach remains the same – adjust the “vital energy” so the proper amount reaches the proper place at the proper time. This helps your body deepen its capacity to heal itself and the experience of the treatment can create a deep sense of calm and relaxation.

Akashic Records

The Akashic Records are a dimension of consciousness that contains a vibrational account of every soul and its journey. They carry within them not only your past, but also the truth of the present and the possibilities for the future. There are two things held in the Record. First is the actual blueprint or pattern for the potential of the soul throughout time. Second is what one could call the story of how that soul manifests through time to realize its potential. The Records reveal possibilities and probabilities, and how you will become who you are through time. The Records are entered through the doorway of the vibration of the spoken word, including the reader of the Records saying your name and a sacred prayer. An Akashic Record Reading can provide you with guidance, clarity, and understanding. Sessions can be done over the phone or in person. Learn more about the Akashic Records by visiting Life Potentials Network’s website here.

Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a therapy, proven in clinical trials, that uses electronic equipment to monitor and display elements of the bodily state, such as breathing and muscular tension in real time, and allows you to learn how to recognize and control such responses. At first you use the monitor to see your progress, but eventually you will be able to achieve success without the monitor or electrodes. Biofeedback addresses the physiological effects often experienced by survivors such as hyper-arousal symptoms. Biofeedback helps you to gain conscious control of unwanted physical symptoms.

Coaching

Coaching is a teaching, training or development process in which an individual gets support while learning to achieve a specific personal or professional result or goal. The structures and methodologies of coaching are numerous, and may be designed to facilitate thinking or learning new behavior for personal growth or professional advancement. Coaching can help individuals address psychological or behavioral patterns or histories that impede on one’s life. Coaches will ask questions and offer opportunities that will challenge the client to find answers from within themselves. This facilitates the learner to discover intuition and new ways of being based on their values, preferences and unique perspective.

Chiropractic

Chiropractic is a holistic health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on general health. Chiropractic care is used most often to treat neuromusculoskeletal complaints, including but not limited to back pain, neck pain, pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and headaches. Doctors of Chiropractic practice a drug-free, hands-on approach to health care that includes patient examination, diagnosis and treatment. Chiropractors have broad diagnostic skills and are also trained to recommend therapeutic and rehabilitative exercises, as well as to provide nutritional, dietary and lifestyle counseling.

Color Therapy

Color therapy is considered a vibrational healing modality. Vibrational medicine uses the energy within living organisms such as plants, crystals, water, sunlight and sound. Color is a form of visible light – of electromagnetic energy. All the primary colors reflected in the rainbow carry their own unique healing properties. Color therapists may apply or deliver light and color in the form of products such as flower essences and essential oil-based sprays, visualization, or verbal suggestion to balance energy in the areas of our bodies that are deficient or depleted, and can support physical, emotional, spiritual healing. Utilizing color is a very gentle and accessible way to support healing.

Energy Healing

Energy healing includes many techniques that can be used for healing all of the layers of our bodies, including the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Energy healing includes modalities such as Reiki, Healing Touch, Tai Chi, QiGong, Acupuncture and more. Many of the energy healing modalities focus on balancing the chakras which are energy centers in the body that are vital to our health and well being. Each chakra corresponds with different organs in the body and is also associated with a primary color. Energy healers will work with these different energy centers to address imbalances and clear blockages to promote balance, movement and health. This can be a very subtle and gentle healing technique to receive, while also providing deep impact and transformation.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal, yet EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes as does healing physical wounds. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can causes intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes. Learn more from the EMDR Institute, Inc.

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) incorporates horses experientially for mental and behavioral health therapy and personal development. It is a collaborative effort between a licensed therapist and a horse professional working with the clients and horses to address treatment goals. EAP is experiential in nature. This means that participants learn about themselves and others by participating in activities with the horses, and then processing (or discussing) feelings, behaviors, and patterns. The focus of EAP is not riding or horsemanship. The focus of EAP involves setting up ground activities involving the horses which will require the client or group to apply certain skills. EAP is a powerful and effective therapeutic approach that has an incredible impact on individuals, youth, families, and groups. EAP addresses a variety of mental health and human development needs including behavioral issues, attention deficit disorder, PTSD, substance abuse, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, relationship problems and communication needs. This description was made available by the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association, one of the national and international leaders in EAP – learn more about the technique by visiting their website here.

Feng Shui

Feng shui or “wind and water” is one of the Five Arts of Chinese Metaphysics and essentially the study of how the energy of our environment affects us. Correctly analysing and balancing these energies allows us to retain the positive benefits and remove negative effects. Unlike modern methods, Traditional Chinese Feng Shui is not based on religion or superstition. It is an ancient art and natural science that has been tested, developed and practiced for thousands of years in China. In fact, it was not limited to the Chinese and many ancient civilizations used a form of it. Information taken from the Feng Shui Institute’s website here.

Massage

Massage therapy improves circulation by bringing oxygen and other nutrients to body tissues. It relieves muscle tension and pain, increases flexibility and mobility, and helps clear lactic acid and other waste, which reduces pain and stiffness in muscles and joints. People seek massage therapy for a variety of health and wellness reasons including physical pain and discomfort, stress relief and stress-related conditions such as headaches and migraines, circulatory and respiratory problems and more. Massage therapy can effectively relieve and release stress and tension that is stored in the tissues of the body from physical or emotional injuries. Massage may help the body’s stress response by lowering levels of hormones such as cortisol while enhancing immune function.

Naturopathy

Naturopathy is a system of medicine that celebrates the body’s powerful healing ability. It emphasizes treating the whole person, finding and treating the root cause of illness, and using the least force necessary to achieve health. Naturopathic doctors (NDs) also focus on preventive medicine, teaching patients how to use diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, and cutting edge natural therapies to enhance the body’s healing potential. In many states NDs are licensed primary care providers (PCPs) and can order laboratory and imaging studies, draw blood, perform minor surgeries, prescribe pharmaceutical drugs, and administer injections and intravenous (IV) therapy. NDs are also thoroughly trained in alternative therapies such as nutritional assessment, lifestyle counseling, medical herbalism, homeopathy, and osseous manipulation (similar to chiropractic). Information taken from Natura Integrative Medicine, learn more by visiting their website here.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy includes a wide variety of approaches to addressing mental health including one’s emotional, physical and spiritual state that are often explored in conversation between the client and the therapist. Psychotherapy helps people to better understand their experience of themselves, their relationships and their environment, and to learn ways in which to integrate their personal history, identities and purpose into their life in a meaningful way. Learning to identify feeling and thought patterns, as well as physical sensations and symptoms, allows people to better cope with life challenges. There are numerous approaches to psychotherapy such as transpersonal psychology, somatic psychology and body-based psychotherapy that emphasize the connection between body, mind and spirit in order to heal holistically, enhance internal resources, and create overall sustainability.

Psychic Reading

Psychic readings are uniquely delivered depending on the practitioner, but offer an attempt to discern information through the use of the practitioner’s heightened perceptive abilities; their intuition, or their natural extensions of the basic human senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and instinct. These natural extensions are clairvoyance (vision), clairsentinece (feeling), claircognisance (factual knowing) and clairaudience (hearing) and can be explored through various techniques such as Tarot, Aura Readings, and other approaches. Psychic readings can feel very affirming of the deep intelligence and intuition one has within themselves and empower an individual to trust the message of their inner voice.

Qigong

Qigong is a powerful system of healing and energy medicine from China. It is the art and science of using breathing techniques, gentle movement, and meditation to cleanse, strengthen, and circulate the life energy (qi). Qigong practice leads to better health and vitality and a tranquil state of mind. In the past, qigong was also called nei gong (inner work) and dao yin (guiding energy). Some qigong methods exercise specific systems or parts of the body– nervous system, endocrine system, heart, kidneys—and some incorporate a whole body, whole mind exercise. Qigong treats health systemically, restoring the body to its original “program”, uncorrupted by stress, pollution, and disease.

Reiki

Reiki is a Japanese technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes healing. It is administered by “laying on hands” and is based on the idea that an unseen “life force energy” flows through us and is what causes us to be alive. It is a very passive and gentle treatment. Reiki treats the whole person including body, emotions and spirit and facilitates relaxation, peace and wellbeing. Reiki is a simple, natural and safe method of healing. It has been effective in helping virtually every known illness and malady and always creates a beneficial effect. It also works in conjunction with all other medical or therapeutic techniques to relieve side effects and promote recovery. Reiki healing can be delivered in person or at a distance.

Rolfing

Rolfing Structural Integration (Rolfing) is a system of deep bodywork that reorganizes the connective tissues, called fascia, that permeate the entire body, and was created by Dr. Ida P. Rolf. Dr. Rolf recognized that the body is inherently a system of seamless networks of tissues rather than a collection of separate parts. These connective tissues surround, support and penetrate all of the muscles, bones, nerves and organs. A Rolfer works on this web-like complex of connective tissues to release, realign and balance the whole body, thus potentially resolving discomfort, reducing compensations and alleviating pain as well as restoring freedom of movement and flow of emotion and energy. Learn more from the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a potent psychobiological method for resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic stress. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application. The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma. SE offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, freeze, or collapse responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. It provides effective skills appropriate to a variety of healing professions including, mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, education, and others. Information taken from the Somatic Experiencing website, learn more about SE here.

Yoga

Yoga is an ancient Indian system of complementary techniques that promote healing and wellness of the physical, emotional, and energetic body. While there are many styles, approaches and interpretations of the practice of yoga, one of the primary threads is the way in which the practice serves to integrate the whole self through physical movements that stretch and stabilize the body, breathing exercises that promote the flow of energy through the body, and meditation techniques to calm and center the mind. Yoga can support vibrancy, healing and resilience on a physical, emotional and spiritual level and may be practiced alone, with an instructor or in a group class. The practice of yoga can be adapted and personalized to suit people with a range of abilities and intentions for exploring the technique, and is therefore an effective way to promote health, balance and peace for a variety of people.