Trauma & Art

Inhale suffering, exhale compassion and light  (edited, translation available)

This is the 503^rd post in this section of the site, since January 2014. As I consider this I feel that a certain phase is coming to a close, as if, like in the hero and heroine’s journey, after wrestling with the waves of the tempestuous ocean I am stepping on dry land again. I have returned to Ithaca with new eyes. I try to breathe the impact  and then breathe out light, some version of a tonglen meditation. I first learnt about tonglen meditation after listening to a podcast by Pema Chodron a while after my mother’s death. It is not always an easy practice, our body and mind can resist the embracing of the experience, but it can be potent and humbling. As we breathe in, endure, stay with what is, and breathe out, expansion, forgiveness, compassion can arrive.

The tonglen meditation script below is by Danielle La Porte. 

For healing sorrows. For giving when you don’t know what to give. For now. Please read. And breathe.

“Tonglen” is Tibetan for sending and taking.

HOW-TO TONGLEN: Breathe in suffering — yours, others, the world’s.
Breathe out compassion — for yourself, for others, for the world.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. It may shatter you. But wouldn’t that be grand? To be shattered? To be so immensely open that you’d feel the truth: that you’re really as selfless as Mother Theresa, as loyal as an ecstatic dog at the feet of the world, as powerfully creative as a cosmic super hero?

STEP 1: Breathe in suffering. The worst thing that ever happened to you. That sunk feeling. That thing you wish you could take back. Recapitulate it in breaths. The blackness, the sickness, the fibrous seething rage, the sticky-scratchy, inconsolable weight of it. Take in the unbearable-ness. You may want to escape. Press on. Go beyond the embrace. Inhale the pain in to your every cell. You won’t die. You’re going to expand. Keep breathing in the misery. You’re on the verge of a miracle.

STEP 2: Now breathe out joy. Soothing golden warmth. Luminous flying birds of clarity. Electric rays of smiling karate chops. Feel your lungs as powerful creative engines of healing and righteousness. Pulsate rapture. Let happiness emerge from the fractures. Let scar tissue become bridges that lead to a festival of relief and dancing. See joy. Feel joy. Hear joy. Sing joy. Breathe love into every cell of the situation.

Now do it for other people’s suffering. Please. For that homeless man on the street, in winter. Cold and demoralized. Inhale his agony. Exhale comfort and transformation. The jobless folks with families to feed. Cancer patients fighting to live. People gone mad. Soldiers who kill and the families they destroy. Take in the wreckage. Turn it into light and give back compassion and tenderness.

When your heart is heavy, when you want to feel alive…
Acknowledge the dark. And take the light into your own hands’.

Trauma is a fact of life. There is probably nobody on this planet that has not or will not at some time experience loss and trauma to some extent or other. Maybe, the deeper and more prolonged the trauma the greater the possibilities of telling and speaking up……

A. ‘Τo stigmatize and to discriminate against someone is to treat them unfairly and with dis-grace. The consequences of being stigmatized against can result in feeling and actually being excluded and devalued by one’s societal context. It can create barriers and serious limitations to privacy, work, receiving respectful health care and so on. Interestingly, the plural of stigma is stigmata, which are bodily marks or pains resembling the wounds of the crucified Jesus. Stigmatizing, discriminating against and targeting others often comes from a place of fear based ignorance, lack of understanding, and maybe social manipulation and biases that we are unaware of. Engaging in negative attitudes, language and practices of targeting and exclusion and devaluing another’s sense of self is harmful and deeply hurtful. Identifying similarities and differences is part of our wiring. Humans, as well as, other mammals are always evaluating creatures around them. In terms of our evolutionary development and survival it is apparent that there is often a need of assessing of others. Is this somebody to be afraid of or is this somebody who is threatening the equilibrium of our group? However, we need to bring our neo-cortex online and evaluate our behaviour and see whether we are truly threatened by those we may perceive as different or are we simply projecting our sense of entitlement, fears, shame, aches and unresolved issues, and more importantly, consider if our actions stem from our social conditioning, ignorance and misinformation, and unacknowledged biases. What if we asked ourselves why the dissemination of knowledge to do with trauma, post traumatic responses, art and healing and artistic expression, in my case, is threatening to us, and also, what part of the status quo or interests might it be threatening and who does our engaging in unethical and immature behaviours ultimately serve. Lastly, it may be important to remember that democracy is synonymous with freedom of expression, freedom to access and circulate knowledge / information, and the protection of rights and dignity for all ’ (Tonya Alexandri, 2017)

According to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, the rougher your childhood, the higher your score is likely to be and the higher your risk for later health problems. The researchers came up with an ACE score to explain a person’s risk for chronic disease. An ACE score is a tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other adversities in childhood. I read somewhere that we can think of it as a cholesterol score for childhood toxic stress. You get one point for each type of trauma. There are other common traumas of course like the death of a parent, death of loved ones, accidents and surgeries, bullying, extreme poverty, natural disasters, etc

Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire

https://www.ncjfcj.org/sites/default/files/Finding%20Your%20ACE%20Score.pdf