Trauma Touch Therapy™

For the survivor of trauma, the awakening of full awareness and sensation may seem too explosive to risk. Trauma Touch Therapy™ is an unhurried process, allowing for a gradual, integrative release of tension and pent-up emotions.

Together the Trauma Touch Therapist™ and client create an emotionally safe environment in which healthy boundaries can develop and trust can unfold. The therapy always proceeds on the most manageable level of exploration, with the utmost respect for the client's sensitivities and limits.

Recovery from trauma revives the capacity to experience a full range of sensation. Trauma Touch Therapy™ delegates pain to its rightful place among many valid feelings. Clients discover that anguish need not dominate their healing journey, that many gifts are found among the sorrows.

Trauma Touch Therapy™ clients contract for a series of 10 hour-long sessions. Each session is unique, honoring the client's goals, needs, and capabilities in the moment.

Trauma Touch Therapists™ are massage therapists, but they do not apply strokes of their own accord as in typical massage. Clients decide to accept touch on their clothes or their skin. They may choose to lie down, sit, or stand. The type, quality, and location of touch is also the client's choice.

If touch is unwelcome, the session may focus on breath or movement. Clients may use self-touch or a toy to explore sensation.

Trauma Touch Therapy™ is not meant to be a survivor's only means to recovery. Before attempting to extend healing to the body, a client needs to have a stable emotional and intellectual framework for the trauma. Previous or concurrent counseling is required.

A survivor is ready for Trauma Touch Therapy™ when she has reliable social support and good self-care patterns, when the lingering effects of trauma are under reasonable control, and when her circumstances allow her to focus on such a demanding endeavor.

The benefits of Trauma Touch Therapy™

• Integrates the body with the emotional, mental, and spiritual realms of experienceEases muscle tension and joint rigidity
• Restores physiological efficiency of breathing, movement, and posture
• Encourages healthy boundaries
• Enhances awareness of sensation
• Fosters renewed trust and security
• Calms panicked areas of the body
• Reduces the potency of triggers
• Fosters new stress management skills
• Improves the capacity for intimacy
• Models acceptance and compassion
• Provides a sense of groundedness, of belonging within the body

What is trauma?

In times of crisis, the body gears up for protective action. The heart pumps faster, breathing speeds up, the senses go on full alert. But when this "fight or flight" response fails to avert the danger, crisis becomes trauma. The normal human coping capacities become overwhelmed by helplessness and terror.

Although trauma arouses strong emotion, many of its lingering effects are physical: sleep problems, extreme startle responses, numbness or hyper-sensitivity to touch, headaches, restricted movement and breathing patterns, altered posture. The body seems stuck in the trauma response, and physical experience becomes disconnected from the moment-by-moment realities of life.

Some common forms of trauma include:

• rape
• incest
• other sexual abuse
• traumatic childbirth
• witnessed violence
• battering or other physical abuse
• combat
• violent crime
• natural disaster
• medical trauma
• injurious accident

Recovering from trauma is a lot like giving birth. It takes courage to let go and let the pain be there, to trust the hands that support you, to open yourself to the intensity and power of new life. In Trauma Touch Therapy™, the new life you bring forth is your own.

Please contact CSHA (Colorado School of Healing Arts) for referrals for a Trauma Touch Therapist™ near you or to access more information about becoming a Trauma Touch Therapist™

back to top