Barbara Holifield: Empowerment and Healing Trauma Through the Body

Barbara is an author , a Jungian analyst , with decades of experience helping others through trauma and through somatic psychology and psychophysical work , and Barbara's own childhood trauma was shaped by addiction and loss . So let's explore the power of healing and discover courage and clarity and joy for your very next chapter .

But culturally there , you know , it started in such a narrow framework , in such a narrow framework , be it the railroad or oil or cattle . So it's not a place you would necessarily drop down and live if it weren't for those things . And there's a way that you know .

I know a lot of people who are very challenged , who I grew up with and I certainly was one of them challenged . Who I grew up with , and I certainly was one of them . Um , the , there was just a lot of transgenerational trauma coming down that lower track , you know . Yeah , just a lot with those settlers and all that happened there .

As a matter of fact , my grandfather came to Amarillo in a covered wagon .

Explain what you mean by all those people in that small town of Amarillo , texas . Yeah , you know what was that like .

You know people moving because something's not right , it becomes unsafe or there's war or there's drought or there's conflict you know racial conflict or whatever and with that kind of uprooting is a lot of loss and a lot of chaos and a lot of unsettledness and often the running I mean , I will talk about this a little bit there's a running away from the pain

outside but also the pain inside .

And what we know now is not only is there this environmental aspect of our development with our parents , which is huge and this round we're in , and the culture , but those generations of trauma , if left unresolved , they get passed on , you know , from the parents before you and their parents before you , and they even have an epigenetic effect and often you can

see that in you know where there's no particular trauma at all , someone's really struggling and you look back a couple of generations and it's almost mimicking sure , yeah , our family , it was pretty overt yeah it was pretty overt . There was a lot of unresolved grief , strife , conflict and struggle and it led to a lot of addiction .

And that was very chaotic , you know , and very , very painful , and as a child the kind of downstream effect is neglect . Yeah , I said , and I can't hear you , beverly , can you ?

There was a great ratio of faculty to um students and their care and desire was really , you know , it was like in the seventies there was all this new , you know kind of blossoming approaches to education that were much more student centered at rather than you know requirements , and that was mine and I had a few fabulous people that really , you know know , helped

me with what was going on through me , just by encouraging poetry and encouraging writing stories that would stem from literature , that could help segue in and help me continue to process . We never talked about things very directly , but they can see , you know right , and you were just so fortunate to be in that school .

I was so fortunate , you know , and they cared . There was a lot of moral holding , you know , in a school like that , and care and attention , people didn't fall through the cracks too much , which is a blessing , and you know , it affected me . I think everything affected me .

I just didn't want to do the same thing as I had seen unfold with my siblings and the people in my culture surrounding me . I just I thought that's going to be dangerous for me . You know , either I'll go dead or get , you know , caught up in the same sort of patterns as they , because I was already struggling with eating problems .

That's part of what , you know , so often goes on when there's not substance abuse , it will show up in eating problems . And so I went to a college that was also alternatively oriented and very progressive and that was beyond fabulous . It really shaped me . The mode of education was that our classroom would be in the wilderness .

Yes , so even when I was studying psychology and dreams , you know , we'd spend time seminaring , in class , in seminars , and then we'd go out on a long , extended rafting trip and work with our dreams that arose . I mean , it was so experiential , so immediate , really inspiring .

But I had a few really important dreams as a teen and when I look back I can see they were almost kind of guiding or prophetic , and I wasn't latched onto it but I knew they were very important to me .

And so , as I started studying , there were two things that were important To listen to that kind of guidance from something that was me but bigger than me , which is how I think of dreams , and I certainly got supported in that and to be with a very direct experience of who me was , you know , which , as part of the human potential movement , psychology was

really oriented towards a holistic approach , and that was again my good luck , because the guidance and the moral holding and the intent and being able to be in touch with kind of your guiding vision , what mattered to you , all that was important .

But the pain that I experienced was still just imploding in my body . You know I was kind of stuck in a house of shame sort of , and pain , and so I , in those days , you know , the human potential was just blossoming , there was a lot of attention to what is the body has to have to do with . Psychology .

Gestalt therapy was , you know , really pivotal , and I got involved with all those different modalities .

I just was hungry to find , you know , some sort of freedom , liberation and to know , and that led me down the path of directly experiencing that pain , not thinking about it but directly working about it , working with it at a very deep kind of primal level where things started to shift and change .

emerges . It's a practice called movement in depth or authentic movement and the healing that comes from that . Once we start to tune into our bodies , we tune into each other and there's this mutual field of responsiveness that starts to develop and healing is expo-entuated , I think , or potentiated at least in that .

So that's one way and it's so focused that you can really feel that sense of how , when we're , when we attune within ourselves and by attune I mean really drop down from our thinking mind into our feeling body and really start to be , as best we can , living in that place and listening , we're wired to attune to others .

That's the way we're neurologically wired . And when that field is activated , you know you can feel it , and in a practice like that it's very focused . It's kind of like meditating together in a circle . So the same thing is going on in the wilderness , but it's not quite as contained .

You know you're contained in this bigger , immense , awe-inspiring power and beauty . I trekked all through the mountains and deserts of the southwest and working in groups like this , and that too , you know .

Nature , whether it's being in your garden or stepping outside your door in the urban life and looking at the grass , going through the cracks of the cement , or the sunsets or the sky , nature's just been hugely , hugely , um , just been hugely , hugely , profoundly important , part of my transformation , part of my ability to recognize there's something much bigger than me

going on yeah , no , as I'm listening , I would love to come on one of those journeys That'd be so fun with a group of others , people that have the same dreams and aspirations as you have and want to release something , whatever it is , and you're together in a very safe , safe space .

You know it's part of our body , but we tend to override our body experience and think of ourselves as kind of these brains in the world , absolutely , or even in Jungian analysis . You know it's changing now .

But sometimes we're psyches and those psyches are connected to our something and the body comes along , but it's not always central we , we really don't think of it unless parts of our body get sick .

One is first like step again , like if you turn your attention inward for just a moment and breathe purposely and purposely , bring your awareness to your breath and feel it as it moves in you and out , and you don't have to do anything , you don't have to try to make it bigger , you don't have to try to make it right , just be with it and inevitably what

happens is our breath will start to adjust by the virtue of our attention and that starts a self-regulating motion in progress , because we have the capacity to self-regulate , to work through trauma .

But instinctually we go away from pain and that's emotional or physical , and you know there's lots of cultural things and historic things and all that , but the emotional piece is probably as big as any that you know moves us out .

So when we come in into the body and moves us out of the body , I mean when we come in body and moves us out of the body I mean when we come in and just you know , even if it's just a tiny little bit , be say , you know , here I am .

It's kind of like the image would be a little bit like you know , rather than growing up like a tree , it would be like an acorn the myth of an acorn story where you have to grow down into the earth . Your seed gets planted , your roots grow out , you get planted here in your body and then we can start emerging more as a full self .

So it's primarily attention , it's primarily bringing our attention . The body's always there .

You know , some people will call it somatic mindfulness if we think of it that way , and many meditation practices are incorporating it , because many of those practices come from Buddhism and some of the earliest teaching of Buddhism is that enlightenment happens through the body , and really what that means is we're not whole , we're not our whole self until we drop

into all of us . And so it's meditation , but a little bit different . You know , we can drop in and begin to like really let our senses help inform us .

So just kind of the five senses , our sense of taste , of smell , vision though it can be helpful to close your eyes , your vision goes inward , you know , because we can get very distracted by our vision and start to objectify the world .

But when we turn inward , we are the subject of our own experience and textures and sensations , especially inwardly felt sensations , are very prime here . And really when we bring our attention , something starts to kind of , you know , like all the lights can start to come on .

You know , like all the lights can start to come on Our kinesthetic sense , you know , like if we move slowly that can bring us down in . You know our proprioceptive system , like sense , where am I in space , but it's that other thing too of oh , I have an inner world and I can sense it . That's regarded also as part of our .

We often limit ourselves to these five senses , but actually there's many more and this sense of I have an inner world and I can feel it is huge here .

And to cultivate little moments where you know like , start with something fun , like , yeah , when you feel joy , you know like nothing , like a little child or a puppy or a cat to bring you joy , you know , and or a sunset , and to actually really feel it in your heart , versus think about it , you know , to feel your excitement , that's the best place to start

.

And so , barbara , where can people find you ?

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