A Multifaceted Approach to Trauma-Healing
Incorporating an avenue for personal and social repair using mind-body approaches to trauma-healing and trauma-sensitivity.
Mind-Body Techniques:
First, the Global Grassroots program introduced and provided training in a range of mind-body techniques that have had a scientifically demonstrated impact in addressing holistically the broad range of symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Mind-body techniques, such as meditation, Qigong, yoga, mindfulness and breathwork are utilized for several reasons. They allow for a direct physiological benefit that can be felt immediately when practiced by the survivor. When utilized over time, they have the ability to support autonomic nervous system self-regulation, which is one of the core physiological functions disrupted by trauma. Mind-body techniques are also easy to learn and to teach to laypeople across religious, cultural, and language barriers. They do not require a long-term therapeutic relationship as conventional talk-based psychotherapy does, are accessible to communities with little cost, can be made available immediately post-disaster when the existing mental health infrastructure has been destroyed, and can continue to be practiced individually and on a grassroots level in families and in other community groups. When Global Grassroots has introduced its range of mind-body practices in Rwanda and Uganda, it is strictly with an explanation of the neurological and physiological effects of post-traumatic stress and the reasons why movement, breath, and relaxation techniques support a balancing of the nervous system, and thus healing from post-traumatic stress.
Self-Organized Teams:
Second, Global Grassroots provided opportunities for women to form teams, which also serve as support groups to survivors with similar experiences who have not previously had the opportunity to connect with others and discuss their circumstances. Since participants gathered on the basis of creating their own non-profit, teams could avoid the stigma associated with participation in survivor support groups or mental health activities that stand alone in that purpose.
Inner Work for Agency:
Third, in its issue diagnosis work, mindfulness-based leadership training, and creative problem-solving skills, Global Grassroots incorporated a process of identifying one’s inner power and recognizing the assets and gifts that one could leverage to create social change. This personal growth work supported the reclaiming of one’s sense of agency for self-care and self-improvement as well as one’s sense of value to others.
Designing Non-Profits:
Fourth, Global Grassroots provided a pathway for understanding suffering and designing a civil society organization that would advance one’s own solutions from a place of deeper consciousness. With funding and high-engagement support, participants launched their own non-profit organizations and engaged in a direct experience of creating social change. This process provided a self-led opportunity to combat the failures of society, advocate change within and by existing institutions, and create new programs to serve others in need and to advance transformation.
We believe that this dynamic and multi-pronged method, integrating personal and social transformation, offers an optimal and holistic approach to both trauma healing and post-conflict reconstruction.
Use of Mind-Body Approaches to the Treatment of Trauma
Interventions that rely on the Western model of talk therapy have limitations, especially in circumstances of war and disaster. First, there needs to be an awareness of what level of mental health stigma, gender differences, traditional beliefs, or self-medicating behavior that could sabotage programs. Second, should local demand exist, local populations may be limited by affordability, time, or disrupted transportation and childcare services. In disaster scenarios, highly-trained local specialists may be in short supply, too expensive or inaccessible, especially if affected by the same trauma they would be sought to treat. Unfortunately, programs led by foreign experts may be at risk of lacking cultural relevance or sensitivity. Interventions that rely on some form of talk therapy can also leave participants vulnerable, especially when comprehensive or ongoing follow-up support is subject to the accessibility obstacles mentioned above.
Mind-body techniques, such as meditation, Qigong, yoga, mindfulness and breathwork allow for a direct physiological benefit that can be felt immediately when practiced by the survivor. When utilized over time, they have the ability to support autonomic nervous system self-regulation, which is one of the core physiological functions that is disrupted through trauma. Such mind-body practices are safe, easily taught to lay people across cultural, religious and language differences, and require no long-term therapeutic relationship to be able to practice and share. They foster personal agency as they can be learned quickly and practiced again on one’s own. In post-conflict environments, where the sheer scale of enacting justice and rebuilding a nation’s core institutions must take precedence, the need to attend to the welfare of individual citizens can be met with simple mind-body practices that are scientifically proven to have a positive impact on health and emotional wellbeing. Further, they avoid triggering the facilitator, when they too may be survivors of mass disaster. They are accessible to vulnerable communities with little cost, can be made available immediately in environments where access to mental health infrastructure is limited to non-existent, and can be continued to be practiced individually and in families and other grassroots community groups.
Breath-Body-Mind – The Practice
Since 2010, Global Grassroots has taught, as an integral component of its programs, Breath-Body-Mind (BBM) a mind-body trauma-healing practice that includes simple movement and Coherent Breathing practices that help restore balance to the nervous system resulting in greater calmness, energy, and resilience. The BBM practice sequence incorporates three main parts:
(1) A series of movements, including Qigong taught by Master Robert Peng,
(2) A period of focused, Coherent Breathing (guided by the sound of gongs, from the 2 Bells track on Respire-1 CD by Stephen Elliot),
(3) A Breath-Moving Meditation and integration exercise.
The practice begins with four Qigong movements, which help synchronize the pace of breathing with slow movements of the body, supporting autonomic balance. The movement also helps relieve the outer levels of tension held in the body and supports trauma survivors in becoming more grounded and less dissociated from their bodies.
Next, participants practice Coherent Breathing lying down with eyes closed for between 5 and 20 minutes. Coherent Breathing, BBM’s key healing component, is a particular breathing technique conducted at five breaths per minute, the optimal pace of breathing for most people necessary to reset the autonomic nervous system so it can self-regulate. Coherent Breathing requires that we breathe at a slower pace than our natural breath frequency and take deeper breaths (with equal inhales and exhales through the nose), both of which require conscious awareness and intention.
The practice also integrates a form of resistance breathing called Ujjayi breath. Further, the Breath-Moving Meditation, which imagines the breath moving through parts of your body, as well as Les Fehmi’s Open Focus Meditation, support self-awareness, attention skills, respiratory and circulatory resonance, and reduced stress. Finally, integration activities such as dialogue, singing and journaling help groups connect and integrate their experiences.
Breath-Body-Mind - The Impact
BBM combines scientifically proven techniques to relieve stress and/or trauma, and dramatically improves one’s physical and mental well-being, rapidly relieving stress and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress. When slow, deep and conscious breath is combined in an intentional practice it helps to bring into balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system, resulting in cardiopulmonary resonance and maximum heart rate variability, markers of cardiovascular health. At this pace of breathing, the electrical rhythms of the heart, lungs and brain are synchronized. Further, Coherent Breathing has also been shown to decrease beta brain waves, the brain waves associated with normal waking consciousness, and increase alpha brain waves, the brain waves associated with wakeful relaxation.
Most simply, this unique breath practice results in our body telling our mind that we are safe and that we can relax. As a result, BBM has immediate positive effects including reduced anxiety and tension, mental calmness and improved mood and energy. BBM also has more long-term effects which include increased stress resilience, reduced inflammation, improved cardiovascular and respiratory function, resolution of trauma, improved relationships, reduced anger, improved emotion regulations, improved attention and learning, healing and recovery from chronic ailments, and improved academic, athletic, and artistic performance. Over time, the practice helps reset the autonomic nervous system so that it can self-regulate. Participants have found significant elimination or reduction in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder through the practice of BBM.
Global Grassroots’ Women’s Academy for Conscious Change and Young Women’s Academy integrated BBM in the following way:
Breath-Body-Mind was practiced daily for 12 to 14-days.
The program included 2-4 Qigong movements, 20 minutes of Coherent Breathing, with breath moving meditation and Open-Focus Meditation, and customized integrative activity.
We measured our impact using a translated PCL-17 at baseline, post-training (12-14 days), and at endpoint (7 months for students, 12-24 months for adult women).
We conducted BBM in groups of 24-40 people maximum.
The practice was conducted on tarps, grass mats and/or chairs.
Participants arranged in a circle on the floor with heads center to prevent genocide flashbacks of mass casualties.
In our YWA program from 2014 – 2018, we found:
Average level of decrease in PTSD symptoms (on the translated PCL-17) from baseline to post-training, two weeks later
2014: 21.6%.
2015: 35.8%
2016: 19.2%
2017: 57.3%
2018: 27.4%
Decrease in the number of symptoms experienced ”quite a bit” or “extremely” (4 and 5 on Likert scale)
2014: 39.3%
2015: 30.8%
2016: 41.5%
2017: 56.6%
2018: 26.4%
BBM represents over 40 years of medical research carried out by Dr. Richard Brown, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry from Columbia University, and Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at New York Medical College. Dr. Brown and Dr. Gerbarg have extensively studied the effects of Coherent Breathing along with several ancient practices from Indian yogic traditions, Zen Buddhist practice, Japanese and Chinese martial arts and a form of breathing done by Russian Orthodox Hesychast monks (Brown & Gerbarg, 2012). After several years of scientific study and practice, Dr. Brown and Gerbarg distilled the practice into a three-part program they called Breath-Body-Mind. They have worked with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan wars, survivors of mass disasters, such as the Asia Tsunami, and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. Global Grassroots has utilized the practice with 2010 Haiti earthquake survivors, survivors of war and gender-based violence in Rwanda, Northern Uganda, South Sudan, and Kenya, as well as with first-responders, ER doctors, humanitarian aid workers, social entrepreneurs, activists, mass disaster survivors and others.
