Using Reflexes to Heal & Regenerate

It is common for people beginning to look at developmental resources to underestimate their full usefulness. For example, infant reflexes should not be retained into childhood and beyond. They may come out of integration during trauma. Some novices see this as “bad”. However, when infant reflexes are reactivated, nature is offering an opportunity, if we take it. If we return to the movements and postures that developed our original ability, we can heal using the original process that developed the ability in the first place. Then one can return to integration.

For example: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSS) usually brings the Moro Reflex out of integration. Originally for the individual, the Moro Reflex may have been weakly integrated and therefore quickly becomes unintegrated under traumatic stress. By starting a program that allows a person to just relax in the positions of Moro #1 and Moro #2, as well as adding the development resource of sustained deep pressure, an adult can recapture the original moment of development for regulation.

This may not be all that is needed for re-integration, but it can be a healthy start. It is common that one or the other will not in the beginning feel entirely comfortable. This activity gives the Upper and Lower Brains time to adjust and rewire. At first the body-brain system may only want to stay in the positions for as little as 15 seconds. Tune in and gently encourage the system to lengthen the time, over a number of days. Two minutes in the postures seems to be a favored amount of time, although some prefer up to 10 minutes in each position. More time in a posture is not necessarily better. Check in (see earlier posts on checking in) and listen to what you Lower Brain and body are trying to communicate. Attempt to ignore the chattering Upper Brain. Relax your joints and muscles as much a possible in the postures. Let images and thoughts come and go without reaction.

Next week, I will post the pictures for the postures!

Traumas and the Neurodevelopmental System

Last month we looked at birth trauma and how it affects human development. Today we connect birth trauma with other types of traumas. As we previously noted there is a spectrum of trauma:

1. Stress, that can be bad or good for our growth
2. Chronic stress that is decidedly not good for our systems
3. Strauma when chronic or sudden stress triggers mini trauma into our systems
4. Trauma when the physical, mental and/or emotional human functioning is effected

Birth trauma can look like any of the above and any of the above can affect how the sensory-reflex motor systems develop. Some of these differences are minor and others can be major. If the developmental spiral through life is too splintered, the human system is stressed at more and more levels of daily life.
Other traumas can affect our functioning in life:
1. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
2. Traumatic bodily injury
3. Traumatic emotional injury
4. Traumatic mental injury

Each of these traumas is real and healing needs access to the developmental resources that we all have available in our brain-body systems. Some of these resources include:

1. Reflex patterns 2. Gravity and Body senses

3. Breathing 4. Use of mirror neurons through visualization

5. Sleep 6. Nutrition

7. Body and natural rhythms 8. Meridians

It is my belief that most emotional and mental (and many physical) traumas become traumas because the human systems in early development were weak. For example, emotional trauma is often linked with an unintegrated Moro Reflex. Often the Moro Reflex was not entirely or strongly integrated at the time of the trauma which then became emotionally triggered. I have met many people who have had physical trauma due to “accidents” that were all or partially caused by a retained ATNR Reflex.

At times the infant reflexes will come out of integration to restart healing after a trauma. Using the infant reflexes for healing is a natural way to remind the human system of resources we have naturally within.