Jeannine L. Rashidi - Abundance Beyond Trauma: Discovering Your Courage for Change and Commitment to Yourself

Written by Vaidya Jayarajan Kodikannath BSc, BAMS, AD

Ancient healing traditions like Ayurveda emphasize that the healer is within and healing is ultimately a self-transformation process. Every individual is a unique expression of the cosmic consciousness, and the sustenance of life is through the seamless flow of nature through the body-mind systems in the form of food, water, breath, and perceptions. The ability to transform, purify, nurture, nourish and flow are the key indicators for healing and well-being. Since the mind and body work together as a single entity, the minds well-being contributes to the bodys strength and balance, and any disturbance in the mind can affect the body and express physical symptoms and vice versa.

Ancient texts of Ayurveda explain that mind care is life care as our life is the sum of our experiences and our responses to those experiences. Every occasion creates an impression in our deeper mind, and that impression will become the yardstick for our response to similar experiences in the future. Meaning our entire behavior patterns depend on the collection of our experiences and how our mind created the series of impressions, which lead to a series of actions. Making the traumas the most difficult to cope with as the aberrations produced by such traumatic experiences become the reality of that individuals life, carried forward in every future perception and action. This pattern will be much stronger if the traumas happen during the childhood period. The most challenging part is that those who have gone through traumas may not recognize or appreciate the supportive and positive environment that may come later in their life. The hidden memories of the trauma can get triggered by words, images, touch, smell, or a taste and can make them experience the same trauma even while they are in a safe and positive environment. Such triggers are recurrent and cyclical; for example, a traumatic experience after a cake cutting on the 10th birthday can become a trigger whenever they are at a cake cutting in the future. The fascinating part of such PTSD cases is that most of them may not even recognize that it is coming from the previous trauma, and it doesnt have anything to do with their current life situation!

Based on the Ayurvedic teachings, intellectual awareness (Dhi), courage or determination (Dhriti), and spiritual awareness (Atmadi Vijnanam) are considered the most potent medicines to heal the mind from any imbalances, including those caused by trauma. Healing is the process of self-transformation through proper identification of the issue and then taking the mind-body system through purification, stabilization, and restoration.