journal
Resilience
September 8, 2010
In my last newsletter, I spoke about the shaking medicine of the Bushmen of the Kalahari and about the wisdom of the rattle and stone for healing trauma. While it is important to be aware of how traumas can affect us, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we all possess natural resilience in the wake of traumatic events. Indeed, studies have shown that up to 75-85% of individuals experiencing a traumatic event will not develop long-term symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but will go on to live balanced, healthy lives. What creates the conditions for resilience in individuals? Indigenous cultures around the world prior to the arrival of Europeans possessed clues to answering this question and are even now offering us their wisdom through teachers who are stepping forward to teach others.
The first condition is connection with others. Despite the American ethic that we should be able to deal with life’s challenges on our own, the truth is that the more isolated we are and the less we feel free to share our personal challenges with other human beings, the more at risk we are for becoming unhappy. A rich social network fostered through mutual play, shared work, and rituals of transformation and healing keep hold us in a supportive web. In such a rich community context, we both find caring for and transcend our individuality. We know we are loved and valued even though we are human and messy.
The second condition is access to sources of teaching, inspiration and wisdom. Knowledge is truly power. We build inner strengths and feed optimism from knowing how the world works, whether such knowledge is framed in folktales, colorful paintings on cave walls or paper, poetry, novels, initiation rituals, or the stories of elders and those who have experienced challenges like ours. When knowledge is transformed in the context of community and with the intention to educate and heal, wisdom gradually grows in each of us. What initially were experienced as wounds are transformed into our greatest teachers and source of inspiration.
The third condition is access to tools, methods and materials for creating balance and the conditions for healing, whether in the form of dance, sound in all its forms and from all sources (instrumental or vocal), prayer, laying hands on the body, meditation, medicines for constitutional support and curing disease, and many others. We all get out of balance and experience the effects of loss, illness, and death. The key is not to whether this will happen, but whether there are sources of support and help to turn to.
Lastly, we need to have a connection to a source of meaning and spiritual sustenance beyond the human realm. These sources come in many guises and names in the human world: God (s), Spirit(s), Source, Great Mystery, Goddess, or Gaia, among others. Those who may not believe in such powers or beings, but who have a sense of their own personal interconnection with the web of life on earth or even a grounding in core moral and philosophical ideals can find inner resources in times of trouble. I have known people whose contemplation of the workings of the natural world or of the deeper meaning of life was so rich that they derived a great sense of optimism from it. All of the tools and means listed above assist us in continually renewing and strengthening meaning and connection to higher sources.
In the western world, we often lack one or more of these conditions for resilience. This may be true despite living with family members and spouses, going to work where we are never alone, or being part of small or large social groups, from suburban and urban neighborhoods to whole nations. Many of us never share a cup of tea or coffee with our close neighbors and family members, much less our innermost feelings and thoughts.
In contrast, Brad Keeney, author of Shaking Medicine, tells us that the Bushmen of the Kalahari are surprisingly joyful and resilient even in the face of sometimes great physical hardship. Similarly, Martin Prechtel, who lived among and was trained by an ancient Mayan shaman named Chiv and who was taken under the wing of the elders in the village of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala prior to the arrival of war in the 80s, tells us that there was a deep thread of resilience and happiness among the people despite the challenges of eeking a living out of the Earth and the inevitable conflicts and heartbreaks common to any human village. War has sadly broken down these ancient villages and scattered the people and their medicine bundles to the wind. Hence, as Prechtel tells us, the Maya, now in exile both abroad and in their own lands, suffer emotionally and mentally as much as westerners from depression and an overall sense of struggle and malaise. Kenney reports that the Bushmen still live on the same piece of earth they have inhabited for 20,000 years. Therefore, their sense of connection to land, community, and spirits remains unbroken despite attempts by whites to sever them.
This is not to completely idealize indigenous societies as they existed prior to the arrival of westerners or even afterwards. No human society lacks challenges, pain and suffering. Superstition, greed, hatred, and unhappiness in all its forms can be found everywhere. Eeking out a living from the Earth is hard work. As Prechtel puts it, village life is not always easy. Yet, I myself know from long years of accessing both western and non-western healing modalities that my sense of hope and optimism, my ability to whether small and large traumas, that it has taken every condition named here to build my own resiliency. Access to more money and more things did not do it. Nor did simply knowing the stories of my past, told over and over again in therapy sessions. Every tool in my basket–deep friendships, supportive family, meditation, yoga, shaking up ecstasy, art, rituals for transformation, access to new sources of knowledge and wisdom, and music–continue to contribute to an optimistic and hopeful worldview.
Yet I still must touch back into communities of support who are attempting to reconstruct such conditions. I shake to move trauma out of the body and I blow my breath into my mesa to release heavy feelings. I write and make art. I also create connection and sustenance by offering such experiences to others from my own tool basket.
In these times, when we cannot readily live in self-contained, self-sustaining groups, we must find at least approximations of such communities and experiences in sometimes transient, sometimes permanent communities and settings, such as weekend workshops, churches, synagogues and temples, schools, colleges and universities, retreat centers and nature outings. Where we are lucky in the 21st century is how much there is to choose from. The great challenge is finding what works for each of us to continue to build resilience and foster a storehouse of peace.
In my weekend workshop, Shaking Down Trauma, Finding Peace, we will tap into all of these tools and resources to build community and resilience in ourselves and our world at large. I invite you to join me and others in this wonderful endeavor.