The Mind and Body Haven

“You’re not healing to be able to handle the trauma.
You’re used to the trauma.
You’re healing to be able to handle the joy.”

Do you wonder why you can find it so hard to feel joy, to be playful, feel free?

It can be that parts of you froze in time, overwhelmed, filled with sadness and despair.

Those parts know trauma well, they handled it by shutting down, shutting people and the world out.

By doing this, they cut themselves off from accessing the really difficult feelings that others weren’t able to help them contain and be with in a compassionate, loving way.

This then also shut off their access to feelings of joy and positivity and a sense of being ok. And shut down their life force, their lively energy, their exuberance, their joie de vivre.

I recently got in touch with a very little, infant part of me when having one of my regular get-togethers a with a friend and fellow Havening practitioner.

Little baby me did not want to engage with adult me at all to start with, would not look at me, was turned away and did not want me close to her.

As I applied soothing Havening touch, I imagined gently playing with her, running my fingers up to her along the mattress, not touching her and then running away again.

I started to sense her interest and my friend asked me what else she needed. She just wanted to be held with no expectation, no pressure to be anything other than a baby, just to be.

And it didn’t take long at all for her to come alive, to want to play, to be swung around onto my back in a joyful way, to have fun.

Since that session, when I check in with her, I see her full of life, nothing like the little frozen one, shut down, not moving, given up.

And I’ve been feeling playful and energised in a way that I didn’t used to be, that I found so hard to access in the past. It feels wonderful and joy feels easier to handle…

How touch dampens the brain's response to painful stimuli…

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-dampens-brain-response-painful-stimuli.html

How touch dampens the brain's response to painful stimuli When we press our temples to soothe an aching head or rub an elbow after an unexpected blow, it often brings some relief. It is believed that pain-responsive cells in the brain quiet down when these neurons also receive touch inputs, say scientists at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, who...

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

“The mind is released from darkness once we shine the light of a safe Haven through touch.” ~ Dr Ron Ruden, Co-Creator of Havening Techniques ®

Here's a description of Havening and its neuroscience:

Havening – or creating a safe haven - is a psychosensory technique which permanently stops the neurons holding the biological imprint of trauma from being able to trigger unhelpful responses.

It has similarities with other psychosensory techniques such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).

Healing with Havening is literally in your own hands as it uses the sensory input of touch as a key part of its self-soothing effectiveness.

You make stroking movements over your upper arms, hands and face to trigger delta waves in the brain, waves that are usually mostly active in our deep healing sleep.

The delta waves in turn prompt chemical chain-reactions in the amygdala, a part of our brain which triggers our fear-related behaviour in response to threat or danger.

This removes specific AMPA (aminomethylphosphonic acid) receptors from the surface of neurons in the amygdala where the traumatic event is ‘stored’ and unlinks the sensory information encoded – sights, sounds, smell, touch, taste, emotions, thoughts, feelings and pain - when the event happened.

Havening can be done without words and without having to go into the traumatic story, making it a gentle way of processing difficult experiences. Also, if we don’t have the story behind the pain and distress, we don’t have to go digging for answers.

As well as releasing you from the grip of the trauma, Havening also increases feelgood neurotransmitters such as GABA, serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine and decreases stress hormones such as cortisol, which is harmful to health if levels are consistently high.

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Hello and welcome to my page about HaveningTechniques®, a psychosensory therapeutic treatment which uses touch to create emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

Havening can be a powerful yet gentle and compassionate tool to help you recover or gain a sense of who you really are when you’re not struggling, perhaps daily, with debilitating states such as chronic pain, fatigue, persistent anxiety and depression, insomnia and recurring memories or nightmares.

It can bring relief from suffering quickly and effectively to create emotional, mental and physical resilience and boost overall wellbeing.

Our nervous systems hold on to what we could not process when we were overwhelmed by difficult experiences without the support of empathic care. Such experiences will keep coming back as conscious memories and often unconsciously, in the form of uncomfortable feelings and physical pain and sensations, until they can be released.

Havening with me as your guide could help you to release yourself from the pain of the past and find a way through your trauma to a life where you can thrive, not just survive.

The technique works by breaking the chains in your brain that become triggered as you navigate relationships and other situations in your personal life and at work.

We can also work out together through sessions tailored to your personal experience how you would like to envision your future with your specific aims and goals in mind.

Havening can help with but is not limited to:

🤲 phobias
🤲 sudden loss
🤲 bullying
🤲 panic attacks
🤲 witnessing frightening events
🤲 injury or illness
🤲 anxiety and depression
🤲 chronic pain and/or fatigue
🤲 chronic stress
🤲 abuse
🤲 broken relationships
🤲 fear of driving or unresolved pain following an accident

Call me or send me an email if you’d like to find out more about how I could help you find a way out of your distress.

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