The Roots of Healing

In my upcoming book, Trauma Survivor to Soul Warrior, I map the healing process onto the three levels of a tree; roots, trunk, and branches. Here’s an excerpt from the ‘Roots’ chapter:

Your journey from here is to work your way out of the tangled mess of the past, up the healing tree and into the sky. A growth-focused definition of evolution is, “A process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state.”1 From here, your evolutionary path is to return to soul level. Yet, not as you left, but permanently changed for the better.

As you recover and heal, the focus of your identity will gradually shift from trauma survivor to soul warrior. Remember, the powerful, true You is always within you, always was and always will be. What changes as you reconnect to your soul is your conscious awareness of who you are–from a limited, threatened human being, to a mighty, eternal spiritual being.

A good place to start our healing climb is with our physical body, the densest root level which anchors us upon the planet. Our root system is our connection to the earth, where our mind joins with our physical body and extends into matter. Our physical form is part of the natural world, so health demands we are grounded and present in our body. Here is where we work on the raw material level of healing.

When our roots are clear and healthy, we can move through the world in flow, harmonized and engaging comfortably with the natural world. Our physicality, as well as other people, animals, plants, and the broader universe, are met in our full presence. We can respond and interact with grace and ease.

When we are stressed out however, our body reacts instinctively to protect us by going into defense mode. This can get stuck in our brain and nervous system, so we can no longer relax. Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: the past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.”2 It can be so unpleasant to be in our body that we disconnect from our root system almost entirely. The processes of our trauma reactions have driven us out of home.

We need to get back into our body and bring ourselves into a calm, regulated state. We need different hacks we can use repeatedly to feel safe in the body again, to reduce the defenses keeping us stuck in hyper and hypoarousal and allow us to reinhabit our physical form once more. The key word here is safety; trauma is a state of feeling unsafe, so anything that brings comfort and security is helpful.

1. Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2022), s.v. “evolution.”

2. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma (London: Penguin, 2015), 97.