What do you do when you have unresolved trauma? Two types of orienting.

In this blog I’m sharing a vlog that covers one of the fundamentals for healing unresolved trauma and restoring regulation and better self-awareness back to the human system: Orienting

The capacity to orient to one’s environment in two different modes – exploratory and defensive – as well as effortlessly and unconsciously going back and forth between them should, technically, be just naturally wired into our physiology. However, with untreated trauma in the picture, and a lifetime of being disconnected from the self and the world, our capacity to orient to the here and now suffers.

Orienting can be highly mis-understood (and mis-practiced) because when we (re)teach it in Somatic Experiencing trainings and even in my online programs like SmartBody SmartMind, it’s taught as a very specific neurosensory exercise because, after all, you have to start somewhere, right?

Orienting is one of the building blocks of healing unresolved trauma.

But if there isn’t adequate integration, continued practice, and extrapolating said practice to weave back in to simple daily life…the practice will often fail to become natural again (because at some point in our life, it most likely was natural, even as infants, but slowly this natural orienting response was shifted and shutdown as a result of scary traumatic experiences).

The ability to restore the orienting response BACK to our nervous system such that it is spontaneously put back into motion, as it might be when we naturally look both ways when crossing the street, or how we might pause in the midst of a work hour to just look up and around as a way to naturally reset (without a device telling us to do so!!) means we are gaining more regulation and health!

Click below to watch the full vlog and get to know the two types of orienting that are must-haves for optimal nervous system health.