One of the first things I learned as a trauma and PTSD recovery specialist is that we store old wounds in our bodies.

It’s one thing to know that with my head, and a whole different thing to integrate this knowing into my heart.

But first, a review for context.

• I had a weird medical thing with my lower back and corresponding nerves in January.
• Since that time, I began experiencing more pain and stiffness and decreased mobility.
• I wrote about how my chiropractor figured out the source of my problems last month, which I wrote about in Sometimes Getting Better Looks Like Getting Worse

For about four weeks, I’ve been getting consistent chiropractic and massage treatment in the most painful areas. And I can tell you that the pain has been EXQUISITE.

But more than that, I started to feel super weird.

The Old Wounds Stored in My Body

My lower half began to loosen and cause this exquisite pain during my week of fun at the Oregon Country Fair. This is the place where, once a summer, hippies gather near Eugene and celebrate art, music, food, and general hippy-ness.

They also have massage services there, which I fully take advantage of. (Massage has been a friend of mine since I started my PTSD recovery in 2006. I try to go minimum once a month, and I work with minimum two massage therapists at any time, so I can get appointments. What am I spending my money on? MASSAGES.)

Anywho, the massage therapist who worked with me during the week of the fair really connected with what was going on in my hips and legs. After the bodywork, I started feeling what I could only describe as “super weird.”

Not physically, that was just straight up pain.

Emotionally, I felt…surreal. Like a time traveler, but with emotions.

After coming home from the fair and doing chiropractic and bodywork, I started feeling even MORE emotionally “super weird,” even as I started to physically feel joints and muscles and tendons start moving.

I felt emotionally “all over the place.” Crying a lot. SO very tired. Snappy. Very little capacity. Overwhelm. A much smaller window of tolerance.

My emotions and feelings did not make sense AT ALL with my present life. And I have been feeling impatient about that.

Why These Emotions Did Not Make Sense

I kept talking with my husband about it because I needed to apologize a lot, especially for snapping at him. One day, I was expressing my frustration and impatience with my emotions and the lightbulb snapped on:

The EMOTIONS DIDN’T MAKE SENSE WITH MY PRESENT LIFE BECAUSE THE WOUNDS ARE OLD.

That area of my body – the sacrum – started locking up as the pandemic shut everything down. Tighter and tighter and tighter over the last few years.

THE BODY STORES TRAUMA.

Like old emotional wounds, old physical wounds have attached emotions.

Remember how I posted recently about how getting better can sometimes look and feel like getting worse?

Yeah! That!

Through this process, I am not only healing physically from the trauma of the pandemic, I’m healing emotionally.

Connecting The Mind and Body is Vital to Recovery

Obviously, the pandemic affected me in ways that I’m just starting to deal with. It was – in plain language – traumatic. And I’m not the only one.

Plus, I’m fairly certain that the trauma I’ve been emotionally processing through healing these physical wounds is not just from the pandemic.

The sacrum is considered a sacred space, connected with the reproductive and sexual organs. This area is known as the Sacral Chakra, and it is considered the central place for our emotions, creativity, sensitivity, sexuality, intimacy, emotional well-being, and self-expression.

Whether we practice a spiritual connection with the chakras or not, my connection of my sacrum to trauma is common sense. I am a survivor of sexual abuse and complex trauma. It makes perfect sense for me to have stored my experiences of sexual trauma in this area of my body.

Making the connection of my mind and body gives me three things:

• Awareness of how my body and mind work together
• Validation of my body’s storage of this trauma until I could better process it
• A chance to fully process these traumas, grieving openly and letting them go.

Now I can use this experience as I move forward in my own trauma recovery journey, as well as working with clients through painful processing experiences.

Letting go to move forward.

Really, that’s what it’s all about for me.

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