Mindfulness, Trauma and the Brain

I wanted to share this article for people to read because the neurosciences are providing new hope for the individuals, families and communities who are dealing with the sometimes horrific effects of complex trauma.


Until recent times, normal psychology in the academy, “has had no pressing need to pay attention to the nature and structure of subjective experiences such as the present moment. Psychology’s new alliance with the neurosciences has changed that and a more fruitful dialogue is now taking place” (p. 137). The dialogue now reveals that there are not only objective brain correlates and limits to the mind known through subjective encounter, but that concepts of interpersonal neurobiology and neuroplasticity are disclosing how the mind shapes the brain (Gallese, 2001; Lewis et al., 2000; Lipton, 2005; Siegel, 1999).

In particular, recent technology is beginning to show the ways in which mindfulness helpfully affects the brain through such things as left prefrontal activation that enables people to not be fused or blended with emotional activation or obsessive-compulsive behaviors (Germer, 2005a, p. 22-23). Rather, impulses may be witnessed as they arise, and choice introduced in terms of a variety of responses (Austin, 1998; Libet, 1999; Schwartz & Begley, 2002; Schwartz, J. 1996). This ability supports the contention of Popper and Eccles (1981) that the best word for describing the unconscious is “disposition.” We are disposed in many ways through biochemistry, object-relations, conditioning, cultural and societal influences, but not absolutely determined. As the work of Kurtz (1990) demonstrates, these various dispositions can be mindfully studied and possibly modified as they arise or are evoked.

Nowhere is this more important than in work with trauma. Some studies report that nearly half of all Americans have experienced trauma, though perhaps not in the technical sense of a perceived threat to life (Kessler, Sonnega, Bromer, Hughes, and Nelson, 1995). For those who have experienced a real or perceived threat to their lives, the primitive reptilian and limbic brains have been activated and organized around fight, flight, or freezing (Levine, 1997, Herman, 1992). Clinically speaking, this implies that normal psychological counseling after traumatic incidents employing the neocortex in ordinary consciousness can be counterproductive or even serve to re-traumatize (Ehlers et al., 2003; Groopman, 2004).

What is needed is a form of therapy that addresses the need for bottom-up processing that respects the power of primitive sensory-motor and limbic processes to immediately start a trauma vortex that leads to dissociation when memories are evoked too quickly through top down processing that generally seeks meaning, understanding, and a coherent narrative (LeDoux, 1996; Van der Kolk, 2002).

One recent approach that has been exciting through its clinical effectiveness is Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy that employs mindfulness in the service of bottom-up processing for those who have suffered trauma. Ogden and Minton (2000) write:

In Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, top-down direction is harnessed to support rather than manage sensorimotor processing. The client is asked to mindfully track (a top-down cognitive process) the sequence of physical sensations and impulses (sensorimotor process) as they progress through the body, and to temporarily disregard emotions and thoughts that arise, until the bodily sensations and impulses resolve to a point of rest and stabilization in the body. The client learns to observe and follow the unassimilated sensorimotor reactions (primarily, arousal and defensive reactions) that were activated at the time of the trauma. (p. 6)
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Mindfulness is the key to clients becoming more and more acutely aware of internal sensorimotor reactions and in increasing their capacity for self-regulation. Mindfulness is a state of consciousness in which one’s awareness is directed toward here-and-now internal experience, with the intention of simply observing rather than changing this experience. Therefore, we can say that mindfulness engages the cognitive faculties of the client in support of sensorimotor processing, rather than allowing bottom-up trauma-related processes to escalate and take control of information processing. . . .[Mindful questioning invites] the client to come out of a dissociated state and future- or past-centered ideation, and experience the present moment through the body. Such questions also encourage the client to step back from being embedded in the traumatic experience and to report from the standpoint of an observing ego, an ego that ‘has’ an experience in the body rather than ‘is’ that bodily experience. (p. 14)

Morgan (2002) echoes Ogden’s wisdom of dealing mindfully with signs and symptom of traumatic activation:

In excessive arousal the higher processing is shut down, and the tendency is to be overwhelmed by input from the emotional and sensory systems. The left brain and verbal centers are under-active and distressing memories are more likely to be activated by the more active right hemisphere. The hippocampus is under-functioning so a sense of sequence, context, and ability to make a story is dampened. (p. 9)
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Mindfulness calms the system, allows the person to focus attention. The . . . mindfulness induction has been shown to heighten mental imagery, disconnect attention from external sense and increase the blood flow to the anterior cingulated cortex. This is the brain area that allows attention to be focused on internal events. Candace Pert (1999), in her discussion of neuropeptides, talks of the system being able to digest information when there is focused attention on the body. This allows information to flow upwards, be filtered, and be processed. When the client reports experience to the therapist the verbal areas are kept active, which will help balance the two hemispheres. Memory fragments are gathered by the hippocampus and the frontal lobes, and these can be brought together in a meaningful way. Movement between the left and right hemispheres is crucial for memory consolidation. This could involve feeling something, speaking about it, expressing emotion, linking this to a remembered event, feeling the body, making some sense of the feeling. Freezing in the body can melt, and energy be released in movement, heat and trembling. Going slowly, mindfully allows processes to complete. (p. 9)

Therapists learning to encourage mindfulness in relation to bodily signs of primitive activation is a promising way to avoid dissociation while pursuing completion and integration of traumatic fragmentation.

printed from:

A Survey of the Use of
Mindfulness in Psychotherapy

by
Gregory J. Johanson, Ph.D., FAPA, FAAIM, LPC
Hakomi Educational Resources

The Annals of the American Psychotherapy Association
Vol. 9 No. 2. (Summer 2006):15-24