Healing & the gunas. (Part X)

Healing and the gunas.
Welcome to Part X of the series exploring the question, “What does it mean to heal trauma?” This framework for healing is distinct from the others we have explored so far in that it is an example of what we might consider to be an “impersonal” approach to healing. But first, as the Sanskrit word guna is probably unfamiliar to most Western readers, let us start by reviewing what the gunas are.

Within several lineages of yoga, the gunas are the qualities of prakrti, or Nature (“Nature” as in the material Universe). There are three fundamental gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Broadly speaking, sattva or sattvic qualities are those related to peace, tranquility, insight, wisdom, calm, understanding, insight, and realization. Rajas or rajasic qualities are those that are activating and active, forceful, pushing, energized, exertive, disruptive, and incessant. Tamas or tamasic qualities are those of inertia, freeze, shutdown, slow, collapsed, low energy, unwilling, resistant, depressive, cold, and ignorant. Within most schools of yoga, one of the primary goals is seen as that of achieving a sattvic state of mind or consciousness, a state of insight, clear seeing, wise understanding, and gnosis. For example, within Patanjali’s school of yoga, the state of samadhi would be the epitome of the sattvic state of consciousness. In fact, taking verse 1.2 of Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras, which defines yoga as the calming, stilling, or restraint of the fluctuations or waves of consciousness or objects of the mind, the state in which consciousness is calm or in which the objects of the mind and consciousness cease to arise and fall away would be a purely sattvic state. This would be yoga.

Now bringing trauma into the picture, trauma would be considered disruptive to a sattvic state, and in fact would make sattva very difficult both to attain and maintain. Considering the symptoms of trauma as both too activating and too collapsing, one might conceive of being traumatized as vacillating between rajasic and tamasic states of consciousness. Within Polyvagal Theory, this could be looked at as bouncing between sympathetic activation and dorsal vagal collapse (what some would also term bi-polar).

However, traditionally within the yogic lineage, the gunas are seen as impersonal forces, impersonal attributes and qualities that make up all phenomenon of prakrti, or Nature. Everything we see and experience in the material Universe is made up of the various forces of sattva, rajas, and tamas. All that we see and experience includes our own “personal” experiences. To experience life and its changes and fluctuations as the interplay and interaction of these three forces provides an opportunity to step back, to create some space even from the symptoms, and see them as the interplay and interaction of these three forces of the material universe. All the emotions, all the physical sensations, all the thoughts, are simply the interplay of the gunas. In this respect, they do not belong to anyone. They do not belong to a specific survivor. They are experienced by individuals, but they are not owned by, do not belong to any one individual. Thus, “traumatic” experiences and the “trauma” (symptoms) that follow are the waves of the gunas crashing into each other and creating experiences. Pleasure and pain, suffering and connection, rupture and healing, are all the ebb and flow of the gunas.

If this is “true,” then trauma ceases to be “my” trauma or “your” trauma or “our” trauma. Ownership collapses. It becomes impersonal (but, importantly, not in a sadistic sense). It simply becomes waves that come and go, that pass through, that pass. Trauma symptoms become things in the Universe, made up of the same forces that make up everything else. Healing becomes the process of letting go of one’s sense of ownership, one’s sense of attachment to the symptoms, one’s sense of isolation in suffering. Healing becomes release. Healing, and one’s sense of wholeness, becomes allowing the waves and interplay to be as they are, waves that come and go just like all other waves, without any disruption to one’s wholeness, health, connection, safety and wellbeing. They are movements of energy rippling, rolling, and sometimes crashing together through the Universe. Healing becomes surfing with these waves of energy; and when they pass through us, we see them for what they are – part of the natural interplay of the qualities of the material Universe.

Part XI continues this series, exploring the concept of healing through the non-linear approach of spectrums, spirals, and spheres.

REFERENCES FOR THIS SERIES

Aurobindo, Sri. (1990). The Synthesis of Yoga. Lotus Press.

Badenoch, B. (2018). The Heart of Trauma (First edition ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.

Banerji, D. (2016). Seven quartets of becoming (Second impression ed.). Nalanda International.

Blackstone, J. (2018). Trauma and the unbound body. Sounds True.

Damasio, A. R. (2019). The strange order of things : life, feeling, and the making of cultures (First Vintage Books edition, February 2019. ed.). Vintage Books.

Freud, S. (2010). Civilization and Its Discontents. W. W. Norton & Company.

Herman, J. L. (2015). Trauma and recovery. Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Larson, G. J. (1969). Classical Sāṃkhya (1 ed. ed.). Motilal Banarsidass.

Levine, P. A., & Frederick, A. (1997). Waking the tiger : healing trauma : the innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences. North Atlantic Books.

Levine, P. A., & Kline, M. (2008). Trauma-proofing your kids : a parents’ guide for instilling confidence, joy and resilience. North Atlantic Books.

McLaren, K. (2010). The language of emotions. Sounds True.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Heal. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved November 23, 2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heal

Miller, A. (1997). The drama of the gifted child : the search for the true self, revised edition. Basic Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory : neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation (1st ed. ed.). W.W. Norton.

Porges, S. W. (2017). The pocket guide to polyvagal theory : the transformative power of feeling safe (First edition. ed.). W. W Norton & Company.

Siegel, D. J. 1. (2012). Pocket guide to interpersonal neurobiology : an integrative handbook of the mind (First edition. ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.

Siegel, D. J. 1. (2018). Aware : the science and practice of Presence, the groundbreaking meditation practice. TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Solomon, M. F., & Siegel, D. J. 1. (2003). Healing trauma : attachment, mind, body, and brain (1st ed. ed.). W.W. Norton.

Van der Kolk, Bessel A. 1943-. (2015). The body keeps the score : brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Penguin Books.