Episode 51: Pain Perception, Trauma and Safety with Steve Haines

Steve Haines has been a bodyworker for over 20 years. He is the author of the award-winning ‘Anxiety Is Really Strange’, part of a series of graphic books that include ‘Pain Is Really Strange’ and ‘Trauma Is Really Strange’. Understanding the science of pain and trauma has transformed his approach to healing. He has studied Yoga, Shiatsu, Craniosacral Therapy, and Trauma Releasing Exercises TRE®. He is a UK registered Chiropractor and teaches TRE and Cranial all over the world. His treatments now use education, embodied awareness, and light touch to help people move more freely and be more present. Steve lives and works between London and Geneva.

Steve initially studied Engineering and worked in the city as a computer analyst. He volunteered with people with mental health issues and became interested in yoga
Since his late 20s he’s been interested in how working through the body affects how we think, feel and remember
He’s explored themes of emotion, stress, trauma and pain through his work
Key skill: learning to feel more deeply
Understanding power dynamics and relieving suffering
Chiropractic taught Steve the importance of structure, problem-solving and palpation and an enquiry into ‘how things work’
Pain is a complex event
Interoception - inner experience of our body, that can be taught. Bud Craig, a leading researcher in this field says that we can train our ability to feel
Learning to understand body signals and then modulate the response to them
The epidemic of persistent pain, which affects 1 in 5 people
Exploring the meaning that people place on pain, how safe they feel and helping to find a new narrative
“Tell me your story” as a way of starting a clinical session
Dr Lorimer Mosely and Dr David Butler - pain research “pain emerges when your brain decides that something is unsafe”
“Pain is an alarm signal to tell you to do something different”
Trauma is “about when your threat-detection systems decide you’re unsafe”
Fight-flight response or collapse and dissociation
Anxiety, pain and trauma are all related to a perception of being unsafe
Safety involves internal feelings that allow the person to feel grounded and present
“Most experience of trauma is other people abusing power over other people”
Resilience comes from skillfully relating to the sensations inside the body, moving from vulnerability to a sense of agency
“Part of the process of change is to acknowledge that there are inequality and unjust societies, and they have consequences on your own perception of your body”
The political dimension around finding safety is often unexplored
A definition of trauma: “anything that affects your ability to cope”
“Trauma is not dependent on the event. It’s dependent on your resources and previous experience”
Dissociation at the time of the event is more likely to lead to a traumatic response
The notion of “this too shall pass” when considering lockdown
Play and creativity is important in any situation where you feel stuck
Movement routines, reaching out to people
Welcoming feelings first before being able to change
Meeting pain rather than trying to change it
Give the sensation a location, size, shape and weight when you’re first learning to feel, so that you can have distance rather than become the feeling
Go slowly
Maus by Art Spiegelman, a comic book about the Holocaust
Darryl Cunningham cartoons
Graphic novels as a way of highlighting complex ideas quickly and simply
TRE (Tension/ Trauma Releasing Exercises) - simple,reflex action to shake off tension
Shaking switches on new feelings of joy and connection. It’s a novel stimulus to a stuck organism
The complexity of touch
Touch is one of the ways we first learn about the world
Touch as a reinforcement of humanity