By Orit Krug  |  October 4th, 2021

In order to understand how dance therapy releases trauma from the body, we need to first understand how trauma gets stored in the body.

When anybody experiences trauma, their higher-functioning brain goes offline. This is the part of the brain that processes verbal language, makes decisions, and plans what to say or do in any situation.

In the moments that you experienced trauma, you lost the ability to make any rational thought or decision, or remember anything in words.

Your primal brain took over to defend, attack, and save your life. This is true even if you weren’t in actual physical danger and the abuse you experienced was purely emotional.

Therefore, your memories and feelings associated with past traumatic events become stored in your body as fragments of sensations.

Have you ever smelled a perfume or cologne that brought you RIGHT back to the memory of an old partner? Even though you had not thought of them in a long time? This is one small example of how smell, touch, sound, and other senses become memories for significant events in our lives.

Trauma is stored in your body as physical sensations that are connected to your trauma.

After working in psychiatric hospitals and clinics for 8 years, I took my first private client in 2018. She prefers to stay anonymous, so we’ll call her Amy.

Amy had been a well-established psychotherapist for over 20 years. She also received her own personal therapy for childhood trauma for 20+ years. Amy started working with me because she was “curious,” but I like to think her body led her to me because there was unfinished business in her healing.

A month into our work together, I guided Amy to explore movements to let go of control in her body. She immediately started crying as she recalled memories of childhood sexual abuse.

“I don’t understand. I thought I healed my trauma and now it’s showing up again,” she said.

I helped her regulate through her emotions and reassured her, “You’ve done so much important work to heal, but these are the memories you haven’t yet reached… until now.”

When Amy did the “letting go” movements, it stirred up a certain sensation in her body that brought up memories of her past sexual trauma.

There was no adequate verbal explanation I could provide her. Her trauma was never stored in words. It has been stored in the body, and, like every other client I work with, there are certain movements that will stir up different sensations in their bodies.

Each of these sensations is directly tied to the memories of their past trauma. This is not a one size fits all process!

For Amy, it was the “letting go” movements. For my client Brigid, it was strong-weighted movements. For another client Claire, it was slowing down and bringing her body to the floor.

And then there’s you.

You are a unique individual with a unique set of traumas. The way that you’ve stored them inside your body will determine your own experience of accessing and releasing them through movement.

Dance Therapy releases trauma in a safe, gentle and specialized way.

First, it’s essential to say that you cannot rely on ANY modality to heal you. You have to do the work too.

Secondly, not all Dance Therapists are equal. Many don’t have specialized trauma training. If you work with a Dance Therapist, make sure they are experienced in trauma healing and that they’re a safe match for you.

With that said, Dance Therapy can absolutely feel MAGICAL in healing trauma, especially if you’ve been stuck for many years.

Through Dance Therapy, we begin by gently & safely helping you connect back into your body so that it becomes safe to start accessing what’s been trapped in there.

Then, as we begin to move together, old trauma inevitably gets stirred up because you’re literally and metaphorically moving what you’ve been repressing in your body for so long.

However, instead of you reacting, numbing, or repressing in response to your trauma getting triggered in session, we see your micro-movements & micro-body signals that show us you’re about to enter into a fear state.

But we don’t let you go into that fear state because the point is to NOT repeat the same patterns that are happening in your life & relationships.

In that exact moment that fear comes up in your body, we help you stay present & regulated in your body AND the therapeutic relationship.

That way, you can stay present in your relationships, even when you get triggered. This allows you to CHOOSE how you want to respond, instead of overreacting or shutting down.

Expanding your window of tolerance to stay calm, even while triggered, is the essence of rewiring your nervous system.

You deserve to find peace in your body & live freely without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.

By Orit Krug  |  July 28th, 2021

Healing childhood trauma is an uphill battle for most people, but is it possible that it’s easier than we think?

I spent a lot of time struggling to heal my trauma and have healthy relationships without sabotaging them.

After 15+ years of childhood trauma, I was (passive) aggressive and unable to trust ANY act of love in my relationships.

When I met my now-husband, Aaron, I had already been in talk therapy for 3 years in an attempt to finally break my unhealthy patterns.

Talk therapy gave me the cognitive awareness about why I was STILL sabotaging the relationship and partner of my dreams. But I didn’t know how to stop.

Eventually, Aaron couldn’t take any more of my controlling and abusive behavior. He broke up with me about a year into our relationship. 

That was my breaking point.

I didn’t realize that talking couldn’t help me heal my childhood trauma.

It was 2013. I was 3 years into my dance therapy career and I finally decided to do this work as a client. 

I enrolled in a dance/movement therapy program where I finally accessed and released my childhood trauma from my body. 

My entire life transformed and I got my relationship back with Aaron. Stronger & healthier than I had ever experienced in my life before. 

I went from pushing him away to truly letting in his love without being defensive or constantly questioning my worth. 

Our clients experience a very similar transformation, even after 20+ years of talk therapy, energy healings, and other approaches.

Trauma must be released through the body.

It’s essential to understand that your childhood trauma is stored in your body. 

You may be able to verbally recall memories from the past, but most memories and emotions associated with your trauma are stored in the non-verbal brain & body.

Let’s do a quick recap of the science behind this (click here for a full-on free training).

When you experienced your trauma, your higher-functioning brain went offline. This is the part of the brain that uses verbal language to think, remember, and make decisions. 

Hence, your trauma was NOT stored verbally in your memory.

Your trauma is not remembered in words. It is remembered through sensation.

If you can resonate with the following scenario, then you already know this to be true.

“It happened out of nowhere. I was having a great day and all of a sudden, BAM! I had a flashback. I was simply walking down the street when it happened. Nothing specific seemed to trigger it.”

You might’ve smelled a specific scent or heard a noise that immediately brought your body and nervous system to a trauma memory. As if it was happening all over again.

That’s how trauma gets stored (and triggered) in all of us. Through fragments of sensation associated with the traumatic event.

If your abuser wore a certain cologne, or your mother baked “apology cookies” after hitting you… you only need a faint whiff of these smells to bring you right back to the traumatic event.

There are no amount of words or mindset work that can access most of the trauma you’re holding in your body.

We must access trauma through the body. And the language of the body is movement.

Dance Therapy is the perfect match for healing childhood trauma. 

When you work with a dance therapist who is qualified to heal trauma, then you get to connect back to your body in a SAFE and gentle way.

However, connecting back with your body inevitably stirs up old trauma memories. So you can’t just say, “Great! I’ll just dance at home” or go to a yoga class.

There is a crucial point in time during the healing process that cannot be approached alone. Most people who try it DIY end up making their trauma symptoms worse. 

A skilled dance therapist can see your micro movements & micro body signals that immediately shows us when your trauma is getting stirred up in your body. 

This is the crucial point of time where you have the opportunity to change everything you’ve been wanting.

Instead of dissociating, disconnecting, numbing, or escaping your body, your dance therapist will help you stay regulated, present and connected to your body. 

Through repeated experiences of staying present when your nervous system used to hijack your body’s behaviors, you rewire your nervous system.

Additionally, staying present in the therapeutic relationship, when you’re triggered and tend to escape or lash out, will directly help you do the same in your external relationships.

You deserve to find peace in your body & let love in without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.

By Orit Krug  |  July 27th, 2020

Trauma processing can be heavy, frustrating, and painful, OR it can be light and enjoyable.

Trauma processing becomes unbearable after spending YEARS going over the same old stories. You may have had little moments of clarity and breakthrough over time, but ultimately you feel stuck, hopeless, and on the edge of giving up. 

You’ve done so much work.

You’re so aware of everything that’s happened to you in the past. You’ve recalled old memories and stories about the way people abandoned you, rejected you, or didn’t meet your needs. You can even draw a map from all those events in the past to the behaviors and patterns you’re struggling within yourself and your relationship today. 

That’s how insightful you are. You have an amazing awareness about why you are the way you are today.

This is exactly how I was for the longest time before I processed my trauma through dance and movement. It was the biggest mind f*ck because I KNEW all the reasons why I kept pushing away my amazing partner but I just couldn’t stop.

Having this deep level of awareness can be a blessing but it can also be a curse. It feels like we’re successfully processing our trauma when we’re doing things like reading, reflecting, and journaling, but these approaches can actually block us from the real trauma processing that needs to happen in order to finally move forward.

Movement and dance create new neural pathways that help us move past the old trauma.

When we keep talking about the same old stories in therapy or to our friends, we only create deeper neural pathways that reinforces the trauma in our minds and bodies. The more we talk about the trauma, the more we hang on to it. It’s the opposite of releasing it.

Trauma gets stored in our bodies because our “talking brain” goes offline when we experience trauma. We don’t remember most of the trauma in our minds, but that doesn’t mean it disappears into thin air. Our bodies remember instead. There’s massive amounts of research that shows this to be true.

You can probably already sense that trauma is stored in YOUR body, in one way or another. You might feel tension ALL the time in your shoulders or neck. Or, maybe you feel totally numb and disconnected from your body as a way to avoid feeling any old trauma (which often comes back to haunt us in anxiety attacks, explosive anger, etc).

The only way to fully, deeply access trauma is through the body and gently releasing it through movement, because movement is what helps us move it OUT and change our patterns.

Movement is the quickest way to change unhealthy behavior patterns and create new ones.

Have you spent years talking about how you want to act differently with your partner? Perhaps you’ve even gone to couples counseling and created some SOLID plans together about how you’ll behave differently. 

Maybe the plan is to stay calm and present the next time you get into an argument. Or to speak up when something about the relationship is bothering you. But when the moment comes, all of that goes out the window and your nervous system & body hijacks you again. You react before you can even think. You shut down even though you intended to stand your ground.

That’s because it was your MIND that planned on doing these things differently, but it’s your physical body that’s doing the same old behavior because it doesn’t know how to do it differently. 

Movement is action. Movement is behavior. So many experts preach that you need to change your thoughts to change your behavior. But you are here because you’ve already tried that and it hasn’t worked. If you want to finally experience a lasting change and stop reacting based on the past, you need to change your physical behavior through your body and movement.

Stop talking about it! Words are not enough for trauma processing. 

There is no amount of talking that can release body-stored trauma. We need to connect to the body through movement to break out of the trauma-prison that’s blocking you from being more open, free, and able to give & receive healthy love.

If telling the same old trauma story was enough to fully release it, wouldn’t it have already been gone after the 10th, 20th or even 77th time? Talking about it may have even helped you make some amazing intellectual connections between your childhood and why you’re sabotaging your relationship now (I know it did for me!). But even after THAT, if you’re still stuck, then you already know it’s not enough.

You already know you have to do this a totally different way. Bottom up, baby! (bottom up = body first, mind second).

You deserve to find peace in your body & let love in without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.

By Orit Krug  |  June 19th, 2020

Dance therapy releases trauma from the nervous system by helping you to reconnect to your body again after numbing and dissociating, perhaps for a long time.

When your nervous system is triggered and responds automatically to past traumatic experiences, it does so usually in one of four ways: fight, flight, freeze, or shut down.

If you find that this is happening more and more often in your romantic relationships, then it’s a strong indication that it may be time to release trauma from your nervous system.

How dance therapy can help with releasing trauma from the nervous system

Trauma memories are stored in our body as fragments of sensations and emotions; therefore, moving our body in new ways often stirs up this past trauma. Working with a Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist, who’s trained in healing trauma, will help you gently and safely connect to your body again without getting hijacked by these old memories.

As a Dance/Movement Therapist myself, I am trained to see my clients’ micro-movements and attune to their micro-body signals that tell me they may be having a fear response, as we’re moving in session together. However, instead of their nervous system hijacking their bodies physical & emotional responses, I help them regulate and remain present in their bodies and our therapeutic relationship.

This means that although they may feel the fear arise, their system won’t react in fight, flight, freeze, or shut down mode. They begin to stay connected within themselves and all their relationships, and they become in command over how their bodies respond to fear and stress.

Releasing trauma by rewiring your nervous system

The movements that you might experience through a trauma-informed and neuroscience-backed Dance Therapy program allow you to rewire your nervous system right there in the present moment of each session. This happens by expanding your window of tolerance around what currently triggers you and what feels scary to you. 

The more you can feel the fear come up in your body and move through the fear, instead of reacting in survival mode, the less scary your triggers feel and the more you can stay present and connected in your romantic relationships and beyond.

In your relationship this looks like truly hearing your partner when they speak, listening without reacting defensively, speaking up instead of running out on a conflict, and wholeheartedly letting your partner’s love flow in.

Dance Therapy through play and creativity

What sets Dance Therapy apart from other therapeutic modalities are the elements of play and creative movements. These systematic and organic movement processes allow you to PHYSICALLY become a healthier, happier version of you. It’s no longer a theory that you think or talk about to your friends or therapist. It becomes real in your body, where you feel incredible shifts instead of just imagining them. Your change becomes embodied.

Plus, when you engage in play or creative movement in a healthy therapeutic relationship, you can be guided to bring your nervous system to a Sympathetic State or Mobilization state without fear (the sympathetic / mobilization state is also known as the “Fight/Flight” state).

The more you have healthy, fear-less experiences in movement and play in Dance Therapy, the quicker you can teach your body that you CAN be in an activated nervous system state without fighting or running away. As you can see in the infographic above, this means you would be able to play, have sex, be sensual, speak up, and follow through on many more healthy patterns without sabotaging or escaping your relationship.

With a trauma-informed Dance/Movement Therapist, you can also allow your body to become comfortable with gentle, minimal movements that can help you cuddle, rest, make loving eye contact, and lay calmly with your partner without fear (shown in the bottom right section of the infographic above).

In sum, the movement and play that is unique to Dance Therapy can help you become deeply comfortable and satisfied with intimacy instead of running away from it.

You deserve to find peace in your body & live freely without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.

By Orit Krug  |  May 19th, 2020

You’re ready to learn how to move through the fear of intimacy so you can enjoy a loving, intimate relationship with your partner instead of pushing them away.

Before we get into the how, let’s talk about why you have this fear of intimacy. Being emotionally, physically, and sexually intimate with our partners requires us to be highly vulnerable. We have to let our guard down to allow ourselves to get THAT close with another person.

Take sex, for example. You are literally naked, fully exposed, and touching skin to skin as you look deep into each other’s eyes. That’s a pretty damn vulnerable thing to do with another human being.

When you’re holding onto past trauma that ended in hurt or abandonment, your body doesn’t believe it’s safe to experience intimacy. Your nervous system does whatever it takes to prevent you from getting hurt again, even if your trauma happened over 10 years ago.

Your body automatically assumes that any level of intimacy will play out exactly like the times your father rejected you when you asked for love. Or how your ex started out being sweet but ended up being emotionally abusive out of nowhere.

The first step is believing in your BODY that it’s safe to move through the fear of intimacy with your partner.

“My partner is amazing, supportive and loving. They’re NOTHING like the ones who used to hurt me in the past!” You try to tell yourself over and over again in your mind.

But your body calls bullshit on your mind, because you’re not storing the trauma in your mind. It’s trapped in your body and nervous system.

In those moments of intimacy where you get really, really close (or you’re about to), red signals go off and your nervous system instinctually pushes your partner away by reacting in fight, flight, freeze or shutdown.

That’s the old story getting triggered from deeeep inside your survival system that makes you believe that intimacy is NOT safe. There’s no amount of talking that can shift this because you can’t out-talk your hardwiring that keeps you alive and protected yourself from pain.

Dance/movement therapy releases body-stored trauma that’s currently fueling your fear of intimacy.

It’s not enough to talk to a counselor or repeat affirmations to try to release your fear of intimacy. People spend decades talking about how they want to let their guard down but stay stuck in the same negative behaviors anyway.

When you work with a dance/movement therapist, you work with an expert to help you reconnect safely to your body, so you can access your trauma and release it for good.

As you start to gently connect to your body, you inevitably stir up old trauma that’s been stored in there for ages. This causes you to feel the very same fear that comes up in moments of intimacy with your partner.

Right now, you’re wired to protect yourself against this fear by reacting in a survival response, but a dance therapist will help you safely feel this fear in your body WITHOUT it hijacking your entire system and going into overprotection mode.

Then, you learn how to get in command of your feelings and actions because you know how to literally move your body through the fear.

This is the exact tolerance your body and nervous system need when you’re about to have sex with your partner. As you’re getting closer to each other, you start to feel this fear stir up. Instead of freaking out, you’re like, “Okay, this feels a little bit scary, but I can tolerate it. I feel this fear in my body and I can move through it.”

Rewiring your nervous system from fear to love only works in a therapeutic relationship.

Yoga classes aren’t the same. DIY courses on your computer in the dark won’t cut it.

The reason why dance/movement therapy works to heal your trauma is because you’re doing the work IN a safe relationship with a professional. When your old trauma gets stirred up in the moment, we support you to do exactly what you need in order to NOT react in the same old ways.

You’re not gonna get that personalized healing on a yoga mat amongst 12 other students. Actually, our yoga-loving clients have repeatedly said that dance therapy brought them a whole new level of deep healing that they never could’ve experienced even in a private class.

In dance therapy, we help you regulate and stay present & connected within OUR relationship so that you can do the same in your romantic relationship.

This teaches your body and system to stay connected, close, and intimate EVEN when you feel fear coming up. And as you rewire from fear to love & connection, that fear doesn’t even exist anymore. You just feel excited and alive again in your body and in your relationship.

Dance and movement brings on a whole new level of transformation.

Breaking old patterns is difficult and sometimes impossible when you’re repeatedly telling a counselor how you want to change. All the new ways you want to behave in your relationship can be achieved with much more ease and grace through dance and movement.

Whether you want to open up, flow in connection with your partner, be spontaneous, or become free in your relationship, you can practice ALL of that in movement first.

Picture it right now: how would your body move differently if you were more open and in flow? More spontaneous? More open?

We can literally feel a taste of this shift as we envision ourselves doing these movements. Imagine the relief you’d feel once your body gets comfortable being more free, open, and loose. Imagine how easy it would be to let it in your partner’s intimacy!

Right now you’re tensing up and closing off against your partner at the first sign of intimacy. That’s all your body has known since your trauma. You don’t know yet how to act differently. But you totally can.

Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:

• Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
• Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
• An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.

Click here to sign up now!

By Orit Krug  |  July 24th, 2023

Being addicted to your trauma can simply look like “I hit rock bottom many times only to realize that I was addicted to hitting rock bottom”

Let me share a story with you about being addicted to your trauma:

I had this huge epiphany when I started dating my husband Aaron. I tried to push him away from day 1. I tested him a lot and I didn’t trust him to stick around. I was unhappy with his habits and his friends and I tried to control everything.

Luckily, Aaron knew how to deal with my craziness at the time. He set really strong boundaries with me. He continued to show me how much he cared for me, but he was also like, “I’m not playing your games.”

That really hurt, because I was so used to being the victim and I had this desperate need to be pitied and met in my misery.

I tried so many times to get him to meet me there but he didn’t budge.

I had a life-changing realization that I was addicted to my own misery and trauma.

It suddenly all made sense. My parents never believed me when I repeatedly told them that my brothers were abusing me. They minimized it without realizing that it was a DAILY part of my world that was painful and scary.

I learned that I was the only one who would be there for me. I internalized that no one cared or felt bad for my pain, so I had to do it myself.

That’s where my addiction to my trauma began and continued to play out for the next 20-something years.

My addiction prevented me from getting help and eventually led to my biggest heartbreak.

Aaron and I are married now and have an amazing partnership, but we broke up about a year into our relationship. All my crazy from the first 12 months led him to a breaking point.

While I’d started talk therapy a few years before we got together, I didn’t feel a real shift in releasing my trauma until I finally broke my patterns of self-misery.

As much as I told myself that I wanted to have a great relationship and be happy, my body didn’t believe it was safe. On a primal level, I just was too scared that if I didn’t pity myself, I’d be left in the wild and eaten alive.

Our nervous systems are hardwired to stay addicted to trauma.

While it was my responsibility to take ownership of my sabotaging behaviors and change them, it was NOT my fault.

After you’ve experienced trauma in past relationships, your nervous system becomes extremely sensitive to signs of danger in your relationships TODAY. This creates an uncontrollable impulse to KEEP looking for threats in your partner, sabotage your relationship and maintain a level of hypervigilance that keeps you alive because according to your primal body, releasing your trauma would be FATAL.

It’s no wonder why releasing trauma SEEMS so damn difficult.

Yet, breaking your addiction to trauma is the ONE thing required of you to heal it, and it is the one thing that most people don’t do because their nervous systems believe that it’s too scary.

Once I realized I was in a loop of self-misery, I started investing my own money into dance therapy for myself as a client. Before that, I had my parents pay for my therapy or I just claimed that I couldn’t afford it at all.

Money is the biggest reason why we stay addicted to trauma.

One of the reasons I shared my crazy dating story with you is because I want to discourage you from ever trying to resolve your traumas within your romantic relationship.

I was lucky that Aaron gave me another chance but you may not be as lucky.

The only way that you can break your own cycle of trauma in relationships is THROUGH a relationship with a qualified therapist who knows how to release your trauma in a safe way. Your partner, sister, and best friend do not qualify.

You have to invest time and money to heal your trauma. So many people avoid this and impulsively say, “I can’t afford it.” Yet I just finished working with a single, unemployed mom with 3 children who invested thousands of dollars to change her life with me.

It’s easy to give your power away to money because it’s an easy way out from doing the REAL work that needs to happen to heal your trauma.

It’s easy to blame it on the husband who “won’t let you” spend the money (why is HE in charge of how you spend your shared money, even if he earns more?)

It’s NOT your fault though. Your nervous system and primal body crave safety and comfort. Doing the work feels like a threat.

Breaking your addiction to trauma is actually really simple and doesn’t have to be so hard.

First, you must recognize that blaming money and your partner for not healing mirrors your past trauma where you were trapped in a terrible situation and couldn’t get out because someone else took your power.

When you can’t afford getting help, you’re ALSO stuck in a crappy situation that can’t be resolved.

Acknowledge that this is a story from past trauma and then let it go.

Next, reclaim your power and have a calm, productive conversation with your partner asserting your need to invest in external support.

Then, you only need ONE small active step each day to break the trauma cycle and take your power back. I recommend putting aside just $1 per day into an account reserved ONLY for your trauma healing.

Even if you are financially limited, this plan is powerful and it works. It proves to your body that you DO believe that it’s completely possible to heal your trauma and create the lasting loving relationships you SO deserve.

Get on the right path to healing trauma from your body and nervous system.

Many people spend decades and thousands of dollars in traditional therapies trying to heal their trauma. Unfortunately, even the most popular therapies are scientifically shown to be limited in accessing trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body.

Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal from the physical body or the nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for so many people. They often blame themselves for being “un-healable” and decide that they’re broken.

This is NOT true!

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing from the past, because we all have wiring and neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection, to love and openness.

My unique, scientific-backed process via Dance Therapy has helped hundreds of clients finally heal from past trauma and transform their relationship (even after decades of trying in other therapies).

You can heal too, but you need the right methodology.

Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:

• Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
• Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
• An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.

Click here now to sign up!

By Orit Krug  |  April 16th, 2019

If you’ve tried ALL the things to on the journey to healing trauma and you still feel horrible inside, you’ve got to hear this.

It breaks my heart to know how many people feel like they’re a failure or BROKEN because they’ve tried all these things when healing trauma and they still feel like sh*t. Even worse, some just assume they’re damaged goods and they give up completely. They are NONE of that, they just haven’t done the right things:

1. They don’t go deep enough

After spending years and YEARS in different therapies, people still have constant issues with their partner, or they’re still single. They wonder when they’re going to ever get into a healthy relationship and IF that happens, how to not screw it up. Or they’re still really reactive with their kids.

They’re still healing traumand and aren’t yet the person that they’re striving to be.

When you go through so much therapy, and then you still feel sh*tty about yourself. It’s horrible because you’re like, oh, why am I still broken?

All those years and all that work are not for nothing. It may have been a longer journey, but you’re actually just a layer away from really finally freeing yourself of this trauma.

So most therapies out there really help you access and release your trauma at a conscious level and even at a subconscious level. But what they don’t do is help you access it at a NON-VERBAL subconscious level.

So basically, if you go to talk therapy, and your therapist asks you, “so has your relationship with your dad?” All of a sudden, you retrieve a memory of a fight when you were 13 years old and can even recall it word for word.

You’re able to make that subconscious memory into a conscious one because that memory happened on a VERBAL level and it was stored in a verbal level. So you can also retrieve it at a verbal level.

However, there’s this whole deep, NON-VERBAL layer where you store trauma and it just goes right into your body. The only the way you can access it is through your body and through movement.

Your body doesn’t speak in words and you can’t access or start healing trauma by talking.

So you need to access your trauma, release it and change yourself at a level of your PRIMAL responses, nervous system AND your physical being through which you interact with the world.

It’s this deep layer that a lot of people don’t really get to, but the good news is you can still get to it. All that work that you’ve done isn’t a waste. Even though it’s taken longer than if you were to go through that nonverbal subconscious straightaway, you’re still MUCH closer now that you have more awareness.

You just need to go that one layer deeper.

2. They wait WAY too long

Unresolved trauma is like having a cavity that turns into an infected root canal that spreads down to your body and to your heart. If you don’t take care of your trauma, it’ll kill you.

I’m not trying to be morbid, but it’s the hard truth people need to hear because many don’t tend to prioritize their trauma that way. Your trauma is like infection that will spread to different parts of your life and will kill off different parts of your life.

Your relationships die and you lose your job and friends because of this unresolved trauma that gets shoved down deeper and deeper.

Then the original trauma gets piled on with more traumatic experiences, more losses, more breakups more loneliness, and then having three glasses of wine just to get to sleep because you’re wondering when you’re going to find a partner, or you’re wondering why your husband is is lying next to you snoring peacefully, while you’re worried that your relationship is over.

Intensify this by 100x if you experienced trauma from your childhood.

You need to START now no matter what. A lot of people say I don’t have the time or I don’t have the money. I’m pregnant, I have two kids, I’m juggling all these things. It’s just not the right time.

You can’t afford NOT to do it any longer. Your infection is spreading.

I have clients who are in their 30’s and I have clients in their 60’s. The ones who have started when they’re 60 has taken them 3x longer  than the much younger ones.

It’s not their fault and it’s not your fault. But you actually end up spending more time, emotional energy, and money to solve the problem. It’s like now you have to get heart surgery (or whatever, I’m not a doctor!) and spend more money on a bigger operation and more time in recovery. So start NOW!

3. They try to do it on their own

Doing it on your own sets you up to feel like a real failure. When you’re so passionate about healing your trauma, you desperately want to be a better person and you try to do all these self-help books, meditation, yoga, etc.

And you work SO hard just to feel a shift but you don’t end up feeling much different. Doing these things on your own is like putting Disney band aids on your infection. They look fancy, they cover up the ugly wound, but they don’t actually heal it.

You CANNOT rewire your nervous system or build healthy attachments unless you do it IN relationship. So it’s not your fault that doing it on your own isn’t working, it’s actually a huge part of the PROBLEM.

When were infants, we’re all “crazy” yelling, screaming and crying and we CANNOT calm ourselves down. We need a relaxed, regulated parent to teach us how to calm down. We need their their secure, consistently healthy parenting to build healthy attachments with the rest of the world.

If you never got that, or you did but then you were in a marriage for 30 years with an emotionally abusve narcissist, then that all goes out the window. You go into survival mode and your nervous system is in a totally different place.

Expecting yourself to heal your trauma by yourself is like expecting an infant to be left out on the street and still build all the emotional and developmental tools that allow them to grow into a healthy, normal child.

We see this all the time in disrupted kids. They’re unable to calm themselves down, they can’t regulate their emotions and they constantly have tantrums.

Now we have adult tantrums! It’s really crucial that if you want to actually heal your trauma, you do it in a relationship. And that’s NOT your partner – your partner doesn’t need that burden, and it’s not going to work anyway – you need a SAFE relationship.

You need a professional who can help you rewire your nervous system that’ll help you have the best relationships and life.

4. They’ve tried the wrong things and now it feels too hard

There are way too many misleading modalities out there.

Even as a dance therapist, there are a lot of dance healers who run these retreats and say “unleash your inner beast and release EVERYTHING once and for all!” It’s false advertising.

You’re saying that if I go to your retreat for 4 days, then I’ll access everything inside of me and release it all? That’s leaving people in a really vulnerable place. They’re just opening people up RAW. There’s no possible way you can heal your trauma in FOUR days.

To say that they’re going to just feel ALL your pain and release it ALL – that is so UNSAFE.

Now it’s just an open wound.  You’ve taken that band aid off and now you’re going out into the world, so prone to infection and getting worse if you don’t get the ongoing support that you need.

It’s stuff like retreats, meditations, and self-help books that only stirs up trauma and anxiety without real resolution and now it just feels too hard. It’s like you’ve tried ALL the things and NOTHING works. You’ve done the THING that was supposed to open you up and heal you and you just can’t do it again. It’s too scary.

When it feels too hard, you settle on dealing with your pain and suffering because anything’s better than feeling the pain of when you tried to unleash your “inner beast.”

5. They think it’s going to be too much so they avoid it

If your healing has ever felt like too much, then you didn’t work with the right person or you did it on your own (hence, #3).

You need a SAFE container with a professional who can track your micro-movements and micro-body signals that show how your nervous system and primal body are overreacting. That way, they can regulate you and bring you back to your window of tolerance when you’re accessing your trauma.

This NEEDS to happen in the realm of your body and movement. Talking about every detail from every memory you can recall from the past IS painful. And horrible. And not fun.

If you want a sustainable trauma healing, then you need to have a safe place with a safe person who is helping you build that healthy attachment and strong nervous system.

When I see my clients having an ounce of an overreaction, I ask them to pause at the exact right time. I help them become aware of what’s going on and regulate in a way that works for their unique body with the exact movements that THEY need.

As dance/movement therapist, my clients and I co-create an enjoyable, amazing transformational process.

One of the things that I do, that is SO important part for nervous system healing, is PLAY and movement. How fun is that?!

Maybe maybe that sounds silly, but it’s actually proven to strengthen your your nervous system to tone your vagus nerve and help you expand your window of tolerance.

When I help my clients gently, slowly and gradually expand their window of tolerance, they can progressively go into that layer of unresolved trauma without having a panic attack. They don’t feel “too much.”

It’s more like, “Hell yeah! I got this. Look at me, I’ve never gotten to this point, and I feel stronger and more stable than ever.” It’s amazing to witness as their therapist.

Don’t settle for less than somebody who’s going to pay insanely close attention to your physical being, your primal responses, and the way your nervous system is manifesting in your movement.

If you’re really to finally break free of the past in a safe, effective, and powerful way that makes you feel GOOD, that gets through that deeper layer of trauma, without it feeling too threatening…

Get on the right path to healing trauma from your body and nervous system.

Many people spend decades and thousands of dollars in traditional therapies trying to heal their trauma. Unfortunately, even the most popular therapies are scientifically shown to be limited in accessing trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body.

Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal from the physical body or the nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for so many people. They often blame themselves for being “un-healable” and decide that they’re broken.

This is NOT true!

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing from the past, because we all have wiring and neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection, to love and openness.

My unique, scientific-backed process via Dance Therapy has helped hundreds of clients finally heal from past trauma and transform their relationship (even after decades of trying in other therapies).

You can heal too, but you need the right methodology.

Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:

• Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
• Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
• An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.

Click here now to sign up!

By Orit Krug  |  November 22nd, 2018

Dance movement therapy heals trauma in magical ways.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you were just prancing around and dancing everywhere and you didn’t have a care in the world?

Or fast forward to 20 years later, and you were out in the club, maybe a little bit intoxicated, dancing with your peeps and you were having the best time in the world, just freely expressing yourself? Totally uninhibited and totally feeling into YOU.

If you’ve answered yes to these questions, then you already know how amazing it feels it out. So let’s talk about why dance is the perfect way for you to access your past trauma and HEAL it.

First of all, trauma is stored in the body. When we experience trauma, our higher brain that uses and processes verbal language goes offline.

So we can’t actually remember most of our trauma in thoughts and words. When we can’t remember, it doesn’t mean that the trauma isn’t there or that it didn’t happen. We’re just storing the majority of the memory in our bodies.

Access the trauma through your body and release it through dance and movement.

You may have heard of somatic therapy that can help unpack the trauma, but dance/movement therapy is unique in the way that we heal trauma through movement in the therapeutic relationship.

There’s playfulness and spontaneity in the way you connect to your therapist through movement. This helps your nervous system regulate and stay calm even in times of stress or remembering a traumatic event. This doesn’t mean that you shut down a feeling that comes up. With dance therapy, you get the opportunity to  MOVE through the FEAR and signal to your body that you CAN stay present and engaged even when old triggers come up.

Create new neural pathways through movement and dance.

You can break old, stubborn unhealthy patterns as you try on new behaviors and expressions in your body through movement. This happens in a way that talking often cannot achieve. Learning new behaviors through your physical body is more effective than repeating to a talk therapist how you want to theoretically change.

Even if your mind’s intention to change is strong, your body will keep doing the same old thing until it knows HOW to change.

The body is our vehicle for all actions, behaviors, and literal movements. For example, if you want to be more open with your partner, but your physical body is closed – your body will win and the behavior will not change.

As you create change on a whole-body level, you create change in your brain. New neural pathways are formed by repeating new, healthier behaviors. Eventually, your new behaviors become so embedded in your wiring that you don’t even have to think about how to open up to your partner. It just happens naturally and easily.

Dance movement therapy is way more fun than talking about the past!

Are you tired of telling the same old stories about your past? I don’t blame you. It’s heavy, it’s not fun, and it gets tiring when you gain cognitive awareness but don’t see REAL changes in your patterns.

Just because you suffered through your trauma doesn’t mean you have to suffer through your healing. Stop putting off fun and joy because you haven’t healed yet! You can have fun AND heal at the same time. Your nervous system will thank you for this.

If your body and soul are getting excited just at the thought of healing through this unique way, then why not try dance therapy to heal your trauma?

Dance movement therapy heals trauma quickly and effectively without negative patterns repeating in your life and relationships.

If you’re tired of talking about what happened to you, and you’d like to finally heal through an enjoyable process, then it’s important that you first prepare your body & nervous system for this transformation.

Sign up for my online course (ranges from free to $20 USD) to begin a unique, body-based learning experience that will teach you:

• Science-backed education about how trauma is stored in your body and nervous system. You’ll gain an understanding why it has NOT been your fault you haven’t healed yet from past trauma.
• Gentle, guided body-based movement that is necessary for integrated healing. This is crucial if you want your mind’s intentions to match your body’s behaviors in relationships.
• An embodied approach to healing that has helped hundreds of clients break unhealthy relationship patterns and let in healthy, lasting love.

Click here to sign up now!