By Orit Krug  |  Oct 21st, 2022

You finally found a therapist to heal your past trauma, but is the therapy causing more problems with your partner today?

Talk therapy is the most popular form of therapy, yet it is this exact therapy that’s causing problems in many relationships.

You’ve been in talk therapy for years because you still have trauma from your past that blocks your ability to let in your amazing partner’s love today.

You know you’ve got to work on your issues to save your relationship, but talking about it hasn’t made you feel any better. You might even feel worse than when you started therapy.

Talking about your trauma brings up old wounds without releasing them.

At first, it felt good to be able to put words to what happened to you because no one ever validated your trauma as a child or even as an adult. Those initial aha-moments with your talk therapist brought some relief, like “I’m not messed up! I experienced trauma.”

What usually happens next is that most people return to talk therapy sessions week after week… after week. They end up talking about essentially the same things that they already addressed in the first few sessions of therapy, so they make little to no progress.

This isn’t their fault. This is the nature of talk therapy.

When you repeatedly talk about your trauma, you stir up the old memories that are stored in your body without actually releasing them. 

For instance, when you rehash the details of the time your father became violently aggressive with your mom, you get closely in touch with that memory. Even though you’re not physically back there, you might start feeling your heart racing faster as if it’s about to happen all over again. 

Your body reacts with physiological responses to prepare you to fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown to survive and cope in the same exact way you did with the original traumatic event.

At this point, you might even be able to talk about your past without feeling much emotion, but don’t let your mind fool you. Your trauma still gets stirred up subconsciously if you’ve only ever talked about it and have never released it from your body.

For trauma survivors, talk therapy often worsens anxiety, depression, and negative relationship patterns.

Have you often left your therapy sessions feeling more anxious or depressed for days? Do you flip out on your partner after you come home from a talk session?

Here’s why – you’ve stirred up all this emotional charge from the past and your body responds in 1 of 3 ways:

1. Depression: your body pushes all these old emotions and memories back down into your body, creating the heaviness and numbness that is common with depression.
   
2. Anxiety: your body buzzes with the old feelings that have just been brought back to the surface, but you have no idea how to release them. This is the uncomfortable charge and energy which we identify as anxiety.
3. Negative relationship patterns: your nervous system is so desperate to find release that you end up yelling at your partner or your kids, driving a deeper wedge between you and them. It feels like relief for a minute, but you end up regretting it because they didn’t deserve it. This may lead back to pushing it down again and further depression.

You may have also experienced these effects after other therapeutic modalities beyond talk therapy, such as EMDR, energy healings, hypnotherapy, and anything else that gets you in touch with the old trauma without successfully rewiring your nervous system and releasing it.

If you’re able to connect your past trauma to all the ways you’re sabotaging your relationship today, then you’re ready for a change.

You already know everything you need to know in your mind. Talking about it further won’t create a shift until your nervous system and body release the old trauma, so you can follow through with the new, healthier behaviors that your mind wants you to do.

You can spend another 5-10 years in couples counseling talking about how you want to stay calm during an argument, or you can actually create a change by connecting to your body to release the trauma from your nervous system. 

When you successfully release the trauma from your BODY, you can rewire the charge that’s currently hijacking your body into a survival response at the first sign of conflict with your partner. You can choose to respond with calmness, openness, and assertiveness instead.

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 in a way that truly lasts, 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 to sign up now!

By Orit Krug  |  March 7th, 2022

Dance Therapy for relationship issues works faster, deeper and better than any traditional therapy.

Dance Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that gets straight to the root of your relationship issues by accessing and releasing trauma stored in the body.

You don’t actually need to know how to dance. There’s no requirement to move your body in any certain way.

A skilled Dance Therapist will help you to safely and gently reconnect to your body. Then, your body will guide you to move through your trauma in whatever way it needs to.

Dance Therapy helps you access the part of your brain and body where trauma is stored, which traditional therapy & talking doesn’t allow you to do.

In traditional therapy, you will spend YEARS talking about the different ways you want to feel and behave. With Dance Therapy, you get to move your body to feel alive, confident, free, and joyful.

You also learn new behaviors through movement that almost instantly shift the way you interact in your relationships.

That’s because behavior begins with the body and movement. Your body is the vehicle for which you act and interact with everyone around you.

So you can spend thousands of dollars and hours talking about how to communicate more calmly, or feel secure in your relationship. But if your body doesn’t know how that feels, or is too scared to let down its guard, those things will never happen.

The truth about your relationship issues.

Most relationship issues stem from unresolved past trauma, so you need to heal the underlying trauma to heal your relationship issues.

If you have anxiety about your partner not being good enough for you, that stems from trauma of being emotionally neglected or unmet.

If you have a persistent fear that your partner is TOO good for you that they’ll leave you, that stems from trauma of abandonment.

If you’re often irritable and flip out on your partner, that’s your overactive fight response, indicating a dysfunctional nervous system due to old trauma.

See the pattern here?

We COULD talk about all the labels: attachment styles, diagnoses, and all the new age terms that are ever more popular on social media. But it all boils down to having unresolved trauma.

In fact, if you often find yourself going down a rabbit hole of research about your own “labels,” please stop. It usually just makes you more stuck in your head, and you really need to be connected to your body in order to heal.

How Dance Therapy heals your nervous system.

Dance Therapy is by far the most well-rounded and effective therapy for relationship issues AND trauma.

Once you begin to safely move your body with a Dance Therapist, you’ll access non-verbal trauma memories. Trauma memories are stored as fragments of sensation inside your body, like taste, smell, touch, etc.

For instance, you may smell a certain cologne and immediately have a traumatic flashback or trigger. It’s the same smell your body remembers from your abuser. More simply put: your abuser wore the same cologne.

Now, when you move your body in Dance Therapy, it inevitably stirs up sensations in your body that you’ve been working so hard to not feel by numbing, disconnecting, and escaping.

When you connect to these sensations in session, your Dance Therapist helps you feel them and access memories without dissociating. You’ll get the experience of staying connected to your body and the therapeutic relationship, even when fear comes up in your body.

This is CRUCIAL, because your relationship issues make you disconnect or push away your partner whenever you feel triggered or an uncomfortable emotion.

Dance Therapy heals your triggers and allows you to move through them, while staying in connection with yourself and your therapist.

This process is called rewiring your nervous system. Being able to stay calm and regulated through conflict and fear creates new neural pathways that allow you to tolerate and navigate difficult interactions in your relationship.

Dance Therapy is the fastest way to create new and healthier relationship patterns.

Trauma is stored in BOTH your nervous system AND physical body.

There are plenty of alternative therapies that serve to rewire your nervous system, like EMDR and Somatic Experiencing. But NONE of them engage your body through movement to release trauma stored in your physical body!

We see so many clients who’ve been successful in reacting less impulsively in their relationships, but still repeat the same old behaviors. This means their nervous system is less reactive, but their body is still stuck in the same movements.

For example, let’s say you have a pattern of becoming silent and freezing up through conflict. After rewiring your nervous system, your nervous system no longer reacts in a freeze response. You’re able to be more present and connected to your partner.

However, you still remain quiet. You don’t speak up and you often find yourself dwelling on the things you should have said.

Why? Because your physical body is SO used to freezing up and it continues to do what it automatically has always done. Your body still gets tense, small, and frozen, prohibiting you from really speaking your truth and getting your needs met.

With Dance Therapy, you learn how to allow your body to safely open up, take up more space, and be seen.

Please don’t mistake this for other forms of dance-based hobbies: this isn’t the same as dancing in your room, Ecstatic Dance, etc.

This is THERAPY. When dealing with trauma, you must release trauma from your physical body within a safe space. There’s a reason why your body is stuck in old patterns. It doesn’t feel safe to change them!

Dance Therapists are highly skilled in seeing your micro body movements and body language that allows us to safely guide you to learn new behaviors in a non-threatening and LASTING way.

Is Dance Therapy right for you and your relationship issues?

There are a few key questions to ask yourself before working with a Dance Therapist.

1. Is the Dance Therapist highly experienced in rewiring the nervous system and releasing trauma from the body?

Not all Dance Therapists are trained equally.

My client Julia came to me last year because she was struggling with a lot of heaviness and hurt from unresolved childhood abuse. It affected her marriage and every aspect of her daily life.

She’d actually been working with a local dance therapist for several years already, and she was still SO stuck. She had told me that dance therapy exacerbated her freeze response since she would literally freeze through the movement.

It was clear that her dance therapist tried to help Julia heal her trauma without realizing that Julia was missing the necessary foundation of trust and safety in her body.

Even though her local dance therapist was–in her words–way cheaper, Julia spent more money
on “cheap” local dance therapy for YEARS than in my online Let Love In program for 3 MONTHS, where her life & marriage completely transformed.

Please, don’t just find the cheapest therapist for your trauma. That’s like finding the cheapest surgeon for heart surgery. Pretty risky.

2. How much do you already understand about your own patterns and past trauma?

One of the reasons my program works so quickly for clients is because they already have a deep intellectual understanding of their past trauma & current relationship issues.

Yes, I mentioned earlier in this post that talking about your issues won’t heal your trauma. That’s still true! But you still need to have some level of cognitive understanding of your “stuff” so that you can integrate this awareness with the incredible shift you’ll feel in your body through Dance Therapy.

This is such an important prerequisite for my Let Love In program that I don’t accept any applications from people who said that they’ve never been to any type of therapy before. You need some kind of foundation of understanding for Dance Therapy to help you quickly & deeply!

3. Do you believe in yourself and your ability to heal, no matter how long you’ve been trying to?

You can work with the BEST Dance Therapist in the world and have ALL the cognitive
understanding about your relationship issues, but if you don’t believe in yourself, it won’t work.

If you’re constantly doubting yourself, second-guessing the entire process, and trying to figure everything out through the incessant thoughts in your head, it won’t work.

You’d just be repeating the same patterns you’re wanting to heal: deep insecurity and keeping up your guard.

It’s okay and totally normal if there’s a part of you that’s worried or skeptical if you can heal, but there’s got to be a much stronger part of you that deeply believes that it is POSSIBLE for you.

Learn more about how Dance Therapy can heal relationship issues.

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 to sign up now!

By Orit Krug  |  February 15th, 2022

Are you struggling with the most common relationship problems? Or are you and your partner simply incompatible?

You may feel an urge to call it quits with your partner if you’re having problems. Old trauma can make us want to escape anything that feels remotely uncomfortable or confrontational.

Before you make any rash decisions that you may regret later, let’s talk about the most common relationship issues and why its completely normal to have them.

Now, I’m not going to say “Communication, Sex, and Money” are the most common problems. I think most of us already know that these are the areas where couples struggle the most. But these issues are superficial.

Instead, let’s get right to the core of these problems. Because, let’s face it, you’ve already done plenty of talking about it, and you probably just want to resolve the REAL underlying issues already.

The most common relationship problems have a much deeper root cause.

Many couples spend years and thousands of dollars on couples therapy without ever accessing or resolving the root cause of their relationship issues.

They often talk in circles revolving around the same topic, and continue to get stuck in the same or similar spot where they began.

This doesn’t mean they’re broken or incompatible. Traditional couples therapy just doesn’t have the ability to access what’s buried deep within each partner’s subconscious bodies, where the root of the issues lie.

So, here are the 3 most common relationship problems:

1. One or more partners has unresolved trauma

Unresolved trauma inevitably brings a whole slew of issues in relationships. Fear of abandonment, rejection, and intimacy will keep you disconnected from your partner in order to protect yourself from getting hurt like you did in the past.

Yes, many people say communication, sex/intimacy, and money are the most common relationship problems, but those are surface level areas. Underneath these issues is an inability and unsafety to trust yourself or your partner to be vulnerable enough to really let them IN.

Unresolved trauma is the most persistent and relentless relationship problem. It hijacks your nervous system and body to react in the exact opposite ways you wish you didn’t.

Even when your mind intends to speak up more, or even after you discuss in couples therapy a more effective way to communicate, your body always wins because trauma is trapped inside. Old trauma makes everything seem scary and dangerous, even when you logically know it’s not.

2. Different preferences for wanting space or connection

I see couples reveal this pattern all the time in my Deeper Love couples program. One partner wants space, while the other partner tries to get closer and requests more attention.

Whether it’s due to trauma or lack of modeling from our own parents, most couples have no idea how to navigate their different needs for space. Plus, old trauma can make you take it WAY more personally and react impulsively than what’s necessary.

Either way, it can feel really hurtful when we deeply want more connection with our partners while they need space. A lot of couples see this as a black and white situation: “She wants space, so I’m going to leave,” or “He never wants to talk after work. Does he even love me anymore?”

It’s 100% normal and common to want space from each other. I’ve worked with couples who actually thrive better when they regularly have more space from each other. There’s a healthy way to honor each of your needs for space and connection, without pushing each other away.

Having space doesn’t necessarily mean that you regularly spend 12 hours apart in different rooms. You can have space within the same room. You can have different levels of space sitting right next to each other.

Most couples don’t know this because they don’t understand their individual needs. They think, “I’m so overwhelmed, I just don’t want to talk right now!” In reality, they may be too burnt out to talk, but they still crave physical connection. This leaves both partners frustrated and unmet.

In a recent couples session, it took literally 1 minute for my clients Claire & Michael to come back to harmony after 2 weeks of disconnection. When they tried to talk (in circles) about their disconnection at the beginning of the session, I gently stopped them.

“Have this conversation in movement,” I said. “Show each other what you need through your body.” I added.

Claire rested her head on Michael’s shoulder and Michael held her there. No joke: In literally 1 minute, they both got what they needed. Claire had thought she needed space and disconnection, but what she really needed was to be held by Michael, which fulfilled Michael’s need to connect more to Claire after she had been distant.

If you can’t figure out your own needs, you’ll likely resort to unnecessary extremes of pushing away or asking for more than you know your partner can handle at a given moment. This is actually the root of this root problem! Being too disconnected from your body to truly understand what you need.

3. Non-verbal aggression

This is the sneakiest relationship problem that so many couples don’t even realize is happening. I was JUST recently guilty of this myself!

Just last week, I was going through a difficult period in my relationship where my partner seemed to be generally more frustrated and angry towards me. I was getting VERY tired of it and more sensitive each time he spoke with a more aggressive or bothered tone.

I didn’t understand. I wanted him to just be nicer to me! Why couldn’t he be? I was being nice, kind, and loving to HIM!

Or so I thought.

I didn’t realize it, but I had quite a bit of resentment building towards him regarding parenting stuff (we are new parents to a 17 month-old). I thought I was being nice and not aggressive to him. I honestly believed that he was being an a**hole to me for no good reason.

Finally, I realized: I was holding all this resentment, frustration, and anger towards him. He was simply mirroring it back to me, unconsciously.

Whaaaat?!

I wasn’t able to see this consciously until my body and movement revealed to me that this was the truth (you can read about how exactly that happened right here).

It doesn’t mean that his frustration was my fault. Or that I deserved for him to mirror back my own aggression. Or that it even started with me. But once I realized this, I finally admitted to him my resentment. Then, we came up with a way to navigate the reasons behind it.

Just a week later, today, our emotional and sexual connection is so much stronger than it’s been in months! It’s like we’ve pressed a reset button and now communicate more compassionately & passionately with each other.

3 healthy ways to navigate common relationship problems.

Whether you’ve identified with 1 or more of the most common relationship problems above, you may be wondering how to shift them. Here are 3 ways:

1. Heal past trauma

This is an obvious one if your relationship problems stem from your past trauma. Ironically, though, many trauma survivors get stuck in looping confusion about, “Is it my old trauma messing this up, or is the relationship?”

If you struggle with the same confusion, read this blog post here.

Here are some (but not all) strong indications that your past trauma is a primary contributor to your relationship problems:

a. You often regret the way you react or behave in a moment of frustration or anger
b. You often feel abandoned or rejected even when you logically know that you’re overreacting
c. Your emotions often feel intense and erratic
d. You constantly overthink the way you or your partner says or does something.

If you resonate with one or more of these signs, then it’s a good idea to heal your trauma if you want to successfully have a loving, lasting relationship.

If you’ve already been making an effort to heal your trauma through talk therapy, online courses, or certain alternative therapies like EMDR, it is not enough.

These approaches may help you gain more awareness about your trauma and how it’s impacted you, but they are not actually designed to release the trauma from your body.

Trauma is stored in your non-verbal body and brain, so unless you’re engaging in a body AND movement based approach to therapy, it will remain stuck inside.

To get on the right path of healing trauma from your body, you must first build a safe connection with your body to prepare for release.

You can start building this foundation by remembering to make gentle physical contact with yourself at least once a day. Try to hold your own hand, run your fingers through your hair, or caress your arm. It doesn’t have to take long. You can do this a few times a day for just 10 seconds each time.

2. Non-verbal communication

I’m constantly stunned by how many people spend so much time talking about how to communicate better, without ever changing the way they move and hold themselves in their bodies.

Even if you practice scripts with nice words and use a gentle tone, you still may be communicating with underlying aggression that pushes away your partner.

Your body is the vehicle from which you communicate and behave; thus, your body’s MOVEMENT reveals the true expression of how you interact in your relationship.

You cannot change unhealthy behavior patterns and communication simply by talking about them. You have to engage your body through movement.

For instance, if you want to communicate more gently instead of aggressively, you can practice moving your body in a way that is both FIRM and SOFT. Once you can embody both of those qualities together in your body, it’s easy to be assertive without overpowering your partner.

If you want to be able to speak up and voice your needs, then your body has to learn that it is safe to take up space and be seen. If you’re only doing online courses where you’re hiding behind the screen, your nervous system and body will still be scared when it’s time to confront your partner.

Whatever behavior or communication pattern you want to change, ask yourself first, “How would I hold myself and move in my body differently if I communicated this way?” Ask your BODY first and then allow movement to emerge, so you can try on this version of yourself.

You might notice that, through embodying this healthier version of you, your movements slowed down, or you became more connected to yourself. These are characteristics you can begin to incorporate into your everyday life now! You can intentionally move slower through the day, and physically connect more to yourself through self-touch and movement.

3. Do your individual work

In order to have a lasting, healthy relationship, you must have a solid sense of yourself first. If you don’t know or understand yourself, then you won’t be able to separate your emotions from your partner’s. This is why you may get really upset whenever your partner is upset, even when it has nothing to do with you.

You also won’t know how to communicate your needs until you understand them. After years of therapy and self-work, you may be disappointed with how confusing your needs are. One minute, you think you need alone time; the next minute, you’re mad that your partner isn’t cuddling with you.

What gives?

The majority of people try to figure out their needs by thinking or talking about them. The truth is, your needs are first born in your body through sensations. Most people don’t feel this because they’re at least partially disconnected or numbed from their bodies.

When you’re hungry, it usually begins with a growling sensation in your stomach.

When you’re sad, it usually begins with a heaviness through your entire body.

When you’re excited, you probably notice an energetic buzz traveling through your body.

Why continue to think or talk about your needs when they don’t even begin or reside in the verbal brain? It’s pointless!

Instead, begin to develop a strong connection with your body and feel your ever-evolving needs from the moment a new sensation comes up.

You can start this practice by taking a breath, pausing, and noticing what sensations are present in your body at that moment. The more consistently you do this, the easier and more natural it will become. You’ll be able to pinpoint when new needs come up and how to ask for them to be met.

Start healing your fear of abandonment to heal your relationship issues

If your fear of abandonment is intruding on every potential enjoyable moment with your partner, then it’s crucial to start healing it.

Even if your fear of abandonment is only one of several issues contributing to your relationship problems, it is the most important place to start.

Even if you’ve already spent so much time talking about or researching ways to heal your abandonment issues, it usually doesn’t work because you must release the abandonment wounds from your body.

Here is a powerful movement meditation, where I will safely guide you to identify how abandonment wounds still live in your body, and what you need to do next to release them.

This meditation will help you work through abandonment wounds in 8 minutes more effectively than years of talking about it in therapy usually does.

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  |  September 24th, 2021

You’re finally with a healthy, loving partner, so why do you still have a fear of rejection in relationships?

Your fear of rejection in relationships might be confusing the heck out of you. Part of you that knows how amazing your partner treats you. But there’s a much LOUDER part that points out all the ways your partner could hurt you.

If this is happening for you, then this is a strong sign that you’re storing trauma in your body from past relationships.

Even though your mind knows that your partner is committed to you and loves you, your body feels all this anxiety and fear about getting heartbroken. 

Your mind may even obsess over every single word your partner says, or the subtle way they squinted their eyes when they said it. 

Hours later, deep into your circle of thoughts, you find your shoulders all the way up to your ears. This fear creates so much tension in your body.

This isn’t your fault. This is how old unresolved trauma impacts our ability to enjoy life and love.

Trauma fuels your fear of rejection in relationships, even when there’s no real threat.

This is NOT a reflection of your character and it does NOT mean you are damaged goods.

Old trauma stored in the body creates irrational fear in the nervous system and brain. 

Even if your trauma happened over 20 years ago, the threat of the past repeating today feels SO intense. Almost as if it’s happening all over again (time itself does not heal trauma).

Read: How long does it take to heal from trauma?

You’ve gotten majorly hurt in past relationships. Thus, you hold the belief in your body that ALL relationships end in hurt. Even when there’s clear, practical evidence that you’re safe and supported with your current partner.

You may repeat affirmations that you are safe or worthy of love, but the part of your mind that says these words cannot access the part of your brain & body where your trauma is stored.

Talking about your fear of rejection in relationships will not heal the trauma that’s fueling it.

We cannot possibly heal trauma through talking, journaling, or affirmations. These exercises speak ONLY to the higher-functioning part of the brain, or your prefrontal cortex.

Yet, your trauma is stored in your NON-VERBAL primal brain, which does not understand verbal language. 

It’s like speaking French to someone who only understands English. 

You can hear all the words in the world, like “I am worthy of love!” or “I am safe with my partner!” But the part of your brain and body that’s storing trauma will not be able to comprehend it.

You have to speak your non-verbal brain & body’s language to begin to process and heal trauma. And the language of the body is MOVEMENT.

Break free from your fear of rejection by healing your trauma through movement.

My client Shay was so afraid of rejection (and intimacy) that her body would literally freeze up whenever she spoke to a new love interest.

Because the “freeze” response is an ancient nervous system response, we knew that her trauma was being triggered just by LOOKING at someone she was interested in potentially dating.

Through working together in my dance therapy-based program, Let Love In, she was able to rewire her nervous system to stop freezing at the slightest chance of intimacy.

We practiced this directly through our therapeutic relationship. One thing we did was literally move closer together and further away. When we moved closer, she felt her anxiety rise and an immediate urge to completely disconnect from me and her body.

Slowly and gradually, I helped her use specific movements that helped her stay regulated in her nervous system and stay connected to me even through the fear she felt in her body. 

Eventually, she was able to be fully present and calm when we got closer to each other. This was an essential breakthrough in her trauma healing because this experience directly translated to her external relationships in her world. Instead of being intensely afraid of rejection, she was finally able to invite more intimacy and love in her life. This was the transformation she had wanted for so long, but her body wouldn’t allow it until doing this work together!

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  |  September 10th, 2021

Are you in the wrong relationship or is unresolved trauma tricking your brain?

Do you constantly switch between wondering if you’re in the wrong relationship, and then being totally head-over-heels for your partner? If so, you probably have old trauma still stored in your body. 

One day you’re in love with your partner and fully believe you’ll be together forever.

The next day, you’re overcome with anxiety and thoughts like, “I don’t think I can do this anymore” while planning your secret escape.

This isn’t because you’re in an unhealthy or toxic relationship. In fact, when you objectively think about your relationship, you know it’s the healthiest, most amazing partnership you’ve ever been in.

But, too often, you flip like a switch. If your partner isn’t texting you enough, you no longer feel like your relationship is stable.

If your partner is quiet, you immediately assume that they no longer want to be with you. That’s when you start to create your exit plan so you can leave them FIRST.

This isn’t a reflection of your character. This is TRAUMA controlling your ability to feel calm and safe in a healthy relationship. 

To cope, your mind makes up stories that you’re in the wrong relationship. Because that’s safer than totally letting your guard down and letting yourself be fully loved.

Should you trust the voices that say you’re in the wrong relationship?

Whether it’s the voices in your own head, or your friends (aka, unqualified “therapists”), you may want to pause before you believe them.

My client Corrie used to have thoughts of leaving her husband every single day. She had been through decades of talk therapy and alternative approaches trying to resolve this.

She consistently came home from work and flipped out at her husband and daughter. Her baselines was snappy and frustrated. And she blamed this on the relationship.

She felt intense urges to run away, which was her Flight response hijacking her body and emotions. The threat of being in her relationship felt so real, like stumbling upon a bear in the wild. She truly felt she needed to escape. Fast.

While she spent all those years feeling like damaged goods, she didn’t realize how much her nervous system controlled & intensified her fear of being in her marriage.

But once we helped her release her trauma through her BODY, she said all of her relationship doubts & anxiety dissipated. She finally felt calm and rooted, not only in her relationship, but inside her skin as well.

Corrie went from thinking she was in the wrong relationship DAILY to becoming so much closer with her husband and daughter. 

For the first time, she enjoyed her life with them and even felt excited about their future together.

If Corrie trusted those voices in her head, and followed primal urges in her body to leave, she would’ve broken apart her family. All based on false beliefs due to old trauma making her feel that NO relationship is safe.

How do you know if it’s trauma tricking you into believing you’re in the wrong relationship?

There are several ways you can tell this is old trauma running the show:

1. You have a strong track record of Relationship Anxiety, where you constantly fear that your partner isn’t right for you. No matter how many relationships you leave, you always feel the same doubts & fears in the next one.
2. Your partner is emotionally stable, but you cycle between being high & in love with your partner to low & hopeless about your future together.
3. The tiniest “signs” set you off. For example, your partner’s tone was “slightly different” when answering your question about where they went after work. Or, they didn’t answer their phone at the grocery store because it was on “Do Not Disturb.”
4. There has been absolutely NO evidence that your partner is disloyal or doesn’t love you, but you cannot trust them no matter what they say or do.

Once you experience trauma, your nervous system becomes wired to look for danger signs even when there are none. That’s because its #1 mission is to keep you from getting hurt like you did in the past. 

It’s like an animal in the wild who senses every vibration and smell to make sure they won’t get eaten alive by a predator.

You sense your partner’s TINIEST mistakes or things they said “wrong” as the biggest betrayals. When in reality, there is no perfect relationship and you are each bound to mess up every now and then.

Even if there are TRULY questionable things that your partner has done, you won’t know for sure if you’re in the wrong relationship until you heal your trauma. 

Unresolved trauma creates so much confusion because you’re wired to automatically react to protect your life, even when you rationally know that you are safe. 

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  |  August 27th, 2021

Let’s talk about what to do when past trauma is affecting your relationship with your partner today.

It’s the worst feeling when you’re finally with the healthiest, most loving partner, but past trauma is affecting your relationship. 

You may be sabotaging your connection or constantly worried that they’re going to leave at any moment. If you’re at all the way I was, you can’t stop imagining that they’ll turn into a monster like your abusers were to you.

It’s ironic. Your fear of abandonment and rejection is actually making you abandon and reject your partner.

When you’re constantly absorbed in your fears and thoughts of “what-if,” you’re not present in your relationship for your partner.

You’re either stuck in the past or constantly worrying about what might happen in the future. This makes you emotionally absent and neglect your partner. The very same thing you’re afraid of them doing to you.

Recognize that your fear of being hurt is making you hurt your partner.

If past trauma is affecting your relationship by rejecting your partner’s acts of love (because you don’t believe it), questioning your ability to trust them, and creating stories about how they’re going to hurt you… then you’re hurting them in almost the same way you fear them hurting you. 

My client Lavinia used to constantly reject her husband’s acts of love and intimacy. She pushed him away when he wanted to be physically closer and she dissociated during sexual intimacy.

Deep down she wanted to feel unconditionally loved and wanted, but her fear of intimacy and abandonment made her communicate to her husband that she didn’t want him (which is not actually the case).

When your fear of abandonment or intimacy is making you reject your partner, then past trauma is affecting your relationship because you cannot let in the love that’s right in front of you. Yet, all you want to do is FEEL and be loved.

Release the trauma through your body to free yourself of self-sabotaging fears.

When you experience trauma, you store those memories in your body and nervous system. 

This rewires your brain and nervous system to be on constant high alert and make a whole lot of problems out of nothing.

It makes you hypervigilant to see the tiniest things as huge red flags or warning signs that your partner is going to hurt you.

Because all of this is occurring in your BODY and primal nervous system, you cannot talk yourself into behaving a different way. You cannot repeat affirmations or journal about it, and expect it to be resolved.

This is also because the higher-functioning part of your brain, that uses verbal language and cognitive planning, goes offline during trauma and any time you get triggered.

Hence, you did not store the majority of your trauma in words, so you cannot access those memories in words. Which means you also cannot use words or conscious thought to release trauma.

In order to release body-stored trauma, you must access the memories through the body. You must speak the language of the body, which is movement.

Through a specialized process where you connect to your body through movement, you CAN heal your trauma and rewire your nervous system for healthy, lasting love.

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  |  August 3rd, 2021

Let’s talk about why you keep looking for what’s wrong in your relationship.

It’s not like you’re ALWAYS looking for what’s wrong in your relationship, right? 

One day you’re totally in love with your partner, thinking how perfect they are for you, and how you’re going to be together forever.

Then the next day, you’re plagued with thoughts like, “I don’t know if this is going to work out” as you point out all the things that they’re not doing right.

Maybe they didn’t text you exactly when you wanted them to. 

Or they didn’t say, “I love you” FIRST in 4 days (not that you’re counting, right?)

This dramatic rollercoaster is a strong indication that you have old trauma unresolved in your body.

Old trauma makes you question anything that is potentially hurtful to you.

By nature, relationships are potentially hurtful. Sharing your heart with a partner is an emotional risk. Even in a healthy, stable relationship. 

With old trauma trapped in your body, the tiniest risks can feel like death threats. 

You know in your mind that it’s not a huge deal your partner didn’t text you back on time. You may even come up with a practical explanation. Maybe they got stuck at work or lost service on the train.

But your body isn’t rational. In the 20 minutes that you didn’t hear from them, you experience so much anxiety, it feels like your life is in danger.

This is your old trauma hijacking your body, your emotions, and the way that you relate to your partner.

That’s because your nervous system is now wired to look for all the danger signs that something is wrong in your relationship. Even when they’re not REAL danger signs.

You’re not consciously looking for what’s wrong in the relationship. Your survival system impulsively reacts at the first sign of “danger” which makes you feel unsafe to stay in your relationship.

Your nervous system operates under the belief that love is not safe.

You keep looking for what’s wrong in your relationship because it protects you from getting hurt like you did in the past.

Whether you experienced trauma in childhood, a romantic relationship, or both, you learned that it is NOT safe to give or receive love.

Even in a healthy relationship today, your survival system still picks out the tiniest pieces of “evidence” that you will not be safe with your partner.

This is also known as hypervigilance. Like an animal in the wild looking for any sign of a predator. They must pay extremely close attention to any noise, vibration, or shadow that indicates they could get eaten alive.

Now, we are civilized humans, but we are also animals who evolved from living this exact way in the wild. 

When your partner forgets to pick up your favorite bag of chips at the supermarket, or looks at you a certain way that feels “off”… it feels like your relationship is no longer a safe place to be.

It’s usually one little thing that sets you off. Suddenly, it feels like you’re not going to survive your relationship. As if you’re going to be eaten in the wild.

This is NOT your fault or a reflection of your character. You cannot change the wiring of your nervous system with “positive thoughts” or affirmations. You can’t just decide that you’re going to stop looking for what’s wrong in your relationship.

You must rewire your nervous system in order to break the unhealthy pattern of looking for “signs” that your partner will hurt you.

Rewire your nervous system to feel safe, happy, and excited in your relationship.

My client Corrie used to spend hours in her head thinking about leaving her marriage.

She fantasized about running away and how things would be better if she wasn’t with her partner.

Once we began to release old trauma from her body, her brain understood the difference between her current reality and past trauma (her husband is not a monster from her past).

After she completed my Let Love In program, I asked her what changed in her marriage.

She said…“I see him again.”

“Instead of the scary version I painted of him, I can see him and all the expressions of love and devotion that he does every day.” 

Before the program, she had only focused on his flaws and the ways in which he could hurt her. 

But once she rewired her nervous system and took off her trauma-tinted glasses, she was hopeful and excited about their relationship.

Her entire world transformed. Actually to a point where her entire family needed to get used to this new, evolved version of Corrie.

The Corrie who wouldn’t come home and flip out immediately. It took some time to believe that her new baseline is calm, present, and affectionate. 

Corrie had spent YEARS in therapy trying to work this out without success and sadly almost gave up on her relationship that she’s now so happy to be in. 

You have the ability to experience this transformation too.

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!