In tracing through Marius' story we can identify elements essential to healing the effects of trauma. When Marius first begins to tell his story, he becomes riveted on his bloodied,
torn pants and his father's rejection. At that moment, this single fixed image holds the meaning of the entire incident. The condensation of an entire event into a single image is characteristic of trauma. From this event, Marius was left feeling defeated, bitterly hurt, and rejected. During the session, when he feels the emotions that he has attached to the image of his bloody torn pants without trying to analyze or control them, he begins to experience a change in those feelings. Rather than defeat, hurt and rejection, his fur pants become a catalyst for grounding that inspires opposing feelings. In the image of the gift from his mother is the feeling of wanting to jump up and down with joy.
Marius, through contact with his felt sense, was able to find a rough gem in the midst of his pain and hurt. Rather than plunging into his pain, he took that jewel and began to complete, as an adult, his childhood "Walkabout" into manhood and individuation. As hi®3 joyfully receives the gift of the pants, he is able to begin to differentiate excitement from
anxiety. In uncoupling the excitement and joy of living from fear, another important step is taken in waking the tiger.
In the next sequence, Marius is able to expand and deepen this excitement. By feeling the pants with his hands and feeling his legs inside the pants, Marius is beginning to establish a deep resource through the felt sense. It is through this connection with our felt sense that we are guided on our individual paths towards transformation.
In love we are swept off our feet; in trauma our legs are knocked out from under us. By re-establishing a connection with his legs as he identified with the hunters in the village, Marius became grounded in his own body and with his social world. Regaining our ground is an important step in healing trauma.
By seeing himself walking in the mountains and jumping on the rocks, Marius developed a felt sense of strength and resiliency. This resiliency is the literal springiness in our legs. It is also the resilience, metaphorically, that helps us to rebound from trauma and to move through it.
Next, as Marius tracks the imagined bear and prepares to make the kill, he mobilizes the aggression that he lost when he was overwhelmed as a child. The restoration of aggression is another key feature in healing the effects of trauma. In regaining it, Marius is empowered to take the final steps in resolving this trauma. With this newly discovered aggression, Marius transforms the complex emotion of anxiety to joy and triumphant mastery. In his imagined spearing of the bear, he makes the active response that will ensure his victory; he is no longer the vanquished child. In being able, step by step, to exchange an active, aggressive response for one of being helpless and frozen, Marius renegotiates his trauma.
At this point in the renegotiation, we see the establishment of an active escape (running) response in addition to an aggressive counter-attack response. In experiencing himself
climbing the telephone pole and looking around, Marius finishes the renegotiation by completing the orienting response. This act allows him to uncouple additional fear frort?4 the excitement of being fully alive.
Renegotiation helps to restore those resources that were diminished in the wake of trauma. The overall strategy of renegotiation is as follows: the first step is to develop a facility with the felt sense. Once this is developed, we can surrender to the currents of our feelings, which include trembling and other spontaneous discharges of energy. We can use the felt sense to uncouple the maladaptive attachment between excitement and fear. Because excitement is charged and we want to maintain that charge as free and distinct from anxiety, we must also be able to ground it. Resilient strength is the opposite of helplessness. The tree is made strong and resilient by its grounded root system. These roots take nourishment from the ground and grow strong. Grounding also allows the tree to be resilient so that it can yield to the winds of change and not be uprooted. Springiness is the facility to ground and "unground" in a rhythmical way. This buoyancy is a dynamic form of grounding. Aggressiveness is the biological ability to be vigorous and energetic, especially when using instinct and force. In the immobility (traumatized) state, these assertive energies are inaccessible. The restoration of healthy aggression is an essential part in the recovery from trauma. Empowerment is the acceptance of personal authority. It derives from the capacity to choose the direction and execution of one's own energies. Mastery is the possession of skillful techniques in dealing successfully with threat. Orientation is the process of ascertaining one's position relative to both circumstance and environment. In these ways the residue of trauma is renegotiated.
Because every injury exists within life and life is constantly renewing itself, within every injury is the seed of healing and renewal. At the moment our skin is cut or punctured by a foreign object, a magnificent and precise series of biochemical events is orchestrated through evolutionary wisdom. The body has been designed to renew itself through continuous self-correction. These same principles also apply to the healing of psyche, spirit, and soul.