Restoring the Body: Bessel van der Kolk on Treating Trauma with Yoga, EMDR, and Healing Therapies (52 mins)

Thanks Chris for sharing this!!...Changing the paradigm and perspective about cultural norms is sometimes difficult...history is often my best teacher if I am willing to sit quietly and ask myself.."What is it that I don't know"...and then have the patience to wait for an answer...however long it takes....

Note what he says 26 mins in:

van der Kolk: "We (westerners) are much more disembodied. And the way I like to say it is that we basically come from a post-alcoholic culture. People whose origins are in Northern Europe had only one way of treating distress; that's namely with a bottle of alcohol. And North American culture continues to continue that that notion if you feel bad just take a swig or take a pill and the notion that you can do things to change the harmony inside of yourself is just not something that we teach in schools, in our culture, in our churches, in our religious practices. And, of course, if you look at the religions around the world they always start with dancing, moving, singing,...[these] physical experiences and then the more respectable people become, the more stiff they become somehow."

I was so happy to hear someone say this! It's so true.