Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
MDMA and Vibratory Medicine
Geral T. Blanchard • Dec 30, 2021
What treatment is most effective in facing and overcoming trauma? Most of them!
More precisely, if a person, and better yet a community of people, believe in a purported trauma remedy, it will likely work.
Just like we used to believe wholeheartedly in SSRIs and SSNIs for depression and trauma, and later came to rely on EMDR and tapping, they all can and may still facilitate some change. But often reasons for their efficacy remain unclear or unproven. This despite the desire of psychologists to ensconce encouraging trends in unproven neurological theories rather than longstanding and well understood psychological phenomenon.
So what is it about EMDR and tapping, for example, makes them so popular? For starters, they can work, whether because of collective societal beliefs (placebo) or yet to be understood science. Allen, et al, in EMDR: A Closer Look explain that in what is called the desensitization stage of trauma recovery, patients are asked to focus partial attention on a bilateral rhythmic stimulation: a light bar, moving fingers, alternating tapping on the body, or alternating tones in stereo earphones. What is essential to its success is the dual activity, or the distraction when psychological trauma is being addressed. Divided attention, or distraction, much like watching virtual reality games during surgery without anesthesia, research reveals, can dramatically reduce fear and pain. Engaging in most any competing task while experiencing or upon recalling previous painful events can dramatically reduce associated discomfort.
So why is this? It all relates back to how animal minds and bodies evolved. All animals, including humans, have the innate capacity to dissociate (note I didn’t say disassociate, which is quite different) during scary or painful times. I have witnessed impalas doing it during lion attacks, when even a close call resulted in the impala collapsing as if dead, but only dissociating in what some call fear paralysis. Once the danger has passed, the impala gets up, “unthaws,” shakes and bucks vigorously, and then resumes life seemingly unscathed, all in minutes. They complete the trauma cycle rather than bury it or freeze it in the psyche and body.
Humans have similar trauma reactions as our animal relatives. We may “go away” or “punch out” during overwhelmingly scary and painful times. This can eliminate recall of the trauma. Sometimes, however, we only go away to a degree, what is referred to as
partial dissociation. When danger is passed we may have some residual conscious and some repressed memories that can result in post-traumatic stress or even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Fear impairs attention and full encoding of experiences; that’s a good thing. So while a person is fighting for their life, they may only be partially present for the trauma and experiencing
dual activities or
divided attention.
The innate abilities that helped us survive as a species today get repackaged by psychotherapists in new and somewhat different forms that are intended to distract us from a full, flooding recall of the trauma.
Doctors call this titration, in other words, a little bit of recall at a time is released until we get used to discussing the trauma and eventually integrating most of it into a new and positive life story of resolute perseverance and growth, what some of us now call post-traumatic growth (PTG).
So every decade or two Western medicine invents a new drug or a new technique that is designed to treat the sequelae (aftermath) of trauma – what is regarded as the “next best thing.” But what remains to be said about ancient evidence-based approaches? Zulu and Bushman tribes have long relied on vibrational energy, like Kundalini, to dislodge stuck energy from the body, which includes the brain.
A colleague, David Cumes, M.D., who is both a Western trained surgeon at Stanford, and a Zulu trained sangoma (shaman), has noted how shaking, dancing, and even convulsive waves going up the back and spine to the shoulder’s neck and head can release trauma’s hold on people. In one of his books, The Source, David wrote about the importance of blending one’s belief system (potential placebo) with Zulu inspired shaking, to commence the healing process.
In his latest book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing after Trauma, James Gordon, M.D., devotes an entire chapter to “Shaking and Dancing,” African sangoma/nyanga remedies. He sees perturbation -- the intentional disturbance of physical and chemical systems -- as a key to bringing to the surface, expressing, and then releasing buried feelings. He invites his patients to begin each day with vigorous movements, accompanied by music and drumming, to bring vibratory medicine from the feet, to the knees, the hips, and upward. For some people who have rarely, or never cried, this can unleash a torrent of healing tears.
Laughter, animal contact, community support, probiotics, amino acids, and yoga (particularly trauma sensitive yoga) to start, and eventually building up to vigorous movement and chaotic breathing, all can play a small part in dissolving related chronic physical and mental patterns, including those not arising from traumas. Vibration can be generated in many ways. And vibration can reset the body to healthier and lighter energy levels.
MDMA rituals and ceremonies, particularly when indigenously inspired, have repeatedly allowed individuals to relive and then integrate traumatic events with surprising ease. What seems to bring the trauma to the forefront of the mind just before commencing the medicinal treatment is the vibratory release of pent up energy. This can be done by singing, dancing, and vigorous shaking. Shake things up and then relax into healing. This will allow the medicine to better assist you in counseling yourself with greater empathy, compassion, and love in your heart.
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“Think of something that makes your heart glad that can bring you back to equanimity. The dark forces are most helpless in the face of love and laughter.”
- David Cumes, M.D. in The Source
“Ecstatic trembling and shaking are the natural expressions of a spirited body. They indicate a process of heightened arousal that contributes to the body’s way of bringing forth self-corrective healing, well-being, and transformation.”
- Bradford Keeney, Ph.D., anthropologist and expert of Bushman healing
“Indigenous wisdom knows that ‘to live is to move.’ To awaken from our deep slumber means our bones will be rattled, and we’ll be shaken to the core.”
- Malidoma Some’, author of
Healing Wisdom of Africa
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Additional Reading:
Shaking Medicine by Bradford Keeney, Ph.D.
Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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In recent years psychotherapists have become increasingly aware of the risk of transmitting trauma intergenerationally. By examining the impact of the Holocaust, or the experiences of Native Americans who were systematically abused by colonizers including the Catholic Church, it becomes obvious that indirect passage of depression, despair, anxiety, and damaged self-regard are but a few of the ancestral legacies of uninterrupted abuse. If, however, trauma can be passed from generation to generation without direct experience, could it also be possible for the reverse to happen?
Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
There are many emotional reactions to a drug-free spiritual awakening experience and a ceremonial MDMA journey. While this article focuses on empathy – both the feeling and the cognitive component – it is obvious to those who have awakened from a spiritual emergency that a variety of related emotions arise.
It is one thing to imagine how another person feels. Psychopaths, despite what the general public believes, are very good at empathy on an intellectual level. Even criminal psychopaths can put themselves in another person’s position and understand their perspective. It is bigger, better, and far healthier when empathy, in its deepest sense, allows us to “feel with” other people by recognizing a sense of oneness with them, what’s called unity consciousness. To hurt others would be to hurt ourselves.
It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
First, a definition of projection: This is evident when an individual attributes their own unacceptable impulses onto others. For example, a person might accuse others of engaging in thievery when, in fact, they are swindling money from their employer. Some of the behaviors and thoughts we are most ashamed of could be called shadows. We can see them first in other people before we can “call them out” in ourselves. We are defending against humiliation and mortification lest we be exposed.
Does this empathogen work in a similar manner as psychedelics, blasting us off to a sudden and dramatic awakening of the mind and soul? Not necessarily. Much like massive stress, psychedelics and MDMA can knock people off an unhealthy path and offer them an entirely different trajectory, but there is a lot of arduous individual work that must follow the use of these propellants.
So, could it be concluded that MDMA is a transcendent spiritual event -- a chemical event, or perhaps a neurological experience? By themselves, both seem unlikely. They can change activity in the brain, but enlightenment comes from hard work before and after their use. Entheogens and empathogens likely have a catalytic but not a primary casual effect in awakening.
Many events in life can change us, some in profound ways, others somewhat superficially. Some positively, some negatively. Some temporarily, some permanently. Let’s break it down.
With the “help” of psychology and the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD, an entire trauma industry has developed. Much help has been delivered and, unfortunately, in many instances the assigned labels stick like glue and there can be difficulty relinquishing the newly imposed identity of “breakage.”
Many life events are transformative:
Many great minds have come out of India. Like countless spelling bee champions, Mahatma Gandhi, and Aurobindo Ghose who later took on the name of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo became a highly regarded spiritual teacher and author in the twentieth century. His main insight was that what many humans experience during altered or higher states of consciousness are glimpses of the future of evolution. And, he contended, one day these states of expansion will be normal for the whole human race.
Countless numbers of people are seeking the unity consciousness that MDMA can offer. It can make them feel bigger. And more deeply connected and powerful. Like many billions of tiny ants inching a fourteen-wheeler up a hill, every tiny bit of effort pulls the big rig along. Similarly, each one of the eight billion or so people residing on our planet today may, via a combined assemblage of singular efforts, raise their individual consciousness, while tugging the entire race forward.
“Where did all the time go?” That is the ubiquitous question every patient asks after a treatment. They ingest the medicine at 9 a.m. and, after what seems like perhaps an hour or so but was actually five or six, and once the eye mask comes off there is bewilderment as to just how much time has passed. Of course, this is all built on the bedrock notion in Western culture that time is a straight line and linear manifestation. And that there is such a thing as time! Stepping out of existing paradigms, even if for a brief “time” can be eye opening while your eyes are closed.
Traditional Native American cultures have long believed that time is a circular phenomenon. Remotely like the movie Groundhog Day suggests, every day is very similar and reoccurring like the last. In indigenous worldviews, the sun rises and the sun sets, routinely; we always have a predictable reset of sorts, the start of what we call a “new day,” or what Arapahos called “sleeps,” both reflecting measurements of time.
Dark nights of the soul as Saint John of the Cross called those long, despairing periods of our life, are never easy, in fact they are usually dreadful. They are so necessarily awful and so damn long because some of us don’t do subtlety very well. If we are open to these moments, even a tiny bit, they can serve as an internally calculated and blaring wakeup call that will guide us to solace.
John Nelson, in Healing the Split, refers to a fleeting or ephemeral sense of a higher purpose, not fully conceptualized, but compellingly near the heart. It holds answers to life’s pain but isn’t quite within our grasp…at least until the dark clouds engulf us. Then, with great staying power and inexperience matched with trust, a spiritual emergence nears surface awareness. And it always happens, as psychiatrist Stan Groff defined it, around the time of a blurry spiritual emergency.