Journey to Rwanda - Page 7


Because the translation process gets overwhelming in a large group, we break into smaller groups to do case demonstrations. We invite the participants to play the role of a client or work with material from their own lives. Many of our Rwandan participants choose to play their clients, which seems to give them a needed sense of personal privacy and helps insure that they'll learn how to apply TRM to their challenging cases.

One counselor describes the sensation of having a machete slash on the crown of her head that she's experienced since the genocide, even though she was never slashed. In my work with her, I have her sense just the edge of the sensation of the slash and alternate that with sensations in a part of her body that feel more comfortable, or at least neutral. After transfers of focused awareness between the trauma sensation of the slash and the calmer feelings in her chest, she reports that the slash sensations are no longer there.

I didn't need to challenge her feeling that she had a slash on her head or ask why she thought she had one. I merely worked with the sensations as she tracked them in her body. At the end of the work, she described feeling warm on the top of her head and experiencing a trembling in her arms. We consider this type of discharge to be an indication that the blocked traumatic energy is being released. When I checked with her the next day, she said the slash sensations hadn't returned.

Friday

The second day of training is much easier! The participants are more relaxed, and so are we. A counselor starts the day by having everyone stand in a circle. Each person speaks one word that describes how she or he is feeling. Then the next two people go into the center of the circle and act it out. Most of the descriptions are of pain or discomfort, but when two people go into the center to act out the pain of headaches and stomachaches (often signs of trauma), they do so with such exaggerated, melodramatic movements that everyone laughs uproariously.

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