One of our biggest challenges right now, says trauma expert and Somatic Experiencing Developer Peter Levine, is to realize that physical isolation doesn’t automatically mean emotional disconnection. We still have choices that enable us to distinguish between the pandemic outside and the panic-demic we can create within ourselves.
In this clip from his 2020 Virtual Networker Symposium presentation, he explains what it means to stay connected and courageous during troubling times.
“Courage is not about the absence of fear, but the capacity to act creatively in the presence of fear,” Levine writes in his recent Networker article. “Right now, some of the best ways to access our capacity for courage are doing things like listening to music, preparing meals together with the people we’re living with, moving and dancing with our inner rhythms, and finding ways to connect with others, even if the medium of that connection is virtual.”
Peter Levine
Dr. Peter Levine holds doctorates in both medical biophysics and psychology. He is the developer of Somatic Experiencing® (SE), a naturalistic body-awareness approach to healing trauma, which he teaches all over the globe. Dr. Levine is also the founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment and was a stress consultant for NASA during the development of the space shuttle. An accomplished author, Dr. Levine penned Healing Trauma, Sexual Healing and the bestselling book, Waking the Tiger. He also co-authored with Maggie Kline Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes and Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. His latest book, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, is a testament to his lifelong investigation into the connection between evolutionary biology, neuroscience, animal behavior, and more than 40 years of clinical experience in the healing of trauma.
