Enjoy this months guest blogger, Brian Mahan, my long time friend and fellow traveler. You can learn more about his life’s work at www.briandmahan.com.
Comedy and Trauma
As fate would have it, I find myself sitting in a beautiful cabin in Summer Haven, Arizona, overlooking mountains spotted with new growth of Ponderosa Pines, amidst the skeletons of what must have been, at one time, a lush forest, prior to the decimation of fire. It makes me ponder (pardon the pun) about the cycle of life and nature’s capacity to heal itself. It reminds me that, “All the king’s horses, And all the king’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty [Dumpty] together again,” but I guess they didn’t know about Dr. Peter Levine’s technique, Somatic Experiencing, to re-negotiate developmental and shock traumas. Had they known, there surely would have been a Phoenix rising out of that broken shell.
I recall hanging upside down, as the shell of my badly broken car filled full of smoke. I patiently waited for the the next impact and the sound of crumpling metal that would certainly precipitate the untimely departure from my Earthly body.
Just moments before, my car had been tumbling across the freeway and I was fully surrendered to dying. I have never been so calm and present, nor so fully oriented to my environment, as I was during that surreal, slow-motion, almost mystical event. My thoughts were so lucid. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there wasn’t any way that I would survive. And, I was relieved. I was finally going to ‘graduate’ the school-of-life and I thought to myself, “Why did I ever quit smoking?!”
But then that voice came back and said, “You need to turn the ignition off NOW.” Oh, no! How could that be? I’m going to live?! Panic started to overcome me when I couldn’t get the key to turn. The voice returned one last time, “It’s in Drive,” it said in a tone as if to imply, “You #@%$^&! idiot!” So, I put the car into Park, turned the key, and, like a Phoenix, crawled out the back passenger window. I had survived after all - and relatively unscathed at that.
A few days later, the panic attacks would start and I would begin to question my sanity and rage and lament. To add insult to injury, not only had I survived, but all of the old wounds, patterns, habits, and core beliefs that I thought I had healed in the 80’s (by attending every workshop, reading every book, sitting at the feet of every Guru and through the countless hours spent in prayer, meditation and yoga) returned in full force. I was still HERE, plagued not only by several full-blown panic attacks a day, but also by having to carry the weight of all of my old familiar baggage in my own unwieldy U-Haul.
Needless to say, the future looked pretty bleak. How could I ever expect to put all the pieces back together again? And, I wrestled with the notion that if I had survived, then there had to be some reason, some purpose.
I sat in my Chiropractor’s office one day and explained to her that it felt like all the good parts of me got to leave and all the bad parts of me stayed behind. And I was pissed. It was almost as if some negative force or ‘entity’ had glommed onto me during the wreck. So, logically, for as crazy as it seemed, I asked Dr. Connie if she could refer me to an exorcist. She laughed and said, “Perhaps you need a trauma specialist.” So she gave me the name and number of a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and after three sessions my panic attacks stopped, entirely. The healing was profound, fast and far reaching; I immediately began the three year training program.
Unfortunately, my dog was also in the car with me and she didn’t fair as well as I did. She, too, survived but was never the same. Oddly, she went deaf that night and completely detached from me, rarely letting me near her, obviously weary of the man who took her on that hellish ride. Sadly, Aspen never stopped trembling the last few years of her life. If only there had been a way for me to translate the work that I now do with humans…
For nearly 25 years, Brian Mahan has helped countless people from all walks of life. He has studied 9 techniques of massage, teaches Fijian massage, teaches meditation, and holds workshops and residential retreats focusing on re-awakening embodiment through healing stress and trauma. After completing a three-year training program studying Somatic Experiencing, the work of Dr. Peter Levine, Brian’s passion for healing and personal transformation has shifted to working with developmental and shock traumas.
