both hands

These past weeks I've been extra busy. I've set a goal for myself of reinstating my social work license with the state by mid-August (when we are going to see some very special people in a very beautiful place). In order to become a licensed social worker again, I needed to collect 40 credit hours of continuing education. It's been a crash course in all kinds of engaging areas of practice, a time of reacquainting myself with the profession and an old identity that had slipped onto the back burner while mothering my dear ones took center stage. The hope is to begin doing more clinical work with vulnerable populations in the fall, hopefully maintaining some modicum of the relatively flexible part-time work life I now enjoy. I recognize having it all isn't feasible. But I think having some good things some of the time and other good things at other times is a reasonable aspiration.

Yesterday I did an all-day training on trauma that included an excellent primer on how traumatic events affect the brain and can over time -- in cases of traumatic stress disorders -- impact brain structures in such a way that affects concentration, mood, and everything else you can imagine on which how well we can function, be in relationships, and live a good life depends.

Therapists can help "dislodge" the trauma that is repeatedly harming a person through something called bilateral processing. The idea is that through engaging both sides of the body while remembering a traumatic event, the information that has been stored in one area (unlike everyday information and memory that is stored throughout the brain) can be integrated into both hemispheres of the brain and thereby lose its close connection to the "limbic brain," which includes the parts associated with the fight or flight response (panic, stress, fear, anger). The idea is that eventually, through bilateral processing, the traumatic memory is separated from the flood of feelings initially experienced and made manageable.

Well. I am not sure if I got all that perfectly right. I'm sure some of you could explain this better! The takeaway is that engaging both sides of the body helps the brain to deal with terribly difficult stuff. It also helps the brain to deal with mildly difficult stuff - hence the excellent clarity and lightness of spirit we can feel after a good long walk, or the mood boost an intense twenty minutes on the elliptical machine can give me. It's interesting, right?

Here's what's even more interesting. I've been noticing that children do this bilateral processing thing all the time. They are constantly being asked to learn new skills, meet new people, figure out tacit sets of rules in different social settings, and process new information and ideas. And they are constantly in motion! I think of my children telling me a story from their day while flipping over the couch, pacing the room, and attempting headstands. It's hard to follow the story, but it is clearly all for a good reason. If you look around, you'll see that expressly bilateral movement is favored by kids. Think monkey bars, running, double dutch, bicycle riding.

Frances asked me last night if I knew any clapping games. The time has arrived! In camp she's been learning to chant and clap or chant and jump rope and some of the chants are the same as - or at least derived from - the ones I knew on the playground so many years ago. We sat on the edge of the bathtub while Gabriel splashed and she taught me. The clapping was the kind where your right hands meet, then you clap in the center, then your left hands meet.

When you get going, that singular experience of flow takes over. Our hands were flying and our eyes were locked, Cinderella-dressed-in-yellow, and as soon as we noticed that our hands were moving without our express intention we'd lose the rhythm and laugh and start all over. It was delightful, and brought back a forgotten experience of childhood so very vividly.

Nothing like a good bout of bilateral processing with your kiddo to make you feel really great: mind, body, and soul.