Irene Lyon - 'Nervous System Expert'

[Turgon]

The core of her work is releasing stored trauma and learning how to properly self-regulate and live in the here and now. Peter Levine is one of the original pioneers of somatic experiencing, which is a relatively new field that was further expanded by Healing Developmental Trauma and the NARM model that went into further details about this. That trapped trauma and sensations, whether it's early developmental trauma, shock trauma, stress and even past-life trauma's (which she discusses in some of her videos) that are unresolved, becomes 'stored' in a person's body, cells and organs as survival stress which takes up a lot of bandwidth and that the process of releasing the stored survival and stress responses and energies naturally causes shifts in a person's overall being.

One of the big takeaways from HDT and Peter Levine, is that to do this kind of work, you need a trained therapist who can help guide you through what might come up to the surface. She found that with her clients, they would see these insights, improvements and release of trauma experiences while in session, but when they went back out into the world, the old defensive patterns of shut down and hypervigilance would resurface. They struggled to take what they learned into daily life. So she went about developing courses that combines the work of mainly Peter Levine, Kathy Kain and Moshe Feldenkrais that shows people how to work through stored trauma, release it and integrate and internalize certain practices and principles to develop capacity, resilience and self-regulation, in particular for people who were never taught this 'language' growing up.

This was the first video I came across that piqued my interest and deals with self-sabotage from the perspective of the nervous system and unhealed trauma. But it also gives a broad overview of what her practices are about . There's an emphasis on both education and practical application as being necessary, so I did sign up for one of her courses and have found it's been worth it.

Functional Freeze

In fact, a lot of people are 'shut down' but this doesn't always look like lethargy, 'crashing' and dissociate states, numbness, although that can be the end result of what she coined Functional Freeze. That one adaptive mechanism is you shut down your own awareness to your inner experiences in relation to outside events that are overwhelming and instead run on survival stress to navigate through life. This can be like having one foot on the gas pedal and another on the brake, not reacting to or responding appropriately to situations and events. Being out of touch and disconnected in general. In certain situations this is probably essential and can save your life, but afterwards if there's an inability to feel, process and release the events from your nervous system and psyche, then it taxes the system.

Orienting

This is probably the foundational principle and practice that the rest of this kind of nervous system healing work branches out from. Learning to connect with the environment while also, over time, connecting to felt sensation, breathe and experience. This can act like a bridge between the inner and outer world and encourages more embodiment and awareness.

Capacity

This is talked about more extensively in one of her SBSM course that I'm taking, but once you start coming out of a functional freeze state and developing the awareness of your own physiology and nervous system responses, you start coming into contact with your true capacity, which is often a lot less than previously thought and takes time and release of already stored survival energy before you are able to increase your capacity and resilience. She has used the swimming pool and beach ball analogy. If you were to see your entire system as a swimming pool, trauma events that were never resolved are akin to beach balls that take up space in the pool. The more you release and let go of each ball, the more capacity, flow and order is brought into the system.

There are a number of free resources in the descriptions of the videos linked in this post, and her main body of work is something you do have to pay for, but from my subjective experience so far, this kind of 'Work' came at the right time and knew this was something that I needed to delve more into. In the month's since I've started incorporating her practices - and I'm taking my time and going slowly with it - have noticed progress in several areas of my life. FWIW.

 

[Jones]

Have been listening to some of her video's on my work commute and have found it very interesting and helpful for some of the connections she makes with other materials. She seems to be quite widely read and mentions Gurdjieff, Castaneda and Edgar Cayce, as well as referencing other practices such as working with the osteopathic diaphragms.

She also says that if you take her 21 day nervous system tune up, the cost of that is deducted from her Smart Body, Smart Mind course if you decide to continue with her work.

Thanks for introducing her

 

[Jones]

A helpful video by Lyon talks about the difference between healthy and toxic shame. This discussion is between Lyon and her husband and how they navigated their relationship where she had experienced healthy shame and he toxic shame and in Seth's case, how that impacted his relationship with his son and prevented his son from learning some important life skills early. They show a clip of the reactions of a toddler to the experience of healthy shame (at around the 9 min mark) and talk about how that healthy shame would produce a visceral bodily experience in the future to warn the toddler of a potentially harmful or hurtful situation.

The experience of carrying a load of toxic shame is common in those who suffer from depression and such people can go over responsible for others to prevent the felt experience of toxic shame. This could also be the source of the habit of people pleasing perhaps.

Interestingly enough, the gateway to healing toxic shame is through tapping into feelings of disgust.

 

[karo]

Thank you very much for presenting Irene Lyon. It is very helpful and hopeful I think. Also, from what I gather listening to her, her body of work is mostly about being present in your body and letting all the feelings to be felt when they arise. For me it is "remembering yourself" on steroids, because at the same time you can release your old traumas from the body. Her stories, stories of her students who started doing the work invented by Irene, are very hopeful and empowering. She tells you that you can be your own medicine and also that you need to not fear your fears. Also she is clear about that that world is ugly and bad as well as good, she is not "all roses and unicorn", has very down to earth and body approach which is again, very hopeful. Also she is insisting on getting knowledge first and is teaching people about nervous system and developmental trauma.and all that is needed to know before doing her work. Great person. Personally I am very glad and thankful at the moment that I was able to discover her through this thread, so thank you very much for posting it here, because it was something I needed at the moment. Doing her neurosensory exercises is very calming and also leads to more awareness of oneself and body. Thanks to her voice and approach I am not as fearful as I was towards my body feels of different kind. Thank you again Turgon for bringing it here, I think, her approach can be included in doing The Work as is presented here on the forum.

 

[Turgon]

This recent interview caught my attention because of the language used in the title - Service to Others via nervous system healing. In it, she discusses learning to heal and regulate her nervous system throughout the years allowed her to actually be of service to others when not ruled by automatic responses. It was an interesting discussion. Certain aspects of the discussion that caught my attention were:

• The necessity of being able to regulate through the darkness and more horrific aspects of reality is a necessary part of healing - it can't all be good and positive and acceptance of this is necessary for true regulation
• Learning to regulate one's self via the nervous system can lead to being able to help others to regulate themselves through one's presence and being i.e. not being externally driven by what's happening around you when you have better control of your own internal state, this can have unintended effects on the people around you
• That even with awareness of the 'wrathful faces of god' in our reality - one can reach a state where fears and anxieties of the future can be mitigated and even released so that one isn't bound up by fears of what's going to happen next i.e. non-anticipation
• Contemplation of death and our own mortality becomes 'easier' and even recollections of and how we see the past can shift dramatically as our internal physiological reactions and release of survival stress and energy occurs i.e. finding a sense of inner peace and acceptance of one's life and place in it

 

[Jones]

While I haven't done any of Lyon's programs, I was interested in the Feldenkrais method that she mentions and apparently uses in her courses.

I think this is where she also applies polyvagal theory and the way that the exercises are presented in the below video seem consistent with that. Feldenkrais, I think, is both a system of movement and also an exercise for grounding in the present moment. The idea behind it is that as socialisation occurs, not only are impulses supressed but also other signals that our body sends that something might be out of order internally, or in the external environment. This seems to align with the principle of neuroception from polyvagal theory.

In the video below, one Feldenkrais practitioner describes some of the principles and leads the audience through some exercises with guidance.

It seems that learning the point at where the body starts to say 'no' while remaining or returning to a grounded state can help to build a greater capacity both for movement and nervous system resilience. I wonder if this is something like what Gurdjieff was trying to convey with his movements and if it helps with self remembering. Since I didn't study the Gurdjieff movements with more than a passing interest, I don't know.