Video: Trauma and the Body

“We need to tend to our bodies,” says Dr. Dan Allender in this video, part of our ongoing series engaging topics related to trauma, abuse, and the hope for healing. Dan invites us to consider how our treatment of our bodies might exacerbate or perpetuate the effects of trauma in our lives. “We are to go no further in the engagement of our past and the trauma of our story than we can care for our body in the present,” says Dan. “Your body cannot endure ongoing stress and trauma without certain levels of attending care.”

Our bodies reflect the glory of God, and our bodies are what evil brings harm against most ostensibly and clearly.

How do we deal with cortisol, oxytocin, dopamine, and all of our bodily experiences? How do our bodies form bonds and cope with stress? “If we will begin to read our body and begin to understand how abuse has affected our body, then we have a way to tend to our body with far greater care than we have allowed ourselves before. That kind of care becomes a way of not only creating nurturance, but it’s also the way that we open our bodies to taste grace.”

Our bodily health and growth is a core component of the movement toward restoration. That is the journey we are engaging in our upcoming Healing the Wounded Heart online course, which has grown out of the material in Dan’s 1989 book The Wounded Heart and the 25-year retrospective Healing the Wounded Heart. This new online course will invite you to deeper engagement of your stories of harm and your hope for healing. We have been humbled by the process of creating this course and would be honored to have you join us when we launch in early November 2016. Learn more here.