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Why This Works: Peak States Model and Theory


Trauma is at the root of most physical and emotional problems. So, what is trauma and how does it affect us on a daily basis?

Seagulls on Hornby Island
A ‘trauma’ is a moment in time when we experienced something emotionally or physically painful, distressful or shocking. Thoughts and beliefs are created during these usually forgotten trauma moments that later guide our behavior inappropriately. The trauma from the past tells us how to act in the present, blocking our ability to respond according to present circumstances. A good example of this is phobia. If we are irrationally afraid of something – say air travel – then it is likely that the anxiety we feel is caused by earlier traumatic events that we associate with this activity. In this case, healing the underlying trauma would eliminate the phobia.

You can tell if a past trauma moment is guiding your behavior, thoughts and/or emotions by checking to see if you feel CPL (Calm, Peaceful and Light - as in not heavy) in any given situation. Whenever you are not CPL, you know that you are being driven by the past, not responding to the reality of the present. People generally have at least one trauma activated at any given time, making it very difficult to stay in the present moment.

One of the surprising discoveries in this field is that trauma is stored in strings or stacks of similar physical sensations. i.e. traumas are not necessarily stored in relation to similar circumstances but rather similar emotions and body sensations. Thus, a trauma string may link fear of flying – say, uncomfortable feeling in the stomach – with your first day at school – again, uncomfortable feeling in the stomach. What is even more surprising is that most trauma chains have their origins before birth. For example, the trauma chain that causes fear of flying, which is linked to your first day at school, is likely to have links to a pre birth trauma where physical injury (probably in the stomach area in this case) occurred. Therapists use this understanding about the nature and structure of trauma to guide clients back to the original trauma in the chain in order to heal. Once the original trauma is healed, all of the following traumas in that line are also resolved. In this way you are free to respond to present circumstances for what they are instead of being locked into reactions based on the past.

Sunset on Hornby Island

So, effective trauma healing means regressing to the first moment, possibly pre-birth, when your organism experienced the original trauma in the chain. This task seems daunting to some, who may have no experience with pre-natal regression and therefore think it impossible to accomplish. Your therapist will coach you on how to do this but the fact is that when you experience trauma in the present, you have already regressed to a past moment. For example, when someone thinks about their fear of flying - triggering anxiety and uncomfortable feeling in the stomach, say – they have unconsciously regressed to a trauma moment, and are feeling those past sensations in the present. Surprisingly, this trauma may or may not have anything to do with flying; instead, the person may have associated flying with uncomfortable memories of the first day at school; or a time in the womb when they were damaged in the stomach area and they felt as though they would die. In this latter example, their subconscious now associates flying = death. As irrational as this sounds, that is how our consciousness operates and this explains how difficult it is for us to use conscious will to overcome anxiety or phobia. Fortunately, the latest generation of trauma healing techniques can access and heal early trauma, quickly leading to the elimination of problems in the present.

Prenatal trauma is also the key to understanding what causes certain types of illnesses. These diseases or disorders may appear at birth or later on in life. Regardless, the originating cause is due to a key moment in their development that went wrong that eventually catches up with them. This connection between the early developmental event and the disorder is often very indirect (in the same way that even a minor failed part in your car can cause major problems with the way your car runs). Fortunately, a given disease is caused by the same event in everyone. Once it is discovered, it is fairly straightforward to heal the developmental event and eliminate the disease or disorder. That is the basis for our specific disease treatments in our clinics.


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Revision History
1.0 Sept 29, 2009: First draft.