Trauma Healing Project

Trauma. What is trauma? It is an emotion in response to a horrific event. One of these events could be emotional, physical, sexual, or combat related. Some survivors of traumatic events may experience posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD. Survivors have the option to receive help from doctors, psychiatrists, or counselors. All of which may help the survivor to an extent. That is why there are alternative medicine companies designed to help survivors. One company like this is The Trauma Healing Project. This company started up as a group of people who wanted to help others in 2004 (Project, 2017). It took the company a few years to start up fully, but to this day the Trauma Healing Project helps as many people as they possibly can. The Trauma

Healing Project offers nine services listed on their website that are incorporated into group sessions or individual sessions. The services are inexpensive to most, but not to all. They encourage those who can pay more for their service to, so others who lack funds have the same opportunities. “No one is turned away due to a lack of funds,” (Project, 2017). These services will be discussed in this paper along with their healing properties, how they relate to lecture, and how they apply to $2.00 A Day written by Kathryn Edin and H. Luck Schaefer.
The Trauma Healing Project offers a wide array of services for those who need help two of which are group related, they are wellness groups and digital storytelling groups.

Wellness groups help survivors focus on how to keep themselves well. This may seem repetitive, but helping survivors focus on mind, body, and possibly spiritual positivity allows them to slowly move forward. Focusing on wellness in a group allows the survivor to hear how his or her peers focus on wellness. It is a positive space for them. Digital Story Telling is very unique. This is a group where each survivor explains his or her story in a safe space. Next, they recreate their story using visuals and words. This can be cathartic. Visualizing what happened to an individual may help them come to terms with their trauma. Both of these settings would be great for children like Kaitlin Hernandez in $2.00 A Day. Her uncle molested her. The digital storytelling might help her move forward with this trauma. Kaitlin’s mother seemed to experience vicarious trauma from this event. Jennifer moved out with her two kids as soon as possible. She felt horrible(Edin & Schaefer, 2015). If the Hernandez family had access to the Trauma Healing Project their mental and physical health would significantly

improve.
Massage is a form of therapy used in the Trauma Healing Project facility. Not many would believe that massage helps trauma survivors, but it does. Massage relaxes the muscles, works out tension, knots, and stress while also releasing toxins from the muscles. Another form of massage offered is craniosacral therapy. This is when the muscles in your head, neck, and sacrum are massaged. Craniosacral therapy is a great therapy for survivors. As humans, we hold tension in our shoulders and neck, sometimes even in our jaws. This service relaxes those muscles and restores them to their original state. Survivors could benefit from this if they are complaining of head or neck pain from stress, the way they slept, or just because. Trauma survivors may use massage just to purely relax, but add on a Reiki session to release the bad energy and that restores complete body balance.
Reiki is a form of therapy where the practitioner opens the body and absorbs the survivor’s bad energy. These sessions can be very healing to the mind and body. Reiki works because some survivors hold on to the negative energy associated with their trauma(s) the belief is that once the energy becomes released this person can move one step forward. Another good form of energy massage is called polarity massage. This therapy incorporates massage, but the practitioner suggests diet changes and self-awareness activities to practice at home. These suggestions can help balance the body. Polarity massage treatments are like Reiki; they have the same benefits, yet polarity massage incorporates more wellness techniques for the survivor.
The Trauma Healing Project uses many forms of massage to aid their clients, but also offers acupuncture and yoga.

Acupuncture would help anyone of the people in the book, $2.00 A Day. This therapy uses strategically placed needles to relieve stress, anxiety, and tension in the body. Twenty-one-year old mother, Jessica Compton sells her plasma as much as ten times a month could benefit from releasing the stress of donating by attending an acupuncture session (Edin & Schaefer, 2015). Yoga is a therapy that can help adults, teens, and young children. The preschool my mother works at uses yoga to calm down the three and four-year-olds before story time. A lot of the children at her school are deaf or have a disability. Yoga helps these children concentrate. This can be applied to children who have suffered a trauma or teens. For one hour a week, you stretch and breath in a calm environment is wonderful for mental

health.
The Trauma Healing Project is a company dedicated to the health and wellbeing of trauma survivors. They offer a wide range of services that may seem to cover the basic symptoms of trauma, but go much deeper than the surface. Each therapy has its own healing properties just like each survivor requires a specific therapy for their needs. Acupuncture may work for person A, but not person B who needs polarity massages. These treatments are relatively affordable for those who have a low income and donations allow many who cannot afford these services to receive them. I would definitely recommend this company to a survivor of rape, physical abuse, emotional abuse, or interpersonal violence. Modern medicine does help trauma survivors, but alternative therapies like the ones offered here go beneath the surface.