“The Body Keeps the Score” - One Life-Changing Sentence

… Shall I share that one life-changing sentence right off the bat? Or do you want to build a little suspense?

Let’s go with the latter — not only because it feels more fun, but also because I’d like you to get to know me better.

Perhaps like you, reading “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel Van Der Kolk blew my mind. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. While it is dense and quite science-y, it unlocks insights and compassion within ourselves and allows us more efficient access to therapeutic transformations. In reading this master-work, I experienced a deepening of self-understanding and appreciation for the human experience in a way I had never known before. Evidence of these insights is in every page of my copy of this profound book: Most lines in the book are highlighted, and nearly every page contains pen-written notes in the margins.

I wouldn’t have known about this book if it hadn’t been on the "“Recommended Reading” list for a training module in my 300-hour Therapeutic Yoga training titled “Yoga, Psychology, and Trauma.” This module was my intentional first step into my Therapeutic Yoga training, and what a perfect first step it was. Through my own physical yoga practice, I already had realized not only how much our bodies store in terms of memories and wisdom, but also how yoga can heal and transform our lives. While I felt confident that I wanted to serve others through therapy and psychology, I also knew understanding the body and movement needed to be the foundation for that work.

So, to sum it up — I was all in. Fascinated. Hyper-focused. On a mission, really.

I dove into every “Required Reading” text as well as the “Recommended Reading” before this first training module. I had set up this first training to coincide with me relocating to Asheville, North Carolina to devote, in a monk-like way, to studying Yoga Therapy and myself (in yoga, this self-study is known as “svadhyaya”). Can you see and perhaps feel the depth of me being all in and on a mission? My intuition knew how important this work is.

As I was reading “The Body Keeps the Score,” sitting on a second or probably third-hand couch my roommates and I had scored for free before someone trashed it, I read the line that would change my life. I can still see where the line is on the page — bottom right corner, just before I turn the page.

“Angry people live in angry bodies.”

Ho. Ly. Shit.

“Angry people live in angry bodies.”

My mind did the thing it does when a breakthrough happens — it sped up, lit up, and expanded. My body simultaneously expressed this breakthrough feeling, sitting me up even straighter on the couch — so straight that I hopped off the couch. My eyes widened. My hands wrote so furiously in the margins that they trembled.

I realized that we can shift emotions, how we feel about ourselves, and how we relate with others through our bodies. If angry people live in angry bodies, then empowered people live in empowered bodies, depressed people live in depressed bodies, anxious people live in anxious bodies, at peace people live in at peace bodies, and on and on and on…

It made sense. It just clicked.

However, any good theory needs to be tested. I tested and tested for many years, and I continue to test and explore through this day. In addition to my yoga practice, I tried out boxing — what effects would boxing have on my psyche? Over time, I noticed how much more confident I felt through boxing, and how my thoughts were more self-assured when I had to walk alone at night to my car from the restaurant at which I hostessed to help pay the bills while I trained in Therapeutic Yoga. Later, I tested out if and how weight-lifting affected my mental health, how cycling impacted my psyche, and the ripples of various styles of yoga practices throughout the waters of my being. How did dance affect my mental health? Martial arts? Qi gong? And movement practice?

Not only do they all have different effects, but also they each have unique insights to show us about ourselves.

My gratitude to Bessel Van Der Kolk, and to all the energy and years he devoted to serving people struggling in the darkness, is ceaseless. I am ever-grateful. And in this gratitude, I would like to leave you with this:

You can be an empowered, confident, connected, and loved person — you can live in an empowered, confident, connected, and loved body. This, too, I am grateful for and humbled by.

With love and hopes to Cea soon,

Cea Rubin White