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What is Selfunwinding?

September 9, 2022

Defining something that is such a profound and life-changing experience for me personally seems impossible.

The scientist in me wants to share the exact mechanism of this self-healing reflex or program within the body. But unfortunately, there is not a simplistic mechanism or tidy single spot in the brain that turns on Selfunwinding.

When we look closer, we discover the body's unimaginable complexity.

New functional MRI imaging reveals 44 regions of the brain involved in pain. And we have only hints about the importance of many different body systems in Selfunwinding—especially the fascial system—and how they act in a highly coordinated feedback process.

Because of my training, I have this scientific, skeptical mind. But just because current science cannot pin down the exact mechanisms of Selfunwinding, let's not discount it.

We see mammals in nature unwind after trauma. Here is a video showing the process a polar bear instinctively uses after being shot with a tranquilizer gun:

The team working with the bear observes the shaking and convulsive movement, then respects and allows the bear to just complete this traumatic event by sleeping it off.

Ironically, as a physician I commonly see the same tendency after surgical procedures—only for staff to interrupt the process either physically or with medication.

Selfunwinding is by nature regenerative. It is our innate ability to connect and translate sensory, emotional, psychological, and physical aspects of our experience into movement that serves as a release.

That's important: movement serving as release.

When this movement begins, we feel some alteration of consciousness, but we are not so lost in it that we cannot break the activity if needed.

It can appear slow and steady, or jerky and violent, and can be accompanied by expression of sounds.

It follows some recurrent patterns which appear inherent within the body, such as expansion and contraction. This also includes the feeling and expression of emotions, and sometimes even the recollection of events.

Many times there is a quality of a snake moving through the body, finding the inherently genius pathways as an attempt to connect the whole.

Selfunwinding continues to evolve in me, and in people I work with, gently over time, based on our specific needs and capacities for healing.

My role is to bear witness to this natural process and to facilitate and support it.

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