Waking the Tiger
Dr. Levine’s book ‘Waking the Tiger’
The Tiger as a symbol of our aliveness,
our innate nature.
Part I
Three upper brains, one mind
In our decades-long studies of trauma patients, we learned about the primordial energies that reside within the reptilian core of our brains. To resolve trauma we must be able to move fluidly between instinct, emotion, and rational thought.
When, communicating sensation, feeling, and cognition, are in harmony, our organisms operate as designed.
In learning to identify and contact bodily sensations, we begin to fathom our instinctual reptilian roots. In themselves, instincts are merely reactions.
When these reactions are integrated and expanded by our mammalian feeling brain and our human cognitive abilities in an organized fashion, we experience the fullness of our evolutionary heritage.
The instincts not only tell us when to fight, flight, or freeze, they also tell us that we belong here. A sense that “I am I” is an instinctual one. Our mammalian brains broaden that sense to ”we are we”. Our human brains add a sense of reflection and connection beyond the material world.
How can we feel our connection and sense of belonging to this earth, to any-one, or any-thing else, without a clear connection to our instincts and feelings?
Are these the roots of our traumas?
