At the Inner Arts Institute, we focus on a mixture of methods to help a person release trauma from his or her body. One major concept behind our work is the transgenerational transmission of trauma.

Studies on epigenetics confirm that our ancestors, grandparents, and parents pass down wonderful traits like our gifts and talents, strength, and our body type. What our family also passes down is unfinished trauma.

But how do unfinished trauma transmissions work? How do we inherit our gifts and long-passed traumatic experiences from family members we may have never even met?

1. Through our DNA

As seen here in a PBS video about the children of Holocaust survivors

Epigenetics, as written beautifully within the Atlantic Monthly, Oct 2018

And revealed in Emory University’s 2013 mice and cherry blossoms experiment

2. In Family Dynamics

Through our family constellations

And through family loyalties and the morphogenetic field

We repeat experiences and burden sharing

3. Through Our Culture

In collective and cultural shadow structures

Getting in touch with these three areas help us to become aware of the root of many of our personal issues. Although talking to a supportive person is helpful, talking keeps us in our higher brain functions and does not allow us to access our unconscious or transgenerational issues.

To connect with these issues, we need to stay in tune with our bodies and become highly attuned to our breathing patterns and physical states. When we are triggered, our mind and our logic is of little help. Our nervous system goes into fight, flight, or freeze.

These instinctive states are so deeply ingrained in our bodies and move faster than conscious thought. Fight, flight, or freeze overrides any logic or thought in the moment.

What can I do to get in touch with my family’s unfinished trauma?

In short, we can learn to increase our internal capacity to stay centered and calm.

We can practice this by trying to:

• Engage in family constellation process work to loosen stuck energy in our bodies
• Slow everything down.
• Learn to recognize triggers within ourselves.
• Learn how to integrate our emotions

At Inner Arts Institute, we continuously seek to share these valuable tools so people can discover how to release trauma and find peace in their lives. If you feel called to learn more about processing unconscious generational trauma, we have several events over the next few months.

If you’d like to explore a 3 hour introduction to our work, find us in Watertown, MA on May 31^st from 7-10 pm

Our day-long workshops this summer:

Saturday June 1^st in Watertown, MA

Saturday July 20^th in Brattleboro, VT

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave any comments or thoughts below or sign up to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on what’s new at the Inner Arts Institute.