Speaker 1: Our next guest is here to talk about healing childhood wounds and how past traumas can affect your health as an adult. Dr. Erica Steele from Holistic Family Practice in Virginia Beach is here to explain now; I find this fascinating. First one. Yeah. Thank you for being here. How can a person who has experienced trauma cope with the triggers in different facets of life? Interpersonal relationships?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there’s a lot to it. So first thing I wanna do is define trauma. Yes. Because a lot of people don’t understand what trauma is. They go, oh, my childhood was okay. Trauma can be any kind of experience. For instance, it’s deeply personal for me as well. I am a child of two Marines, and my home was a war zone. Yes. Growing up, unfortunately, just because of their training and background. So yelling, violence, those are obviously, we know that those are traumas, but it can be subtle traumas as well. There’s financial stress in the home, and children can feel that. So all kinds of different events can be classified as,
Speaker 1: Okay, so what are some signs and symptoms? You call it ACEs, and what is ACEs?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so adverse childhood experiences were actually clinically studied several years ago. Okay. And they actually created a scoring of ACEs. Okay. Previously there was no graphic in that, but socio-social and environmental risk factors, like I just mentioned, create those adverse experiences or affect some trauma. What it actually does is affects neural development and develop mental illness. So it affects the brain negatively, which then, in turn, causes social-emotional cognitive impairment as well. So that’s why. People with these adverse childhood experiences have difficulty socially and emotionally with relationships.
And then, naturally, they start adopting these risk factors. So drug use, alcohol, addictions, things like that. Even addictions to food and other things, work, sex, etc.
Speaker 1: It would almost seem to fix. This would mean turning back time, but you don’t have to do that. You can do some things to cope and develop if you have had childhood trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s about completing the past. You can’t go back and change the past. But you can get complete with the emotional and mental effects that those events have particularly had. Myself, I’m a successful doctor. I’m in practice. You would never know unless I shared with you the experiences that I lived through. So it’s a, you can turn the darkness into light as they say.
Speaker 1: How does something like, say, yoga help give you a new approach and a new outlook? Yes, a further step forward.
Speaker 2: So I, not just any yoga’s great. Okay. But Kundalini yoga is like my jam. So Kini, it’s a spiritual-based yoga. Okay. So spiritually, mentally, emotionally, I always like to say it’s the yoga and steroids because you’re going in, you’re cleaning out what’s in the subconscious mind to help reframe those perceptions so that you see the world as a safe place.
That each other is one. I’m connected to you. You’re bound to me. We’re connected to all the viewers. Okay. And so it helps us to create that unity and that awareness, which is just amazing what we need right now.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else besides yoga that people might suffer through processing you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s neurofeedback. There’s eft, emotional freedom technique cognitive behavioral therapies. There’s biofeedback, a lot of various modalities that are naturally driven, of course, that can really. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found this fascinating, and I’m glad you were here to share that. Of course, there are so many people going through trauma and dealing with it, and there are things that you can do. So where can we find your practice?
Speaker 2: So our pr, my practice is on Laskin Road. Okay. 1213 Laskin Road. We also have some Catalina yoga classes coming up. Oh, great. I just went through my K R I certification for that. Sundays from 10 to noon. Mondays from six to eight, and all this month, we’re all dealing with. And we’re just gonna clear out our subconscious mind and get ourselves free, happy, and joyful again.
Speaker 1: Gosh, that sounds refreshing, actually. All right. Dr. Seal, thank you so much for being here.
What do you think?