The Doctor knew his fellow creatures better than most men, knew that inner life which so seldom unfolds itself to unannotated eyes. Polarities are a state in which two ideas, opinions, are completely opposite or very different from each other. Reality is organized in polarities: the inner and outer vortices, expansion and contraction, pleasure and pain. There is a natural movement between polarities. Pleasure is followed by pain and pain is followed by pleasure. Expansion leads to contraction and contraction leads to expansion. The natural flow between the polarized vortices is created by trauma. Organisms have evolved exquisite processes to heal the effects of trauma. These processes include the ability to unite, integrate, and transform the polarities of expansion and contraction. If these polarities are integrated in a gradual fashion, then trauma can be safely healed.  Pendulation is something that is naturally always occurring. All experience is in constant movement between polarities. Yet, with trauma, pendulation gets interrupted and attention fixates on the trauma. Without an even flow between the vortices, attention is drawn further into the trauma vortex. This produces an experience of more sensation and emotion than we can remain present with, which leads to overwhelm. When an even flow of pendulation is reestablished, it regulates the nervous system, creating the resiliency that is necessary to remain present and discharge trauma. This resiliency, or self-regulation, is the ability to allow experience to come and go without becoming fixated in some way. 

I know what it is like to experience and ongoing trauma, especially when it follows you and everywhere you go, something bad happens because you are being targeted. Then we you return to these areas or see images, your memory of the trauma come back and you have to mentally fight to stay present and enjoy that moment and it is hard. However, my mother always tells me to be thankful for what you have and find things to enjoy, walk by faith and not by sight, and God will bless you with more. However, if you stay stuck in the past or worrying about the future, your trauma vortex will expand and like a hurricane, it will draw in more bad experiences into your environment. So when you catch yourself slipping back into an old memory, think of something happy. Self-regulation is normally developed through early attachment with our primary caretakers. The development of the ability to adaptively cope with stress is directly and significantly influenced by an infant’s early interaction with the primary caregiver. The more solid our foundation in secure attachment, the more resilient we will be to traumatic experience. Secure attachment is the antidote to trauma. Intense or early trauma, such as fetal trauma, can result in an inability to be here and now, even in basic, everyday ways. Such trauma can cause a person to live in a chronic freeze or dissociation until the energy is discharged. States that bound-up energy can also manifest as chronic physical symptoms such as headaches, back pain, gastrointestinal problems, and asthma.  

As pendulation is established, titration can occur. Titration involves releasing traumatic stress a little at a time, staying with only as much as we can be present to in the moment. Titration slowly allows traumatic activation to be accessed and assimilated so that the nervous system can gradually adjust to each level of excitation. If higher and higher levels of activation are allowed, it leads to overwhelm. Overwhelm can look like either emotional numbing and dissociation or emotional flooding. The higher the levels of activation, the further away a person can get from the here and now. As traumatic stress is released a little at a time, a person becomes more able to remain present with whatever arises. There is a natural movement between the vortices as we remain present on the level of sensation in the body. It flows back and forth like a figure eight or infinity sign, taking support from the inner vortex and bringing it to the trauma vortex, being present with a piece of the trauma vortex, and then returning to the inner vortex and orienting to the here and now. This vortex description of titration mimics what occurs more deeply when a client has recognized the ground of being. A surrender into this being or awareness allows our innate wisdom to bring up only as much as can be met fully in the moment. This meeting dissolves or releases the traumatic energy back into the ground of being. In this meeting it is revealed that the trauma and our essential being are one and the same. 

The flow is a meeting of whatever arises and a dissolving into the source of it all, again and again. This can occur when there is both recognition of awareness and resiliency in the nervous system.  An individual may lac a dialogue of love and still remain relatively healthy as long as other forms of human dialogue are maintained and the individual does not become socially isolated. In its most general meaning, dialogue consists of reciprocal communication between two or more living creatures. It involves the sharing of thoughts, physical sensations, ideas, ideals, hopes, and feelings. In sum, dialogue involves the reciprocal sharing of any and all life experiences. As a definition, the idea of reciprocal sharing, responding to or communicating with other living creatures, sounds innocent enough. However, the process officially goes beyond anything that can be measured with scientific instruments. I hear that at last you are permitted to visit the mainland. Thinking of our reunion soon, I am more excited than the sea across which we have been looking at one another. May happiness and joy accompany you like your own shadow! May your success and progress like Sunrise spur you on forever.