Healing Through Movement, Art, and Sound: Trauma Healing Series

Domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking can be life-altering traumas.

For over forty years, Community Safety Network has returned power and control to survivors through emotional support and crisis resources. In a world where many survivors feel doubt and shame, the non-judgmental support and empowerment offered by Community Safety Network advocates can lay a strong foundation for a survivor’s healing.

We make space for survivors to create more safety in their lives — however they choose and however safety looks for them.

Bessel Van der Kolk explains in The Body Keeps the Score: “Trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.”

As our culture’s understanding of trauma and healing expands, so is Community Safety Network’s programming. To best serve survivors on their healing journey, we have been running a pilot program for the past year that offers trauma-healing opportunities to address the body-mind connection and ways in which trauma sticks with us.

Removing barriers to healing

While many Community Safety Network clients use traditional talk therapy, there are other healing and wellness modalities that many folks in our community are not yet accessing. By removing barriers such as cost, childcare, and lack of language access, we aim to learn which alternative healing modalities trauma survivors find most supportive and effective, to possibly inform future programming.

The goal of the Community Trauma Healing series is to offer an alternative to traditional talk-therapies and support groups — allowing survivors of violence, assault, and other trauma to easily access proven modalities that are focused on releasing stored trauma from the body, improving mental health, and building new neuropathways.

So far, our offerings have included: sound baths, somatic workshops, art classes, movement and dance, trauma writing, yoga, and mindfulness. These events are free and presented as often as possible in English and Spanish. They are open to any community member with strong ties to Jackson, and who identifies as a survivor of any kind of trauma.

Though we do not expect a single session to rid someone of their struggles or traumas, we do hope that free classes and intentional outreach (through Voices JH to our immigrant communities, for example) allow trauma survivors to experiment with a new modality that aids them on their healing journey.

Healing in a group setting

Group events that allow participants complete control over what they disclose — i.e., they are not forced to identify as a survivor of sexual assault — removes barriers of shame and stigma. In our work we know that over 1 in 3 women and over 1 in 4 men in the U.S. have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. We hope to increase community connection and belonging in these sessions, without requiring a high level of vulnerability or disclosure.

We believe this series can be a doorway to our services and other services in the community. Each event is attended by an advocate who can offer emotional support and resource recommendations to participants. An informational table with materials from Community Safety Network and other community partners like One22, Mental Health and Recovery Services of Jackson Hole, and Teton Behavior Therapy is also offered at each event.

It has been a great joy to see a wide variety of participants showing up to events so far – various ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and nationalities. We’ve noticed that childcare is often a huge help, particularly for yoga classes that allow parents to relax while their kids are cared for. Sound baths have been hugely popular, with participants returning again and again.

Reviews from participants have been overwhelmingly positive, asking mainly for more events and for the events to be longer!

We plan to continue this pilot through the calendar year. We would love to be able to continue offering free, healing opportunities to survivors of trauma.

A huge thank you to the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole for providing the funding for this series, and thank you to our partners so far in this series: Medicine Wheel Wellness, Francine Bartlett, Elly Garrett, Rachel Mackey, Francesca Weikert, Sara Flitner, Becoming Jackson Whole, Dancers Workshop, Georgie Armstrong, Mental Wellness Collaborative, Home Yoga, Art Association, JH Pride, Voices JH, Daniela Botur, Teton County Library, Deidre Norman, St. John’s Episcopal Church, and Katherine Standefer.

Follow @csn_jh on Instagram and Community Safety Network on Facebook to stay up to date on these events and others.