from a Chinese medicine/ Channel theory point of view…
I’ve been learning more about trauma because I’m fascinated by how it impacts us. The same situation will mark some of us deeply and others not as much. As Dr Gabor Mate would say, “Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”
Gabor often uses this line to explain that trauma isn’t defined by the external event itself, but by the internal disconnection, overwhelm, or loss of safety and self that occurs in response to it.
This perspective reframes trauma from being about the incident to being about the impact – how our nervous system, mind, and body adapt to protect us, sometimes long after the event has passed.
And this is how Chinese medicine understands it too – from your perspective. Everything is relative. There are no absolutes. That’s the foundation of the medicine.
For all of us, it is different in terms of exactly where and how it will show up. We are all the sum of different kinds of generational trauma and so a current day trauma on top of that base, reaps different outcomes for different people.
How Chinese medicine views us
As you know, Chinese medicine looks at the body in terms of channel systems and so it knows we are designed beautifully to be able to handle life. When the channel systems are overloaded and leaking out, that’s when we aren’t handling things well and we may need some guidance to get ourselves back on track.
One of the key foundations of Chinese medicine and health is that we are impacted by everything. These impacts affect our mind, body and spirit to a degree, whether we recognise it or not. Sometimes we consciously are aware that we’ve been affected by something and other times, we aren’t. It goes beneath our consciousness. Suffice to say, our environment and relationships shape us enormously.
A quick breakdown of the meridian system:
Sinews
As long as we are alive, we have a complex meridian system that is working for us. We have our more superficial channels that actively engage with the world every day. These are called our Sinew channels (aka our muscles and nerves and the Qi associated with present day sensations and activities) These are the ones we injure with our sore back, neck, arm, leg, you name it, that’s the sinew level.
Blood
The next level down is the Blood level. This is the level of consciousness as well as the subconscious – just beneath the surface. This is also the place where feelings and emotions are housed. At the conscious level of awareness sits our spirit that has access to our thoughts, reasoning, will power, decisions, analysis and short-term memory. At the subconscious level there are learned patterns, habits, gut feelings, emotional memory and conditioned behaviours that have been learned and are now on autopilot.
Yuan
The final level beyond that is called the Yuan level. This is the deepest level of the body and it is at the unconscious level of life where many functions work without our knowledge such as: the making of bone, DNA replication and repair, hormonal cycles, autonomic nervous system, heart beat regulation, respiration, thermoregulation, sleep cycles, embryonic development, cellular respiration and energy production (mitochondria). These processes represent the body’s original intelligence – the part that knows how to grow, heal, and regulate without being told how.
Summary of Consciousness Levels:
Consciousness → the surface waves (what you see and think). In Chinese medicine it’s equal to the sinews and the superficial Blood level.
Subconscious → the midwaters (currents shaping the waves, but you can’t see them directly). In Chinese medicine, this is the deeper Blood level.
Unconscious → the deep ocean floor (ancient, powerful forces that shape everything above). In Chinese medicine this is the Yuan level.
How trauma impacts each level of consciousness and where it sits from a channel perspective
On a daily basis, your body is triaging to get you through the day, to keep you alive each and every day. When a traumatic event happens, it can overwhelm the sinew channels and it can be held in the Blood level, to be dealt with later, or it can go straight down deep into the Yuan level. Sometimes when it initially goes to the Blood level but is not dealt with, over time, it will then sink to the Yuan level.
One of the fundamental differences of where our trauma lives is how old we were when the trauma happened and whether we were conscious of it or not at the time.
Early traumatic experiences
When traumatic experiences happen to us when we’re little, they goes in at the deepest level of our being, the Yuan level, because those channels are in development. Those are the years we are sponges. We take in everything we experience. Those experiences are essentially baked into our existence. Our cells respond from that space, from that viewpoint, we know nothing different. It may take years for us to understand that what happened to us wasn’t right.
There are a set of channels called the Extraordinary Vessels. These are the first to form in your body in utero and they take shape in the first crucial years of life. ALL other channels spring from these channels. So in order to treat trauma at that level, you have to address it at the deepest level of the body, in order to gently support it to release.
Shock and trauma
There are another set of channels called the divergent channels. These also go to the Yuan level and are another possible route for trauma to pass through if it was too much in the moment. That’s the situation when there’s no real memory of it all because it was too painful or shocking to process, so it went straight down in the deepest reserves of our body to be stored, normally this is in the large joints of the body, the knees, hips, lower back, shoulders.
Leaking trauma
The body can hold things in only for so long. When it doesn’t have enough resources to keep pathologies at bay (deep emotional wounds, lingering pathogens-bacteria, viruses, fungi, heavy metal exposures, other toxic exposures) then it starts to leak out and can cause physical pain or unhelpful emotional patterns on repeat.
Trauma at the level of consciousness
When there is consciousness around a trauma, it will initially sit in the Blood level. For example, you hurt your knee, you can’t walk for a while and there is lots of bruising. You rest, you get some treatment to assist with the trauma, your body heals and you get back to normal. Another example might be a betrayal from a friend or a lover. You’re consciously aware it has happened. It affects you deeply. You don’t get any help with it and it just weighs on you. Over time it sinks to a deeper level and you start seeing life from that new perspective. The new lens is heavy and laced with sadness and a level of mistrust.
Over the past five years I’ve been exploring these channels more deeply. What I’ve noticed is how powerful they are in helping us access our own internal resources, building us a strong base from which to face whatever needs to be faced and they help guide the body back into harmony with renewed strength and a solid foundation.
Examples of how symptoms have shifted from channel treatments
I’ve seen clients with complicated romantic relationships find clarity and more peace, long-standing foot pain experience dramatic relief, not being able to sleep due to grief and sadness finally have better nights of rest, dry eyelids and eczema clear up after seven years of regular symptoms, painful periods become much less painful, rounds of fertility treatment become successful after multiple failed attempts and many who were struggling with hot, restless nights begin to sleep deeply again – some even dreaming for the first time in years. It’s a reminder that our bodies are always working to heal and re-balance, and sometimes these treatments provide just the nudge needed to complete the process.
While I’ve outlined the main threads here, in reality trauma rarely moves in straight lines. It weaves through the channels in intricate and deeply personal ways. Each person’s story, symptoms, and pulse reveal a unique map of where to begin – and it’s in listening to these subtle cues that the true path toward restoration unfolds.