The Secret of Resilience

Book excerpt: Restore resilience at its developmental source through energy medicine • Shares the author’s journey of learning the healing art of Jin Shin, discovering the embryological roots of resilience, and healing her own trauma • Explores how the Jin Shin sites correlate with the Chinese Extraordinary Meridians and with specific embryological events • Shows how subtle touch in combination with trauma resolution amplifies neuroresilience, enhances creativity, restores motivation, and heals the fragmentation and disconnection associated with trauma and shock When neuroscientist Stephanie Mines started practicing the hands-on healing Art of Compassion, she began to unravel the mystery of trauma and the secret to resilience. As a survivor of early childhood abuse, police brutality as a social justice activist, and a series of dysfunctional and abusive relationships, Mines was profoundly curious about how the human nervous system finds resilience despite the cumulative burden of chronic stress and traumatic life events. While earning her doctorate in neuropsychology, she met Mary Iino Burmeister, master of the Art of Compassion, or Jin Shin Jyutsu. Art of Compassion consists of non-invasive touch, using the fingertips, on sites of the body that are similar to acupuncture points. After the Art of Compassion helped Mines resolve her own trauma and awaken her innate resilience, she began to incorporate it into her clinical research. She discovered that the map of the body she learned from Burmeister sites correlated with the Chinese Extraordinary Meridians or Rivers of Splendor, which develop prenatally. She then began investigating our earliest neurodevelopmental processes and was able to correlate the Extraordinary Meridians with specific embryological events. She found that subtle touch on these sites in combination with trauma resolution amplifies neuroresilience, enhances creativity, restores motivation, and heals the fragmentation and disconnection associated with trauma and shock. Sharing her personal journey as a Wounded Healer, Mines reveals not only how to unlock the secrets of resilience for individual healing but also how embodied resilience will help us heal our wounded planet.