The MASTR program helps people recover from trauma naturally using mindfulness and body-based practices. It is based on mindfulness, the body and an understanding of neurobiology.
Bessel van der Kolk’s book, “The Body Keeps the Score” describes how trauma effects the body and nervous system resulting in a system that is stuck in the fight/flight response. People are left with a constant sense of danger which promotes the continuous release of stress hormones which damages the immune system and the functioning of a number of the body’s organs. In summary, Bessel van der Kolk demonstrates that trauma affects the body. It is therefore not surprising that trauma therapy, including the MASTR program, is body-based.
There is a strong movement to base an understanding of mental illness on an understanding of the functions of the brain and nervous system (Panksepp, J. Affective neuroscience. The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Oxford University Press. 1998). Emotional regulation is often compromised after experiencing trauma. The right orbitofrontal cortex is essential to emotional understanding and to emotional regulation (McGilchrist, I. The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press. 2018). The right frontal lobe regulates the hypothalamic pituitary axis and it is connected with the unconscious and automatic systems for regulating the body and its level of arousal. The right frontotemporal cortex exhibits inhibitory control over emotional arousal. The right brain hemisphere is involved in regulating the body and its level of activation. From a neuropsychological perspective, the right hemisphere is more involved with the body than the left hemisphere. These observations have led me to base the MASTR program therapy involving the right side of the brain. I will elaborate on this shortly.
Trauma leads people to experience emotional dysregulation and to feel disconnected from other people and these need to be addressed in therapy. Human beings come to feel connected to other human beings as a result of secure attachment. Attachment theory helps us understand that secure attachment relies upon experiences between a young child and their caregiver. When this interaction is healthy, it leads to physical changes in the nervous system of both the young child and of the caregiver. The right frontal limbic system stores schemas of styles of affect regulation and of relationships, and these internal working models support both affect regulation and future relationships. Schore (Schore, A. Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Routledge. 2016) is of the opinion that all psychiatric disorders show deficits in right brain affect regulation and he is also of the opinion that the right hemisphere is dominant in psychotherapy. The therapy that occurs in the MASTR program is based on right hemisphere connections.
As an aside, it is interesting to note that cognitive behaviour therapy and cognitive processing therapy have dominated trauma focused therapy for some time. Both of these therapies seem to be based on the left hemisphere.
McGilchrist (McGilchrist, I. The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press. 2018) points out that the right hemisphere brings us in touch with what is new and that we do so with an attitude of receptive openness to what is. The right hemisphere recognises complexity, how things are interrelated, fluent, evolving and alive whereas the left hemisphere is concerned with what is selective, organised, static and mechanistic. The right hemisphere has an open and flexible attention whereas the left hemisphere has only a focused attention. The right hemisphere sees things whole and in context whereas the left hemisphere sees things abstracted from context and broken into parts. The left hemisphere prefers certainty whereas the right hemisphere is comfortable with uncertainty. The right hemisphere has a greater integrating power. The right hemisphere is concerned with living creatures whereas the left is concerned with the non-living. The right hemisphere is intimately connected to nature. The right hemisphere plays an important part in personality and who we fundamentally are. The right hemisphere is deeply connected to the embodied self and only the right parietal lobe contains a whole-body image. The right hemisphere is intrinsically empathic and its attention is caring. It acknowledges intersubjectivity.
In summary, the left hemisphere uses language that yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualised, explicit, disembodied and ultimately lifeless. In contrast, the right hemisphere yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, living beings within the context of the lived world. The right hemisphere is clearly what is being developed through mindfulness where we are encouraged to bring a kind attention to what is happening within our body and in nature. We are encouraged to be aware of how living creatures are interconnected. The right hemisphere, the body and mindfulness seem a natural fit to helping people recover from the effects of trauma and therefore the MASTR program focuses on mindfulness, the body and the right brain hemisphere.
