Notes on Conscious Breathing by Joy Manné

There are connections everywhere, no one theorist has all the right answers to your reality.
Except you, of course.

Manné mentions the idea of separating from the body as a consequence of trauma. Traumatic events are stored in the body holographically as memories. If we experience a trauma that our Selves can't deal with without becoming non-functional, we repress that trauma.
Repression is useful and good, most of us can't deal with trauma when it happens, we need to process it slowly and according to our own inner machinery. However, repression is like damming up a river, it is not sustainable by its nature. Eventually the dam will wither and fail. Also, a dam is not a component of a healthy, functioning earth- it is an unbalanced phenomenon. We want that water to be flowing freely, changing according to gravity and other earthly phenomena- we don't want it to stay as its own object, stuck somewhere with no hope of flushing.
So, while repressing trauma is healthy in the moment, it also results in two negative consequences-
1. The portion of our Self holding the memory goes unused, which is like a broken key on a piano, we can't play some tunes with the somatic instrument because we're missing a note.
2. It takes energy to sustain the dam- energy that is best used for just about anything else.

Manné mentions some of her patients that cannot "feel" their bodies or even be present at all as a result of trauma. These people have dammed all of their somatic rivers such that only a trickle of water reaches their present consciousness and allows them to function. The piano keys available to them only play a narrow repertoire of tunes.
So Manné says this is why we get stuck in repetitive patterns when we haven't processed our trauma properly. With all 88 keys available, not only can we change the song we're playing, we also have every song in the universe available to us.
On page 96, Manné mentions a man named James who has powerful political views that he sees as dictating his perceived failure. "Society", "the rich", his family, his wife, all of these are out to take him down, and he cannot see what it is about himself that allows such victimhood to occur. "James has not got enough free energy for objective observation and assessment of his behavior" she writes.
This is important because it shows that we need energy that we don't use for repression to be happy, and there is a threshold amount without which a seed of contentment cannot grow into a happiness plant. This James character never figures it out and eventually stops going to sessions.

On page 102, Manné says a great thing about taking time out for meditation. "As long as we are choosing our time out, we are also choosing our 'time in'. When we are not choosing, we have grounding and awareness problems. For some people these problems are so severe that they cannot be present at all. Sufferers from severe mental illnesses are afflicted in this way."
I've said for years that the big difference between crazy people on the street and everyone else is that the people on the street can't choose when they are crazy. Most, if not all, of us are crazy at least sometimes during the week. People are homeless because they can't choose when to be crazy, and often end up acting out on the job. So those of us that choose to meditate are also making a better choice as to when our crazy comes out- not where it's destructive.