Trauma Informed Yoga
Yoga for Trauma: Mental Health, Abuse Recovery, Grief, Addiction and PTSD
WHAT IS TRAUMA INFORMED YOGA?
Trauma Informed Yoga is a gentler yoga practice, placing more emphasis on the emotional experience of participants, rather than just the physical body.
Practitioners are encouraged to focus on ‘inner awareness’ in their practice, noticing what arises, allowing it to be recognised or acknowledged. Each session includes appropriate postures, breathwork, relaxation or meditation techniques. Classes can also include mantra, mudra and sound therapy.
Trauma is not stored as a narrative with an orderly
BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE
beginning, middle, and end
WHY TRAUMA INFORMED YOGA?
We have all experienced a feelings of anxiety or helplessness at some point in our lives, and how we deal with these emotions can have a lasting affect on our body and mind.
Experiencing trauma can have detrimental affect on our whole nervous or immune systems; creating problems with sleep, digestion, or bodily functions. In severe cases (such as PTSD), a person’s survival feels threatened, and that person is not able to maintain a balance between reality and normality when triggered.
When we think of trauma, it can feel like a hidden physical pain; described as a heaviness, a burden or a endless cycle of emotions that are hard to control. Trauma (such as grief) can be described as ‘glitter’; it permeates everything, and just when you think it has disappeared, you find some more ‘glitter’, which triggers and overwhelms you.
People can become disassociated from their physical bodies and limited in their movements. In severe cases (such as PTSD), a person’s survival feels threatened, and that person is not able to maintain a balance between reality and normality when triggered.
When our mental health needs support, yoga can help. Yoga helps targets areas of discomfort within the body, healing the nervous system, helps provide a release. Working in a group or on an individual basis, Yoga can help people overcome deep routed or learned coping mechanisms; allowing healing and releasing behaviour to be activated.
Yoga can give you the tools to deal with any trauma you may be experiencing
Through your yoga practice you become more informed to deal with the changing the narrative of your thoughts and emotions. This can help provide the opportunity to release pent up emotions such as anger, shame or guilt.
Recently, I ran a 6 week course for Health Care Professionals in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Unit at St Andrew’s Healthcare in Northampton. I helped them to integrate trauma sensitive yoga into their curriculum, so that they could work with their clients and students, as well as help staff working in this environment.
FURTHER READING & RESOURCES
