THE POWER OF TRAUMA SENSITIVE YOGA
Without a deep anchor in ourselves and our bodies, we are adrift in the sea of life, vulnerable to the storms and unexpected distress that can be unlocked at any time by a sensory trigger. Nearly all victims of acute trauma experience extreme disconnection from their bodies. This is where yoga comes in as a potent somatic technique for healing.
Trauma experts say that virtually every person on the planet has experienced some degree and form of trauma in their lives. For some people, the degree of trauma in their lives has been truly shattering, while for others, the impact or severity of the trauma has been a lot milder. But we all carry trauma in our bodies and in our DNA.
Increasingly, trauma therapists are turning to yoga for its indisputable and remarkable effects on people struggling with the effects of trauma. There is a growing solid body of evidence that modified yoga; taught by specially trained individuals in a therapeutic context, is an amazing tool for healing and empowering people who have experienced trauma. The objective of Trauma Sensitive Yoga is not to dredge up emotions or memories, but instead to help clients have a heightened sense of body awareness, embodiment, choice and empowerment. These simple outcomes have a profound effect on trauma survivors and are proving more potent than other previously used modalities for trauma.
The term trauma sensitive yoga was first coined by David Emerson, the founder and director of yoga services at the Trauma Centre at the Justice Resource Institute in the US. David Emerson created Trauma Sensitive Trauma Centred Yoga (TSTCY) in collaboration with trauma expert, Dr Bessel van der Kolk, and the programs are solidly based in trauma, attachment theory, neuroscience, and yoga. You may be thinking, but isn’t all yoga suited to helping with the release of trauma? Turns out it’s not. Trauma is complex and too often in trying to heal it we, unfortunately, do the exact opposite and can end up re-traumatising or causing further shut down. There is a fine line to tread in treating this well. So what exactly is a trauma sensitive yoga class?
Befriending Your Body
Trauma Sensitive Yoga is vital in helping people who have experienced trauma to learn how to calm the mind and regain safety in their body by noticing and learning to tolerate physical sensations. But this is not a yoga style to be used in the ordinary practice of yoga or employed at your local yoga studio. Emerson: “It’s a serious clinical intervention and an adjunctive aspect of a broader psychodynamic therapy.”
Trauma Sensitive Yoga brings back a sense of empowerment and choice for people who may have felt choiceless and powerless. According to research, yoga has greater beneficial effects in alleviating traumatic stress symptoms as the best possible medications. One study with a group of women who had suffered domestic violence, and were exposed to a 12-week trauma sensitive yoga course of one class a week, showed a reduction in severity of PTSD symptoms and frequency of dissociative symptoms, and gains in vitality and body attunement.
I relate to what David Emerson says as I’ve experienced this in my own work as a therapist. Most victims of trauma feel invisible or not fully there, because of the neurophysiological response to trauma. Something one of his clients shared with him, after undergoing some of his yoga programs, struck me as particularly poignant – one lady said she had spent a long time feeling like an outline, and that yoga had defined her and also helped her to fill in the blanks.
Today, Trauma Sensitive Yoga is being practised around the world, in a variety of forms, with hugely positive results. By accessing those places in the body and the subconscious that we just cannot get to with mind-based therapies, yoga is freeing people from the ghosts of their past traumatic experiences. It is supporting them to move into a future where they are able to connect with themselves and others, and feel more embodied, as they are released from being a prisoner to the traumatic symptoms and memories that were holding them captive.
Please contact me for more information about Trauma Sensitive Yoga Classes and sessions.