What is trauma sensitive yoga?
Yoga itself has a rich history of understanding – and multiple definitions – as does trauma and trauma theory. However ‘yoga’ roughly translates as “union”; it is about joining, or forming, a deep connection with ourselves, our world, our environment and in our relationships.
The experience of trauma and the experience of ‘union’, or ‘oneness’, or a deep connection with ourselves, can feel like very disparate concepts,; trauma can disconnect us from ourselves. A trauma sensitive approach to yoga helps to meet in the middle of those two experiences; the extreme experience of disconnection and the richness of deep connection that can be accessed through yoga.
Within yogic philosophy, we are all innately whole and inherently well. It is a state of confusion – ‘Avidya’ – that prevents us from having clarity around the state of ‘wholeness’. This can happen psychologically, systematically, culturally, and/or through traumatic experiences. Trauma sensitive yoga helps us to weave, gently and appropriately, practices that enable us to interact with and remember that sense of wholeness – it is always there but it gets forgotten.
The Viktor Frankl quote “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This quote can help to act as a bridge between the experience of traumatic stress and the experience of a yoga practice, as our yoga practice can help to widen the window, giving us a chance to choose our responses between the stimulus in every day life and how we respond to that.
For example, during our day we might encounter a trauma trigger, and between that trigger and our response, there is a space – which might feel non-existent without resources – and we respond or react in a habitual way, out of fear. This is not your fault; your threat response system is highly developed and looking for stimulus to keep you safe. But, suddenly the body can get flooded with the stress hormones that enable us to fight, fly, run, freeze, fawn or shut down.
Between that stimuli and our response, there is a space…and by resourcing ourselves through yoga practices, breathwork, therapeutic interventions etc. the more resourced we feel, over time, to grow that window of space or a ‘window or tolerance’. So, eventually we might be able to notice a trigger – and have capacity to choose our response – and in that response lies our growth and our freedom. This choice moves us away from habitual reactions that can feel disempowering, overwhelming and exhausting.
This page is a place to share some embodied practices that people have found helpful, including grounding, breathwork, flows and postures. I hope you enjoy.