Trauma-sensitive Yoga: The why to

The more research is done regarding the treatment of cPTSD the clearer it becomes that approaches like talk therapy and exposure have their limits. Talk therapy misses the fact that it is our body that stores traumatic memories and many chronically traumatized patients never reach the stability needed for successful exposure. One useful addition to classic therapy is body work. The probably most researched body-focussed approach is trauma-sensitive yoga. (More about the polyvagal theory research)

 

What trauma-sensitive yoga can teach us

 

Being present

Trauma puts our focus on the past. When we get triggered, we even respond to the past instead of the current situation. In trauma-senstive yoga we practice to be in the present with our body, even when it gets stressed. It trains us to experience the stress as something happening today, which helps to stop flashbacks and stay oriented in time and space. Being present is the same as being with our bodies, as we experience the Now through our senses. The mind cannot be present without being embodied. Try. Trauma-sensitive yoga can also help us to reduce anxiety that is based on our thoughts and fantasies about the future by anchoring us in the Now. Right here and right now there is no reason to despair.

 

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is based on a sober observation of what is going on, without adding an evaluation. Evaluations often increase our sense of suffering within the situation. Mindfulness also takes time to respond in a level-headed way instead of blindly reacting; it might even refrain from responding at all. We train ourselves to do this in trauma-sensitive yoga by observing our body and physical sensations throughout the exercises, without judging our performance, and by gently exploring if maybe something is uncomfortable but also unthreatening. This will help us to manage stressful or triggering situations in real life. It can stop outbursts of anger and unnecessary flight responses and lead to more conscious choices.

 

Sensing our bodies

The experience that our body was hurt and violated makes us not want to have a body. It is common that survivors dissociate body awareness partially or completely, sometimes feeling like little more than eyes, that watch the world. Sensing our bodies might seem like a threat to us. Trauma-sensitive yoga is a gentle way to approach our body again. We can carefully allow ourselves to be aware of as much of it as we can handle, beginning with single body parts. We can start at a very low level of body awareness and build from there. Over time we can learn to connect the body parts and develop a more integrated physical experience and even a sense of flow in our movements. In my opinion this makes trauma-sensitive yoga superior to body approaches that require a fluid full-body experience that some survivors are not capable of.

 

A new relationship to our bodies

Trauma survivors often learn to fear and hate their bodies for being vulnerable, weak, helpless etc and for being a source of triggers all in itself. The body feels like a threat, not like a safe place to live in. Some try to feel more safe with their body by taking self-defense classes to overcome the sense of helplessness and weakness. But these classes hold an element of aggression that could be triggering and it might overwhelm chronically traumatized patients who don’t have a basic idea of what physical safety could feel like. Trauma-sensitive yoga is a more gentle approach to creating a sense of safety. We can experience physical safety on the yoga mat as we stay with our body and experience that nothing bad happens. We practice being gentle with our body instead of pushing or punishing it. Over time we will learn to partner with our body instead of fighting it and to face challenges with self-love and self-care and experience true strength.

 

Self-regulation

Experiencing too much (hyperarousal, intrusions) and experiencing not enough (hypoarousal/dissociation/avoidance) are at the core of PTSD. Trauma-sensitive yoga offers an intervention for both types of dysregulation by adding grounding and relaxation for hyperarousal and activation and balance for hypoarousal. We can use our body to help us regulate strong emotions. Practicing relaxation can also improve our sleep.

 

Expanding our window of tolerance

PTSD means having a low tolerance for stress. We quickly react to difficult situations by going into hyper/hypoarousal. Trauma-sensitive yoga helps us to practice to stay with our body, breathe and be calm, even when some of our body sensation might be uncomfortable. The window of tolerance can expand as we grow our ability to feel unpleasant things. We experience that they are not a threat, that they have a beginning, middle and end and that we can breathe and tolerate it. This can be an important preparation for further trauma work, but even if we never face exposure, it will increase our daily functioning.

 

Grounding

Hyper/Hypoarousal can make us feel like we are losing contact with ourselves and reality. Things start to float. Trauma-senstive yoga teaches us a firm connection to the ground that we can experience with various body parts as we do exercises lying, sitting or standing. Every pose has a great emphasis on stability and connecting throughout the body and with the floor. Practicing this can help us with grounding when we get triggered. It stops the floating sensation and helps us to be present.

 

Curiosity and exploration

Chronically traumatized children often lose their sense of curiosity. Trauma comes with a constant expectation of punishment or harm. Maybe we found one way of doing things that we believe creates the least suffering for us and although it is not ideal we are too scared to try something else. The yoga mat offers a safe space where we are invited to try out small changes, maybe even just whether we hold our palms up or down for a pose. Nothing bad will happen if we try modifications because it really is just yoga and on the yoga mat it is right to try things out. The physical experience that exploration can be safe will slowly seep into real life and give us courage to try new things. A curious life is a happier life.

 

Being more centered

PTSD often means that we are not just disconnected with our own body, emotions and needs, we are actually focussed on the world and the people around us, always hypervigilant and looking for a threat. It means that our actions are determined by the world around us instead of who we are. Trauma-sensitive yoga can help us to return to ourselves, to focus on what is within us, our own needs and wishes, personality and choices. Experiencing that we are more than just a reaction to the outside world can help us to define our personal boundaries and live from the inside out. Being more centered will result in more balance in our emotions and actions. We can learn to be ourselves.

 

Being powerful

Experiencing abuse has often taught us that we are helpless, that we cannot control our body and that we don’t have choices. This was a real, physical experience and we can’t use our mind to think ourselves out of it. Our bodies need to have a new experiences that over-writes the old one. Trauma-sensitive yoga is full of small choices. By practicing to make these choices we can overcome our sense of helplessness (more about that here) and our body can learn that today we are powerful and free. When we learn to use our options for choice, it helps us to leave our passivity.

 

Sense of agency

Having a sense of agency basically means that we believe that when we do something, it makes a difference, that we can influence ourselves and the world around us by our actions. This inner belief gets harmed when we experience violence and abuse, a situation where we were made helpless and couldn’t defend ourselves. Today we are grown up and our actions do make a difference, but maybe we don’t feel that deep down. It is yet again a situation where our mind fails to make us believe things that our body has not experienced. In trauma-sensitive yoga we are encouraged to listen to our needs and change small things to improve our experience. That could be using a blanket, opening the window, not doing a stretch so deep that it hurts, choosing a comfortable variation of a pose etc. Our choice will result in a change. The yoga mat is a safe place to experience that it does make a difference when we choose to act on our own behalf. We can actively influence our experiences in life.

 

Self-esteem

PTSD is marked by chronic shame. We lost trust in our bodies and our agency. Just even having a body can feel shameful, because of the helplessness of crossed boundaries with experienced with it. We might judge every signal our body is giving us as bad and shameful. Being with our body in trauma-sensitive yoga can teach us new appreciation for it. We experience that we are capable of doing all kinds of poses with our body, that it is actually strong. We learn to listen to the signals our body is giving us and by responding to them in a gentle, caring way we can make peace with the body we live in. As our relationship with our body grows, we learn to trust it again when it points out our needs. Being able to trust our body to make sense and to be capable does wonders for our self-esteem.

 

Moving in sync

Trauma messes with our natural rhythm. One place where we can see this clearly is our breath. Survivors tend to breathe very shallowly, often through the mouth and even hold the breath a lot. Trauma-sensitive yoga helps us to practice awareness of our breath and to move with the rhythm of our breath, even when things feel a little uncomfortable. This practice helps to be more relaxed and less anxious during the day and to keep breathing when stressed, so that it is easier to soothe ourselves.

 

Connection

Traumatic experiences damage our sense of connection with other people and the world. We might feel like strangers who cannot truly be part of a group, who cannot be at home in this world. Doing trauma-sensitive yoga in a group can help us to reconnect on a deeper level than we can manage through communication. We move in sync with others, breathe in sync with them and experience a shared practice with an awareness of our body and their body being in one room together, sharing one rhythm. This physical experience can help us to create better connection with the people in our life through improved attunement.

 

The yoga mat offers a safe place where we can practice all these things. Eventually the lessons will spill over the edges of the mat and seep into the way we manage ourselves, our symptoms and our lives.

 

If you are interested in trauma-sensitive yoga and want to learn more, I would recommend „Overcoming trauma through Yoga“ by David Emerson. It covers the basics for patients, therapists and yoga teachers as well as possible poses to start with.

 

 

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