An Introduction to Trauma-Informed Yoga
When I tell people I teach trauma-informed yoga, eyes often light up with curiosity. Here I share some trauma-informed yoga principles and what you can expect in a class with me.
Before talking about trauma-informed yoga, let’s take a moment to understand trauma.
When people hear the word trauma, it’s common to think of events like war, a bad accident, or sexual assault. Trauma can feel like a word reserved for certain types of severe events and experiences.
You may not see yourself as a survivor of trauma. I know that for a long time I didn’t see myself this way. I felt my life experiences didn’t deserve to be included in this term. The truth is that nearly everyone has experienced some level of trauma–whether large or small, isolated or ongoing.
What Is Trauma?
Trauma is any deeply distressing or disturbing experience that overwhelms a person’s capacity to cope.
This can include experiences such as:
- A parent not being emotionally available
- Racism or various forms of discrimination
- Chronic illness or medical injury
- Ongoing lack of essential resources like food and shelter
- Loss of a loved one
- Divorce
- Emotional abuse
- Natural disasters
- Living with someone with addiction issues
- And countless other examples
Trauma can also include secondary and vicarious trauma, which refers to indirect exposure, such as a child welfare worker receiving reports of child abuse.
How Trauma Affects Your Brain and Body
Trauma leaves a lasting impression on the mind, body, and brain.
Even though the impact of different types of trauma can vary, the body still absorbs the traumatic experience. If a person experiences a traumatic event, the body automatically needs to protect itself and goes into a fight, flight, or freeze reaction. This response is stored in the nervous system as a stress response, even when potential threats have been resolved.
Survivors can often experience long-term effects such as hyperarousal, hypervigilance, numbness, dissociation, and emotional dysregulation.
How Can Yoga Help Heal Trauma?
Yoga can help recalibrate your nervous system as you:
- Begin to inhabit your body and increase body awareness.
- Develop breath awareness and skills to regulate your breath and emotions.
- Cultivate a sense of curiosity toward your internal experiences.
- Work within your “window of tolerance”, the optimal zone of arousal or stimulation in which you’re able to function and integrate new information most effectively.
- Access the space within yourself to meet discomfort and challenge with courage and compassion.
What Is Trauma-Informed Yoga?
Trauma-informed yoga is an approach to creating a safe, supportive space in which students can learn emotional regulation skills through connection with the breath and increased body awareness.
Though many yoga classes may be beneficial, not every yoga teacher is trained in understanding trauma and how to hold themselves and the teaching environment in a way that is sensitive to trauma and supports healing.
Below I’ve assembled some of the key guiding principles of trauma-informed yoga so you can get a glimpse of what sets this way of teaching apart from other experiences you may have encountered.
As you read through these principles, you may notice that they’re quite relevant to what creates a calm, safe space for highly sensitive people as well. While I’m not grouping highly sensitive people with trauma survivors, the overlap in what feels supportive is noteworthy. And of course, the same fear response is activated when HSPs feel overstimulated or trauma gets triggered.
Whether you’re highly sensitive, have experienced a trauma, or both, I highly suggest looking for teachers trained in trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive yoga.
9 Principles of Trauma-Informed Yoga
1) I assume that anyone coming to class may have experienced trauma so I teach in a way that is sensitive to trauma no matter who shows up.
2) I recognize students as the experts on their bodies and experiences.
3) I regularly remind students of their personal agency and options available for positioning their bodies, moving, breathing, and where they place their attention.
4) I strive to ensure that my classes are accessible by teaching positions and ranges of movement that are available to everyone.
5) I teach poses, movements, and ways of breathing that are gentle, slow, and facilitate calmness, but also structure classes to allow space for self-paced movement.
6) I encourage my students to meet their feelings and experiences with compassion and meet the whole student in front of me with the same compassion and care.
7) I aim to minimize stimulation (low ambient music or no music, no scents, calming lights, managing my voice, and so forth).
8) I use language of inquiry to encourage students to explore movement and stillness as it feels suitable to where they’re at rather than using rigid language and instruction.
9) I refrain from hands-on assists for the most part. There are exceptions I won’t get into, but I only use touch with full permission and clear, supportive purpose.
Plus, One Principle Many Leave Out
There is one final guiding principle that I include that I find many trauma-informed yoga teachers overlook. And this is that I do my best to respect the source culture of yoga.
Many trauma-informed trainings advise leaving out Sanskrit words, teachings from yoga texts, and so forth out of concern that this could be triggering or confusing to trauma survivors.
What this approach sadly leaves out is that this can re-traumatize other students, particularly South Asian students, many of whom may already feel yoga has been whitewashed of its roots, the Indian subcontinent and the historical yoga texts written in Sanskrit, in order to serve a more “Western” and white population.
So, I don’t shy away from using Sanskrit or teaching yoga philosophy my classes. I simply aim to incorporate them skillfully by defining terms and having a clear purpose for what I’m teaching. To me, this is a vital component of creating a safe, supportive space for all of my students while honoring the tradition.
For more about trauma-informed yoga, read: