A simple approach to understanding Trauma
(And How And Why To Approach Wellness With A Trauma-Sensitive Approach)
The good news is you don’t have to drastically change everything about your teaching. BUT, you might be in for a wake up call!
If we want to create lasting change in the wellness space, we HAVE to look at the effects of systems of oppression and traumatic events on the bodies practicing with us in our studios. This is so important for the integrity and roots of the yoga tradition. Yoga is a method of trauma healing - which is at its’ very roots as a practice of unity and wholeness. The effects of trauma separate us as a culture as well as sever our mind-body connection. In the west, we have moved very far away from this intrinsic value into a highly aesthetically focused, fit-body, white, cisgendered, hierarchical practice. This is not what yoga is. More and more, teachers are becoming trauma informed every year because:
An estimated 70% of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives, and up to 20% of people go on to develop PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder.
Examples of traumatic events include: neglect, accidents, pandemic stress, combat, sexual abuse, colonization, political unrest, witnessing death or injury, ongoing stress, verbal abuse, to name a few.
Trauma is a highly nuanced and broad topic.
Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past, it is also the imprint left by that experience on the mind, brain and body. (Van der Kolk, 2003)
ADD and ADHD are very often misdiagnosed trauma symptoms. (Bodywise Institute, 2018)
Trauma is systemic.
There is no “cure” for trauma, however somatic and bottom-up modalities (like Somatics & Yoga) facilitate the integration and total healing of trauma.
Top-down approaches (talk therapy) simply do not fully address trauma.
Now, this is all okay. We are beginning to understand the topic of trauma with a broader, more empathetic lens. This is great. Now, stick with me while I give you some foundational information about trauma…
Trauma was coined 30 years ago when soldiers came back from war with shellshock. The word “Trauma” was then added to the DSM (The Diagnostic Statistical Manual that is used by therapists and doctors.) Back then, it was the only type of trauma that was recognized. It was only very recently that more forms of trauma were added to the DSM.
Crazy right?
Trauma can be understood as any experience that the body does not have the resources to fully process.
You will see many definitions for trauma. This is my simple definition that I like to use to define the word with all its nuances.
You’ve probably heard of the fight, flight, and freeze responses to fear. This is what we're working with here when we speak of trauma symptoms.
When a threat is registered in our brains, like a car coming towards us, our biological reaction is to activate a stress response - either fight, flight, or freeze. In common situations like the car speeding at us, or touching a burning stovetop, our automatic response helps us out greatly. Thanks brain! As you probably guessed, this is an involuntary response that we don’t have control over. Oftentimes and especially nowadays in folks, “fighting” has been imprinted as a pattern of response (which does not always look like actually punching someone - it can look like acts of self preservation, believing power will protect them, control, etc.) In some folks, “flight” has been imprinted as a pattern - which can look like being chronically busy, or needing to be perfect in order to be loved. Other folks, when they do not have the ability to fight or flight, they freeze. Freezing is the body’s last defence against pain. Now, “freezing” can look like complying, not saying something you need to say, shutting down, or even rationalizing or justifying a situation that hurt you. In yogi terms, the fight response is more of a Yang energy, and flight and freeze responses are more Yin. Fight is an outward facing response, and flight and freeze internalize the negativity on the self. Every one of these responses is innately in all of us - but the way our body chooses to react is a result of many different factors. This is the way I like to understand it.
There is an additional response to fear that was coined by Grace LaConte; and that is to “Face”. This is a healthy, and integrated response where we defend ourselves in an empathetic way that then results in preserving the self, understanding others, and mitigating the ego.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler describes an additional response to activation in modern day: Appease. This is where we people please and try to minimize any amount of confrontation.
This is where it gets a little nuanced - because depending on our response, the experience of activation of energy is either completed or interrupted. The interruption of this cycle is what results in trauma symptoms.
So, what does this mean?
Well, when we fight, our eyes narrow, and we become defensive. Most of the time this defensiveness is NOT necessary to preserve ur lives - but it sure feels that way. When flight is activated, we run. Think about the gazelle fleeing from the lion - the mobilized energy in her system was put to use. When we freeze, the system shuts down to avoid pain. For example, the gazelle doesn't have time to run and no energy to fight so she “plays dead.” What’s different between the gazelle and us humans, is after the gazelle plays dead (and doesn't get eaten by the lion), she gets to safety and physically discharges her energy. She flicks her ears and her tail as her system releases the rest of the mobilized energy.
With us humans, very often we do not have a safe space to discharge. So often, in reaction to daily news, vehicle accidents, verbal abuse, witnessing anger, and many other things, our system mobilizes large amounts of energy in order to keep itself safe, but we often end up never completing the experience. How many times after activation do you go into the other room and scream, punch the air, shake it off? Probably not often. When we do begin to thaw out a bit and some energy bubbles up, we become afraid of what the onslaught of energy might do to us, so we refreeze ourselves. We rationalize, we do what is acceptable and move on. Then, the bound up energy gets compounded in our system and manifests as - you guessed it - trauma symptoms. This happens so much in our society.
The portal out of the trauma cycle is the felt sense. (Eleanor Bramwell, 2018)
If we are dissociative, that is our body's coping mechanism to keep our felt sense as far away as possible to protect itself from feeling pain. But the felt sense is how we thaw out. Just like when you hold an ice cube in your hand, it begins to melt and change. When we hold a sensation in our awareness, much like the ice cube, it begins to change and become unstuck. Lots of trauma survivors are living from the neck up. This is why bottom-up approaches to healing are absolutely essential for somatic healing of trauma. The felt sense is a safe exit from the freeze cycle. As a yoga teacher, you can begin to unbind trauma by tracking the sensations in your body and simply holding them in your awareness.
In modern society, we simply do not have the means to consistently stay present with the felt sense.
So, this brings us to Yoga. The window of tolerance is something you teach your students in yoga classes perhaps without even knowing yet. It is also called the “zone of arousal.” A body can tolerate a certain amount of stress without a stress response. This is the place where the person is able to make clear decisions, breathe well, respond to the demands of the moment, able to reflect, and aren't withdrawn or overwhelmed. Often in folks with trauma, this window of tolerance is very small. The good news is that bodily awareness, interoception, and meditation help to expand this window.
When we hold a challenging Yoga posture, our heart rate goes up. In a student with trauma, this posture could very easily move them OUT of their window of tolerance and trigger hyper or hypo-arousal. In other words, their body is reacting to a stressor. In hot, heavy, high intensity Yoga classes, it is actually very common that a student’s body will activate their freeze response and become compliant, numb, and prone to injury. The student just ends up doing everything the teacher is saying, even when it doesn’t feel safe in their body because they are afraid of being called out or being seen as inferior. This simply turns their awareness away from their bodily needs - and onto pleasing the teacher. This is a very subtle but common experience in Yoga. If this feeling is the only experience of Yoga that a student knows, Yoga just becomes another “task”, and likely not a method of true healing and unwinding for that person. They perceive with their body and mind, that they are not performing “well enough” and in turn, have to keep up. This suggests a hierarchical system, and the student’s power is thus taken away and given to the teacher. Yoga should be empowering. Trauma-Informed Yoga is, at its essence, EMPOWERING. This is so important.
To Empower: To make someone stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life, and claiming their rights.
So in order to truly empower your students, a couple more things are needed.
This is about reclaiming the body, giving less power to the trauma and more power to our capacity to heal as individuals. This is where being a Trauma-Informed teacher comes in. You give your student permission to heal themselves. That's all. They do the rest. Yoga is innately a practice where we release, where we discharge, and also where we become resilient. Trauma-Informed Yoga does just that. It guides the student through sensations in the body in order for the student to explore where they feel safe and empowered in an activated state. Meditation, linking breath to movement, and asana is healing when the student feels SAFE to be present with the felt sense in their body. Safe is the keyword here.
Some examples of this would be inviting a student to move through cat and cow, while using language that implies that it is only an invitation - and to use their own discernment weather or not it feels safe in their body. In bigger postures like virabhadrasana 2, you might invite the student to move in and out of the posture while their awareness is in the activation of the legs. You might offer for them to release the posture if it becomes too activating. This is creating an attunement to safe and unsafe activation in their own body. And as we know, it is a practice, and attuning to this may take some time.
The goal of Trauma Informed Yoga is to uncouple the fear that is associated with the mobilization of energy in the body.
Is this landing? Take a second to read that again.
To further explain, when I speak of “the mobilization of energy in the body” I am speaking to the biological coping mechanism of fight, flight, or freeze that the nervous system evokes to protect us human animals from harm in any given situation. In trauma survivors, mobilization can be scary.
Something to note: Trauma can be very subtle. Trauma is not just things like combat and injury. It is very much psychological as well.
If a student becomes hypo or hyper activated in your yoga class, it may look like rapid eye movement, heavy breathing, shaking, white skin, shutting down, looking around the room, hyper-vigilance, or total confusion. Begin to notice these things, even if you're not teaching a trauma-informed class or a demographic that you know are trauma survivors. Start building in cueing that gives the power back to the student. Simply saying “if it feels good” might not be enough. Clarify that by saying “if it's a full-body yes, move onto this next variation with me” or “if it feels safe, lunge deeper into your left leg.”
Things to avoid when being trauma-sensitive in your Yoga teaching:
Saying the word “juicy”
Saying “spread” or “open wide”
Saying “push through” or “you know you want to”
Using the word trauma
Counting down in breathwork (may trigger combat memories in veterans)
Telling students they “should” feel a certain way in a posture takes the power away from them to feel what they feel
Using the word “pose” may trigger memories for sexual assault survivors
Things to do when being trauma-sensitive in your Yoga teaching:
Using the phrase “another option is” or “if you want to”
Inviting awareness of textures, smells, temperature, contact points, space
Attuning to the students so they don't feel the need to control the room
Have a grounded, calming presence
Being consistent with demeanor, language, ending class on time
Try not to single out students, even with positivity
These are just a few. If you'd like more resources on how to use trauma-sensitive language in Yoga, I suggest David Emerson’s book Trauma Informed Yoga in Therapy.
All of this being said, I invite you to the empathetic perspective that trauma is present at the very foundations of our colonized, western society. I encourage you to look at the discipline of Yoga as something that may have been distorted and glorified by us in the west as a goal or an image. Yes, Tapas, or discipline is an important piece of the Yoga practice. Perhaps our discipline can be radically looking at where we have complied, justified, or rationalized events that have imprinted trauma in our bodies. Maybe our discipline can be radically shifting our perspective to notice where we haven't safely been able to thaw. Perhaps our discipline is to truly start melting away internalized systems of oppression. As an ally, a friend, and a fellow Yoga Teacher, I invite you into this perspective.
However, unfortunately folks still see Yoga as a goal to get to, or only for able-bodied folks. How often do you hear someone say “I would love to do yoga, but I'm not flexible enough.” This very statement reflects upon the hierarchical, divided system that western yoga seems to perpetuate.
Of course, the first thing to do with trauma sensitive approaches to anything, is to take care of yourself. We can easily burn out or freeze up when our bodies are on overdrive.
Being trauma sensitive at its core is recognizing the root of trauma. Giving a name to all of the suffering that goes unaddressed in society. Being trauma-informed is a way of claiming our resilience, our joy, and our power. I hope you can gain a bit of wisdom and inspiration from this information, just as I have.
Please Note: this article DOES NOT supplement as a Trauma Informed Yoga Training. This information is simply an invitation to start understanding how to unravel trauma symptoms from a somatic perspective. Please see resources below for accredited Trauma Informed Yoga teacher trainings and relevant reads.
If you'd like to read more on decolonizing and reducing harm in Yoga, I recommend Susanna Barkataki’s book Embrace Yoga’s Roots.
Former mentioned:
Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps The Score
David Emerson’s Trauma Informed Yoga In Therapy
If you are looking for a trauma-informed yoga teacher training, I 100% recommend training with Adi Shakti through the Soulwork method online or in person. I have trained multiple times with her and Eleanor Bramwell, founder of BodyWise Institute in Costa Rica and it is truly a life changing experience. See Adi Shakti’s offerings at Soulwork.
Mallorie Buoy of Homebody Healing offers a comprehensive trauma-informed program for Somatic Therapists. This program has changed my life and work in Somatics immensely.
Check out more of my work on katemanuell.com and @sahaji_somatics
xoxo,
kate
