While at a movie night at my local yoga studio a few years ago, sipping on my herbal tea, I started getting goosebumps. Since then I’ve come to recognise those emotional shivers as a signpost that whispers “Keep going, you’re on the right track.”
The movie I was watching was talking about trauma, PTSD and how yoga can heal. It was a couple of months before I started training as a yoga teacher and I could already feel a million ideas bubbling inside me.
Fast forward 6 months, yoga teacher certificate in hand, and I’m sitting in a room full of yoga teachers, listening avidly to Shirley Hicks teaching us how to teach trauma sensitive yoga classes.
What I learnt and un-learnt in that room that day has shaped the way I teach every yoga class.
I’ve taught many yoga classes specific to first responders, veterans and military members, but I bring these principles to every yoga class I teach, because I don’t necessarily know who is in the (virtual?) room and because trauma takes many forms.
If you’ve experienced trauma in your life, if you’re experiencing PTSD, you might have heard that yoga can help.
And, while yoga is, by definition, therapeutic, the way yoga is taught isn’t always trauma sensitive.
How do you choose a yoga class and a yoga teacher that can support your healing?
(If you’ve never been to a yoga class before, and you feel intimidated to walk into a yoga studio and do a yoga class with a group of strangers, I hear you!! The many online options might just make that first step a little easier.)
First there are yoga teachers and yoga classes that are specific to trauma and PTSD, so that’s a good place to start.
This site has great resources: Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga
If that’s not an option in your area, or not something you want, here are a few things to guide you in your choice:
1 – Listen to their words:
✦ Is the teacher offering different options (without ranking them as better or worse, harder or easier)?
✦ Is the focus on your experience in the present moment?
✦ Is the teacher encouraging you to take action and move if you feel uncomfortable or in pain?
✦ Is the teacher using plain language (or explaining yoga jargon if using it?)
✦ Is the teacher welcoming your experience (instead of telling you how it *should* feel)?
2 – Look at their actions:
✦ Is the teacher giving hands-on adjustments? AND is he or she asking for consent (in a way that allows the student to say no) before doing so?
✦ Is the teacher staying at the front of the room?
✦ Is the teacher creating a safe and inclusive environment for all students?
Also remember that each of us could have a very different experience of the same class.
You might find some of these things above matter to you and other things not at all. Not every teacher will resonate with you, and that’s OK.
Choose a teacher who makes you feel safe, seen and heard.
Journalling prompts to cultivate choice:
✎ Write 20 words that you associate with the word “choice”. Don’t overthink it! What patterns do you notice?
✎ Where in your life do you feel out of control? How do you respond to that feeling?
✎ How else could you respond to it?
✎ If choice were an object, what shape, size, color(s) would it be? What texture, smell and taste would it have?
✎ Finish this sentence: Today, I have to…
✎ Now reframe it: Today, I get to…
✎ How does that feel?
(Of course I am still and will be forever learning on this big topic. I make mistakes and I so appreciate when students of mine share their experience. I recognise good intentions are not enough and that it’s part of my job to continue to educate myself.)