Understanding what trauma is and how it shows up in the body and mind are essential first steps to understanding how yoga can be a part of the solution.
What is trauma?
It’s safe to say that all of us have felt stress in our lives at one point or another. But what makes everyday stress different from trauma? Trauma refers to an event that overwhelms our ability to cope and respond. When we experience trauma, we feel helpless, hopeless, and out of control.
A person is traumatized when they can’t bring their mind and body back into balance after the event is over. In other words, if you experience a stressful event that you do not recover from, then that event is traumatic.
Understanding trauma matters and should be a must for every yoga teacher
As a source of long-term stress, unresolved trauma can impact our physical, emotional, mental and behavioural state. For people who have experienced trauma, there can be long-lasting, chronic effects on how they think, feel, and behave and their overall health. Understanding how trauma shows up in the brain and the body allows us to address its symptoms, such as depression and anxiety.
When a yoga teacher understands that students walk into class carrying lots of different experiences in their body and hearts and that during class they may connect with parts of their body and psyche that they have shut off from, they will treat them differently if they see them struggle or get distracted. They have an opportunity to normalize how uncomfortable it can be and offer techniques to work with that discomfort.
A trauma-informed perspective asks us to come at our students with compassion and curiosity rather than judgement or pressure.
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