What Is Trauma-Informed Yoga & What To Expect on a Yoga Teacher Training
Trauma Informed is a non-hierarchical, heart forward, and humanity centered approach.
WHAT IS TRAUMA-INFORMED YOGA
Trauma-Informed Yoga is a space that honors the nuances of the human experience and the facilitation of an environment where each practitioner can take agency over their own bodily autonomy, nervous system regulation, and power of choice.
A truly trauma-informed space embraces and welcomes all emotional realities while highlighting the undeniable truth that embodiment means discerning for oneself what feels right and what feels safe in each moment.
Embodiment practices, such as Yoga asana, are proven to be the most effective modality in trauma recovery. Hosting a brave space for folks to show up and feel into their bodies is a great privilege and responsibility. For many, yoga asana may be a completely new language and matrix to navigate.
For many, being embodied and thinking about the body is no easy task. Every time we step onto our mats, a courageous act is committed.
- A willingness to turn towards ourselves, instead away from ourselves.
- A willingness to notice sensation.
- A willingness to experience emotion.
- A willingness to be fully present.
- A willingness to face it all with an open heart.
- A willingness to feel what needs to be felt.
- A willingness to heal.
The practice of yoga — union of mind, body, heart, & soul — asks us to fearlessly examine the parts of ourselves, our lives, and our world that are not in union. It requires us to be radically honest about the disconnection that exists within ourselves and the world around us.
HOW YOGA CAN HELP TRAUMA SURVIVORS
Trauma-informed yoga is a therapeutic approach that recognizes the complex and varied ways that trauma can impact the body, mind, and spirit. Trauma survivors often experience a range of physical, emotional, and psychological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, hyperarousal, and dissociation. These symptoms can be difficult to manage and can interfere with daily life. However, research has shown that trauma-informed yoga can be a powerful tool for healing and recovery.
Why Traditional Yoga Spaces Don’t Always Work for Trauma Survivors
Trauma survivors often have difficulty inhabiting their body. With unprocessed trauma we will tend to orient toward threat and dissociate from the painful sensations, thoughts, or feeling states that arise in our physiology. A vital ingredient in healing one’s relationship to the body is reconnecting to it. As we dive deeper into this work, we learn that trauma is inherent and unavoidable. Therefore, it is essential to craft yoga spaces that are inclusive, welcoming, exploratory, brave, and supportive.
The Role of Choice and Agency in Trauma-Informed Yoga
Trauma-informed yoga is different from traditional yoga in that it emphasizes safety, choice, and empowerment. Trauma survivors often feel a sense of loss of control and safety, and may feel triggered by certain poses or movements. In trauma-informed yoga, participants are given options and choices throughout the practice, and are encouraged to listen to their bodies and only do what feels safe and comfortable for them. This helps to re-establish a sense of agency and control, which can be empowering for trauma survivors.
Trauma-informed yoga fundamentally understands that each individual has different needs and preferences based on what they have been through and how they are feeling in each particular moment. Because of this, it is understood that certain breath practices, mantras, affirmations, and meditations may not land for all practitioners in a supportive or beneficial way. This is why options are emphasized for everything from closing your eyes, partaking in pranayama, and opting to find seated meditation vs a lying down meditation.
Why Breathwork Is Not Always Calming
It is a common misconception that focusing on the breath is regulating and calming for all people. This is actually not the case. Trauma-informed Yoga gives folks the opportunity to decide for themselves what feels regulating and calming in any given moment on any given day instead of the Yoga Teacher assuming they know what will be supportive for their students.
WHAT TO EXPECT ON A TRAUMA-INFORMED YOGA TEACHER TRAINING
School Yoga Institute has been honored to offer Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Trainings since 2019. As we recognized an emerging desire for Yoga Trainings that focus on mental health, emotional intelligence, and social justice, we have spent the last several years expanding our curriculum and content with the abundant new research and information emerging in the world of trauma. Our Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher Trainings were created and are led by Jeanine Talento and Brooke Alexander, two of our most beloved and seasoned facilitators.
As our human consciousness and awareness expands, terminology around trauma, somatics, embodiment, and nervous system education are becoming a part of our everyday vernacular. While it is exciting for this verbage to be spread amongst the masses, it also risks the potential of dilution or misinterpretation. Because of this, we feel it is important to provide our prospective students with an accurate depiction of what they can expect to learn and experience in one of our Trauma-Informed programs.
Our Trauma-Informed offerings differ greatly from our Mystical programs. While we still cover, revere, and honor Yogic history and the sacred nature of these ancient practices – this specific methodology serves as a more modern approach to Yogic pedagogy.
We view our trauma-informed curriculum as a bridge between western psychology and eastern philosophy. Because of this, we have participants interested in teaching Yoga in more traditional settings, as well as those who are looking to share Yoga in more alternative settings such as in therapy, hospitals, schools, prisons, addiction centers, domestic violence centers, etc.
In all of our trainings, we come to understand that Trauma-Informed Yoga is a non-hierarchical, heart forward, and humanity centered approach. We learn how to curate any Yoga asana practice to be Trauma Informed, where students feel safe to artfully move through the practice in a way that suits their unique needs.
We offer a Trauma-Informed 200hr YTT, 300hr YTT and several trauma-informed continuing education programs. Depending on the participant’s career goals, the expectations when signing up for a trauma-informed Yoga Teacher Training may vary.
Here is a breakdown of the primary take-aways from each offering.
OUR TRAUMA-INFORMED YOGA TEACHER TRAINING OFFERINGS
Trauma-Informed 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training (Hybrid & Online versions)
Description
Our most intensive introductory trauma-informed offering. It covers tangible and concrete techniques for teaching Yoga, Meditation, and Pranayama in any setting, all through a trauma-informed lens.
Core aspects
- Stabilize: Slow Flow Yoga focusing on foundation, alignment, safety, and grounding.
- Metabolize: Yin Yoga for processing trauma with poses held for 3-7 minutes.
- Visualize: Vinyasa Yoga to explore new shapes in the body and challenge physical limits.
- Alchemize: Somatic explorations and embodiment practices to turn wounds into wisdom.
Trauma-Informed 300-Hour Yoga Teacher Training
Description
An advanced course for those who have completed a 200hr YTT, designed to offer a deeper understanding of trauma through a bio-psycho-social model, with a broader range of tools for prescriptive sequencing, somatic facilitation skills, and leadership/career building exercises.
Core aspects
- In-depth approach to understanding trauma presentations.
- Expanded toolset for prescriptive sequencing and somatic facilitation.
- Leadership and career-building exercises.
Trauma-Informed 50-Hour YACEP
Description
A continuing education course for RYT-200 or Mental Health Professionals, focusing on the baseline understanding of Yoga’s effectiveness in Trauma recovery. Covers Yoga history, the Sutras through a trauma-informed lens, basic nervous system education and Polyvagal theory, and considerations for offering meditation, pranayama, and yoga asana to trauma survivors.
Core aspects
- Yoga history and Sutras through a trauma-informed lens.
- Basic nervous system education and Polyvagal theory.
- Techniques for using inclusive and invitational language and holding space for trauma survivors.
Why Trauma-Informed Yoga Is Human-Informed Yoga
In all of our trauma-informed programs, we oscillate between self reflection and contemplation as well as professional development. We believe that the work we do on ourselves informs the work we are able to do with others. Yoga always requires an element of self inquiry — svadhyaya in sanskrit.
We believe that trauma-informed yoga is simply human-informed yoga because all of us will likely experience pain, heartbreak, loss, grief, longing, shock, loneliness and confusion at varying times and in varying degrees throughout our lives. How we process (or don’t) these emotional states that are part of being alive influences our capacity to stay embodied and present with the people we choose to work with.
There is an over reliance on intellectualization in our western culture. Somatic work, like trauma-informed yoga, reacquaints us with the intelligence that resides in our body. It slows us down enough to notice the fluctuations present in our physiology and nervous system so that we can reclaim and regain agency over how we feel. This allows us to ensure that we are not projecting or transferring anything unresolved onto the folks we work with.
Explore all of our trauma-informed programs and upcoming dates on our Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training page.
CONCLUSION
Due to the sensitive subject matter covered on these programs around traumatic events, mental health, addiction, disordered eating, etc. we have created a more in-depth screening process to ensure participants are ready and supported for the journey that is a trauma-informed Yoga Teacher Training.
If you are interested in learning more about all things trauma-informed, you can contact us or schedule a call. We hope to meet you soon!
Have more questions about Trauma-Informed Yoga or our YTT’s? We’re here to help!
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