“Trauma Sensitive Yoga – A Gentle Way To Manage Covid-19 Stress” is locked Trauma Sensitive Yoga – A Gentle Way To Manage Covid-19 Stress

Days ago, the government just announced that the circuit breaker will be extended for another month until 1st June 2020. Everyday, we see the number of Covid-19 infections rising by more than a thousand. It is stressful to go out, it could be equally stressful to stay at home managing work and children (if we are lucky). We could also be the unfortunate ones who have lost employment due to Covid-19 and struggling financially.

Stress can take a physiological toll on our bodies

Years ago when I first started teaching Yoga, I was entirely focused on anatomy and body alignment. In one of my private therapy sessions, I was working with a woman who suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome and lower back pain. As our sessions progressed, our lessons focus evolved from solely physical exercises to include breath work and meditation and came to the discovery that most of her physical ailments were caused by childhood neglect and trauma. By gradually coming to terms with her trauma through breath work and meditation, she was able to resolve most of her physical problems.

While short term stress is helpful for get the job done. Long term stress can cause or exacerbates serious health problems. Our bodies struggle to find balance and rhythm under chronic stress, sleep deprivation or mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety could ensue.

There is no right or wrong way to practice Yoga

Trauma Sensitive Yoga is an evidence based practice that emphasises healing trauma through the body. This practice has almost 20 years of research proven to be effective for adults and youth affected by traumatic stress, complex trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other related behavioural and emotional conditions.

The term Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) was coined by David Emerson, E-RYT, founder and director of yoga services at the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute in Brookline, MA, to describe the use of yoga as an adjunctive treatment within a clinical context. The practice, pioneered by experts such as Bessel van der Kolk, MD, and championed by others such as Richard Miller, PhD, CEO of the Integrative Restoration Institute and cofounder of the International Association of Yoga Therapy, aims to help clients regain comfort in their bodies, counteract rumination, and improve self-regulation.

In my first Trauma Sensitive Yoga class by Kristen Pringle, one of the few TCTSY trainers in Australasia, I was surprised by how much freedom I had in deciding in where to be and how to move my body.

I have been practicing Yoga for the past 14 years, and was used to receiving strict instructions on how to breathe and move my body into a particular position. In contrast, this freedom and autonomy in a yoga class felt rebellious and daring.

Kristen was cueing, ‘If you would like, you could possibly extend your arms to the sides or raise them up. If you would like to do something different from what I am offering, please feel free to do so. This is your practice, there is no right or wrong way to practice yoga’.

 

“Trauma Sensitive Yoga is an evidence based practice that emphasises healing trauma through the body. This practice has almost 20 years of research proven to be effective for adults and youth affected by traumatic stress, complex trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other related behavioural and emotional conditions.”

We must be the authors of our recovery

During my experience of Trauma Sensitive the environment encouraged inward observation. The lights in the room were dimmed and there were no mirrors. I felt safe and comfortable to notice what is happening in my own body without judgment. I chose to sit in the chair and started to drown out Kristen’s voice, letting my sensations take center stage.

Afterwards, we learnt that TCTSY is intentionally invitational and non-coercive, so that participants can make their own choices according to how they feel in their bodies. By making choices based on sensations, participants find their own ways to release tension, reduce and control fear and arousal, and tolerate sensation.

This is in contrary to the traditional prescriptive method where participants are told what to do to release tension and reduce arousal.

This practice is based on the growing understanding that the first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure.

When a person undergoes trauma, it takes a heavy toll on both her body and the brain. Through continuous exposure to trauma, her body anticipates trauma causing an individual more likely to experience fight, flight or freeze responses.These could include hyperarousal and hyper-vigilance, avoidance and numbing of sensation. TCTSY can help participants learn to recognise physical sensations and regulate their physical responses, thereby creating a sense of safety in their bodies.

 

“This practice is based on the growing understanding that the first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure.”

What Is Interoception And How Does It Negate Trauma?

David Emerson explains, trauma researchers have demonstrated that many of those areas of the brain are affected by trauma and are under-active in those who are traumatised. These parts of the brain responsible for interoception, that help us to feel ourselves and provide an identity of the ‘material me’ are our insular cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex.

Why is interoception so important? Let’s imagine if we cannot feel our internal states. We do not know if we are feeling hungry. We do not know if or where we feel pain. We do not know if we feel safe with someone or in a place. Obviously, a lack of interoception can be crippling. Individuals who have experienced trauma often have heightened or reduced states of interception as a way to cope with the trauma.

“At times people who have experienced trauma do things do things with their bodies that seem hurtful. “ Emerson says, “This is because they’re trying to work out a relationship to a body they don’t have direct, reliable, sensory access to. It therefore becomes an antagonistic, violent, painful endeavour that’s probably based in part on under-active interoceptive pathways.” When working on the study with van der Kolk, Emerson and the researchers observed the pathways of interoception becoming more active in a small brain scan cohort of individuals who engaged in trauma-sensitive yoga.

When practicing trauma sensitive yoga which emphasises on sensations, with no visualisations, individuals can ground their sense of self and reality through their interoceptive experience and be present.

A New Way Of Looking At Yoga

Coming from a Hatha and Iyengar yoga background and a mainstream Singapore education, where top down teaching and rote learning are norms. This could be a huge culture shock. In Hatha yoga, strict alignment and modelling of teacher are ways to excel in the practice. Similarly in our mainstream education, answering questions with the right words will grant you high examination results.

In contrast TCTSY is a free and self directed practice. In my early days of sharing this practice in my yoga classes, I had many participants looking confused when I used invitational language and they ended up copying what I was doing. It can take a while for people to learn that they have real choices. After all if we boil it down to the essence of yoga as illustrated in Bhagavad Gita, “Perfection in action is yoga” because perfection is expressed through being present in the action and yoga happens when the mind is not caught up in the results of the act.

References
1. Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
2. Khalsa, Rudrauf, Feinstein, & Tranel, 2009

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