What makes trauma release yoga different from every other kind of yoga?

They say comparison is the thief of joy but it can also be an excellent guide post. Today we’re going to take a deep dive into the differences between traditional yoga and trauma release yoga. Our work IN today will hopefully empower you on your own real world resilience journey.

I want to start by saying I believe literally everything we do can be approached from a yogic perspective. We don’t have to be on a mat to practice yoga but most people even today believe that yoga is only stretching. Our challenge as instructors is to hide our eye rolls, and refrain from saying something cryptic  like “You know nothing, John Snow” and simply lead by example. Hopefully with a little grace. 

Grief and stress are part of the human condition. We don’t need to live very long before we experience either one. What’s interesting is the recovery process for each can be remarkably similar. Chronic long term stress can feel remarkably like grief. Our Work IN today is a look at how we can use the 5 stages of grief as a framework to better understand and conquer chronic stress for long term resilience.

In my own trauma release process using trauma release exercise there was a lot of grief that came out. It was the strangest sensation to feel sadness in my bones.

Yoga retreats sound so nice. Full disclosure, I’ve never been on a retreat per say and I have all the excuses to prove it. I’ve done yoga teacher training that lasted a week but I’ve never had the time to take away from my family, my job for anything like that that didn’t have some purpose to it. Shoot I can barely bring myself to take time off on holidays with my family. But I understand the appeal. I like the idea that you completely step out of your everyday life to rest and repair, recharge, maybe learn something new or simply take a full time out. I sometimes fantasize about running away like that. That seems like an awfully big privilege if I’m honest. And what is the point if nothing changes about the life you come home to?

Today our work IN is all about how to use retreats in intentional, mindful ways for practical, long lasting stress relief and resilience and an opportunity to try one without the big time and money commitment.

What we don’t want is to become locked into a past version of ourselves that is limited by that past experience. Today I want to focus on the way traumatic events both big T and little t can shape our physical, mental and emotional health and become part of our subconscious identity, an identity pathology, and lock us into the past. So today our Work IN is a conversation about how this happens and how we can start to detangle ourselves from the fixed mindset social sci op of identity pathology by first rediscovering who we really are and then redefining ourselves on our own terms.

Until about the age of 7 we don’t have the ability to reject any ideas or beliefs that we’re exposed to. Our baby brains haven’t developed that kind of filtering yet. So our early years are marinating in the beliefs of our caregivers about who we are and what we’re capable of in this world, what we should and shouldn’t do. By the age of 7 are well and truly programmed with all kinds of micro cultural expectations around health, wealth, education and behavior. For many people that micro culture includes identity pathologies and socially acceptable addictions like food and alcohol but also the emotional energy of stress and over commitment on one side and victimhood on the other. Our Work IN today is how to use the 3 things we’re always trying to let go of in yoga; judgment, expectation and attachment to defy definitions and expand our health beyond what the eyes can see and break our stress addiction.

Hypervigilance is a common stress and trauma response where it feels like you’re always on high alert. It’s also one of those things that opens the door to self medicating because when we can’t self regulate our nervous system we often turn to external chemical regulation. Our work IN today is how hypervigilance as a stress response can lead to socially acceptable addiction and natural ways we can self regulate for ourselves and our students.