Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body

unbearable physical sensations: crushing feelings in your chest, agonizing tension in your shoulders, and burning pain in your abdomen, accompanied by the conviction that you are utterly helpless to do anything about it.

traumatized women: we observed that during Savasana, the state of total relaxation at the end of a yoga session, their muscles continued to twitch, as if still fighting an unseen enemy. We saw this also in our immunology research, where the immune systems of incest victims were shown to be excessively activated, as if they were in acute danger of b

the real problem is that they do not feel safe inside—their own bodies have become booby-trapped.

Yoga became a major cornerstone in our understanding that it is imperative to befriend one’s bodily sensations to overcome the imprints of trauma.

late body psychotherapist Thomas Hanna said in The Body of Life, We cannot hate or be angry without an organism that hates and is angry. We cannot love and hope and expect without actively, movingly, physiologically loving and hoping and expecting. Hate, anger, love, and hope are not “psychological states,” existing in some “mental” vacuum; they ar

Yogis discovered that there are two primary roots to physical suffering. One is craving and its many effects: greed, grasping, clinging, addiction. The other is aversion: fear, terror, hatred, avoidance, anger, resentment.

An experience becomes traumatic when this natural flight/flight defense is aborted. When you are assaulted and realize that there is nothing you can do to stave off the inevitable, this self-protective system may break down, resulting in the inappropriate activation of fight/flight reactions in response to minor subsequent irritations, and an inabi

Somatic experiencing, with an intuitive knowledge that there is a natural flow in and out of emotions, opens up an appetite for even deeper experiencing.

Many traumatized people learn that self-injury such as cutting can make these sensations go away. Others race motorcycles or engage in other high-risk activities, like prostitution or gambling, which they say gives them a sense of control or provides relief by giving them an emotional “