The Australian Trauma Support Centre (ATSC) offers a range of programs and services to support your overall wellbeing, including Trauma Sensitive Yoga.
Do you have trouble sleeping? Find it difficult to control your reactions? Are you experiencing the same unhelpful patterns recurring in your life? These can sometimes be a trauma response to a past experience. Research has shown that yoga, combined with a treatment protocol, can significantly reduce trauma (specifically PTSD) symptoms.
Yoga can help you to learn and practice activating the “relaxation response”. The relaxation response is the opposite to our fight/flight/freeze response. It is our innate biological response to a regulation of the breath, which can foster a calm mind and gently encourage healing and recovery. Too often after traumatic events, we have not had the opportunity to regulate and heal causing trauma to remain held in our body-mind continuing to induce distress.
The art of understanding and engaging the body and breath in healing has been somewhat neglected until recent times. It is an integral part of healing and recovery for those who have experienced traumatic events and/or abuse. Yoga is the cultivation of the mind-body-breath relationship, a relationship which helps us to live more in the now, in the moment.
Often, people who have experienced trauma, or episodes of depression or anxiety, can feel overwhelmed with attending a traditional yoga class. At the ATSC we offer a one-on-one environment where we can explore experiencing the present moment, making choices, taking effective action and creating rhythms, all in a safe container with an accredited yoga teacher with a mental health background.
A Trauma Sensitive Yoga class can:
– foster self-compassion
– honour individual choice
– build safety and resilience
– strengthen coping skills
– complement therapy
Jess is an experienced yoga and mental health practitioner who weaves the psychobiology of trauma and recovery into the ancient wisdom and practices of yoga. Her approach is gentle, trauma-sensitive and self-empowering. During your session, Jess will introduce and lead you in exploring the gentle healing power of yoga. You will develop abilities to self-regulate the breath, release tension and develop mindfulness through emotional rebalancing. This trauma-sensitive practice will help you integrate your healing process through lessons and practices conjoining the body, the mind and the breath.
To register for a session or for more information about a yoga class, contact Jess on jess@atsc.net.au or 0477 017 649.
Trauma Sensitive Yoga FAQ's
A Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY) class is a place where yoga, mindfulness and breathing practices can help you become more familiar with your body and yourself. Since trauma can cause us to disconnect from our bodily experience and our emotions, you can also think of this as a safe place to start befriending your experience again.
Wear anything that you feel comfortable to move in. “Yoga clothes” are good for this, but not necessary. You can also bring layers so that if you get too warm or cold you have options to keep yourself comfortable.
Before, during and after class you will only be expected to share what feels comfortable for you. The Yoga practitioner only needs to know enough about you to guide you through yoga and mindfulness techniques and help you take care of yourself if you become overwhelmed. If there are things you want the Yoga practitioner to know in order to understand you better, you are welcome to share this. This could be anything from sharing about an injury or if you’ve had an emotional day.
Since coming into connection with your body can bring up new feelings and body sensations, it is possible that you could have a reaction to something and feel overwhelmed or triggered. If this happens and you need support you can either choose to find a comforting posture that helps you feel safe and grounded until you feel calmer, or you can leave for a moment and use some other means of calming yourself down, so you feel safer. You can talk to the yoga practitioner in your initial consultation if there are things that you think might cause a trigger or reaction for you. During this consultation, you can talk about choices and plans to take care of yourself if this happens.
No – you can think of the class and all of the postures and practices as an invitation and a choice, not an expectation. The class is also a place where you will also have a chance to listen very carefully to yourself and do what feels right for you and your body in the moment and to see how you’re responding to new things. This kind of listening and responding to yourself is what is most important. There may be certain postures or shapes that don’t seem helpful to you, or times when you need to stay in a posture that comforts you.
Yes – you may have questions about how to do certain postures or shapes or what to focus on in a breathing practice for example. The space is intended to feel comfortable and safe to ask any questions that help you to become more aware of yourself and feel confident within your body.
No, not unless you give permission. It’s important that you know you can choose to have a hands on assist if you want one, and you can also make it clear that you don’t. If at some point an assist is helpful or brings comfort in certain shapes and postures, the yoga practitioner will always ask and give you a clear way of choosing whether to allow touch or not. It’s important that you always feel in charge of this choice during the yoga class. If you know you never want to be touched during class you can tell us this up front. If you change your mind later, you can tell us that too.
The yoga practitioner does not need to know details about your past experiences, but we do need to know you well enough so we can be supportive if you become overwhelmed or need to calm yourself down during or after the session. It will also help us modify the shapes and postures if you have any health conditions i.e. high blood pressure, sprains, pregnancy etc.
Not at all! Just bring your curiosity. Allowing yourself to be curious is the best approach you can take whether you have previous experience with the practices or not.
Our classes are in a one-on-one format and run for 60 minutes.
Initial consultation – $85
Standard session – $75
The payment is required on the day of the session.