Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)

This week's post takes a break from discussing the Yamas & Niyamas. I would like to share with you some of what I did over the weekend.

I took part in the 20hr Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) workshop. This work first caught my attention at a yoga conference I attended in NZ in 2018. At the conference, a wonderful yoga teacher who is also a clinical psychologist presented on the topic of Trauma Sensitive Yoga and took us through a practice. To this day it remains one of my most favourite classes I've ever taken. The ease with which the teacher granted full permission and agency created a beautifully safe space.

The yoga training I did for both my 200hr and subsequent 300hr teaching certification was very people-centred. Jayayoga's motto is ''safe, sustainable yoga'' and their training programme embodied these words. We gave alternatives for every shape and empowered students to follow along or take what they needed instead. We did not use the word ‘‘relax’’ due to triggering for some people, we asked every student about injury and taught from a space of encouraging compassion and self-enquiry. Rarely, if ever, did we offer hand-on adjustments. Permission was granted time and time again and we worked with many facilitators on the topic of consent. The Jayayoga bubble of safety was that of tremendous compassion and acceptance.

And still, with all of that acceptance and hours spent granting permission, I have had so many instances arise before me on a yoga mat where people either did not feel safe or they surrendered to a flood of emotion. I had students leave my class, I had students burst into tears. I had students freeze on the spot. I had students turn to face away from me in class. All of this was invisible to the human eye until I stopped looking and started seeing.

From their website ''TCTSY is an evidence-based adjunctive treatment for complex, developmental trauma or chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD''. The workshop I took was the first step on the pathway of my yoga spaces becoming safer, for every body.

Whilst TSY is a specific practice aimed as a treatment for a specific set of conditions, I see such value in this awareness in a general yoga class setting. It is understood 1 in 5 people have experienced sexual assault, 1 in 3 are currently in a violent domestic relationship, 25% of us have addiction in our families. Abuse is only one side of the coin, there are also those who have experienced disasters, illnesses and accidents. The reality is that the likelihood of having someone in my class who is living with trauma is high.

The yoga space is wonderful and also incredibly toxic. An Instagram scroll through the hashtag #yoga shows white, slim, beautiful able-bodied girls in gymnastic movements marketed as ''yoga''. Rarely will you see a representation of men, POC or people with disabilities. Bodies tend to be slim and muscular, rarely of different sizes. The splits and handstands are front and centre. Flexibility and gymnastic capabilities are celebrated.

In classes, we give shapes and techniques with an end goal, either flexibility or relaxation. Do A + B and you will be relaxed. Breathe this way and you will become calm. Do this sequence on repeat and your body will become flexible. Repeat this and you will be muscular and strong.

How do we know this? How do we know that everybody will become calm if they do what the teacher says, regardless of what is going on in their own body? How do we know that savasana is the ultimate relaxation when for many people the pose petrifies them? How do we know what's going on in someone else's body or mind? We don't.

(Another topic for another time is how Patanjali never claimed flexibility as the goal of yoga - that was us; privileged, diet-culture infused white folk. J O Y.)

People living with Complex PTSD (c-PTSD) most often have no felt sense of self. Mostly, they can not feel their feet on the floor, nor their legs on the yoga mat. Their nervous system is stuck in freeze mode, they disengage with their body. They are anywhere but here. They've lived a life of being told what to do, how to feel, what to be. Do they need that in a yoga class?

Of course, working with c-PTSD in a yoga environment takes years of continued education, clinical supervision and many hours of self-enquiry. I am not (yet 🙂 ) at that stage. But, I am at the stage of awareness and it is my responsibility to keep this work up, to remain curious about the experience of others.

As teachers, we have a beautiful opportunity to support people in their wellness journey. Yet, in order to do this, we have to keep ourselves in check. We have to spot our ego, notice when we are teaching for a power-boost versus when we are student-centred. Notice when we give commands vs options. Notice how often we become attached to the experience another is having. Notice what alignment cues really deliver and to whom.

I have many ideas for how I will incorporate this work into my weekly teaching schedule and will keep you up to date as I do.

For now, though, I will leave you with this. Agency matters. Options matter. Attachment and ego matter. People matter. Representation matters.

Love. Always, love

Leonie x