David Emerson - Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body

Acknowledgments

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough at North Atlantic Books for being so kind and generous and for believing in our topic. I would also like to thank Jessica Sevey specifically along with everyone else at North Atlantic Books who had a hand in this final productwhat a fantastic, patient, and professional group! Thanks to Dana Moore, Jodi Carey, and Jenn Turner for their specific contributions to the development of the Trauma Center Yoga Program and to all of the other wonderful yoga teachers who have been involved with the program. Deep gratitude to Bessel A. van der Kolk for being a champion of yoga in the field of trauma and for being somebody whom I am proud to call teacher. To everyone at the Trauma Center, Joseph Spinazzola, Margaret Blaustein, and Ritu Sharma in particular, thank you for supporting me and nurturing the yoga program with your tremendous intelligence and generosity. Finally, thank you to my family, especially Mandy and Hazen, and to my friends for supporting me throughout the writing process and for giving me a reason to get up each day.

David Emerson

I would like to thank my mentors and colleagues at the Trauma Center for guiding and supporting my learning about trauma treatment, and for giving me my professional home. Thanks to Dave for his calm presence, enthusiasm, and kind spirit in his leadership of our yoga program. Thank you to the therapists and yoga instructors who have attended our workshops, and to the women and men who have attended our yoga classes, for generously sharing their own experiences and giving us much food for thought. Many thanks to our executive director, Joseph Spinazzola, for his invaluable contributions to our manuscript and for supporting this project from start to finish. I also want to thank my clients, who have shown such strength and resiliency, and who are my greatest teachers.

Elizabeth Hopper

About the Authors

A registered yoga teacher, David Emerson is the director of yoga services at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 2003 he collaborated with Bessel van der Kolk, MD, the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center, to create the Trauma Center Yoga Program, which includes classes and teacher training programs. Emerson currently leads trainings for yoga teachers and clinicians interested in offering trauma-sensitive yoga to their clients.

Elizabeth Hopper, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist with a specialization in traumatic stress and has worked with trauma survivors for the past fourteen years. She is a staff psychologist, supervisor, and the associate director of training at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute. Dr. Hopper is also the director of Project REACH, a program that serves survivors of human trafficking throughout the United States. She offers national training and consultation on traumatic stress and alternative interventions for trauma survivors.

Conclusions

EXPERIENCE IS often our best teacher. Yoga students and practitioners have shared invaluable thoughts and insights with us over the years, based on their own experiences with the yoga classes and yoga-based exercises offered through our center. This email from a yoga student at the Trauma Center gets at the heart of the matter:

Although I was really glad we had a class, I also liked talking with you about the trauma stuff and yoga. Coming to yoga as a trauma survivor was so hard for me, I like to think about ways to make some of that easier for other people. I really appreciated what was said in class about gestures today. Of course, in a way, it is all about the gestures, the open chest and shoulders or the closed ones. The act of opening my shoulders or my legs in Happy Baby pose [a yoga posture that involves being prone with the legs up in the air and the hips wideneda very open and exposed gesture] may be physical, but it also carries a lot of meaning. A lot of the meaning is rooted in my body, and that is what makes the gestures and just thinking about being able to do them so profound.

For me it always comes back to the body and the memory that I store there. Maybe because I was so young, I feel like the abuse lies deepest in a part of me that is fundamentally a physical being. So it is some of the seemingly most simple things, like just thinking that it is OK for me to breathe in and breathe out deeply, without fear. Because in some parts of my body, I still remember what it was like to be afraid to make noise breathing, and so that gesture of more open breathing is in and of itself profound. Same thing with Standing Mountain posturethere almost wouldnt need to be anything more than that. Except that I really do like feeling strong in my body; that makes me feel very safe, and so that part of yoga has become important to me too. Happy Baby right now is a gesture that is too open for me to make physically, but I can think about it, notice it. See you soon.

In a way this email perfectly sums up the entire idea of traumasensitive yoga that we have described in this book. This yoga student is recognizing the impact of the trauma on her body, and she is experimenting with postures and breath, while being fully present with that knowledge. She is assessing what works for her and what doesnt. She is making choices according to what feels right to her, and she is learning to trust those decisions and the information she is getting from her body. She is integrating breath and movement into her life in a safe, effective way and is curious about the process. Please note that this person had been practicing trauma-sensitive yoga for several years when she wrote these emails. Her insights are hard won, but we can all benefit from them.

We hope that this book has offered survivors, clinicians, and yoga teachers a framework for understanding the impact of trauma, as well as an appreciation of the important role of trauma-sensitive yoga in healing. Above all, we hope that survivors have found something useful in the textsomething tangible that can be practiced. We encourage you to be creative, use what works, and put aside what does not seem helpful. Experiment, if you like, and decide for yourself.

Another survivor experimenting with yoga described her experience of coming alive again through her yoga practice. She recalled how she had felt dead, and her body was always cold and numb. She was disconnected from herself and isolated from other people. She began attending a trauma-sensitive yoga class and practiced yoga-based strategies with her individual therapist to help her remain mindful in session and to work on regulating her emotions. After one particular session with her therapist in which she was practicing Seated Mountain and breathing exercises, she raised her head and looked her therapist in the eyes. She was present, experiencing the current moment, and she wasnt afraid of what she was feeling. She had tears in her eyes, and a big, warm smile broke out on her face. I feel whole, she said.