Trauma-informed yoga is a revolutionary teaching method that gives trauma survivors something they didn’t have before: more safety, choice, and empowerment. Beyond this, it improves your life on and off the mat.
As a fellow survivor of trauma, this style of teaching has changed everything I thought I knew about yoga and my healing. I invite you to read the 15 ways your life improves when you start a trauma-informed yoga practice.
What Is Trauma-Informed Yoga?
Unlike Hatha, Vinyasa, or Yin, trauma-informed yoga is not a style of yoga. It’s a way of teaching that avoids common triggering cues, poses, language, props, and more.
Its purpose is to allow you to feel as safe and comfortable during your practice so you heal your mind and body connection through movement.
I invite you to read this in-depth post about trauma-informed yoga for more information, the research, and if it’s right for you and your healing journey.
15 Ways Trauma-Informed Yoga Improves Your Life
1. Deepens Your Mind-Body Connection
I explain how trauma-informed yoga increases your mind-body awareness in the last section, but why does this matter?
After trauma, you may feel a strong disconnect from your body. You could feel like your body was used to hurt you and it’s not safe to fully live in and be present with.
Trauma-informed yoga gives you the space to connect with your body in your pace and your time. You don’t need to talk about anything you don’t want to. You’re allowed to take full choice and agency over your decisions. Overtime, you trust your body and ask what it needs. This is your mind and body reconnecting.
2. Release Stored Tension
If you have tension after trauma, you’re not alone. Your body braces for stress and overtime this leads to tension in areas like your jaw, shoulders, abdomen, hips, and psoas.
An effective way to find release is through trauma-informed mindfulness strategies, physical stretches, breathwork, and meditations.
The more you come back to your mat and focus on softening this tension through gentle movement, the more you’ll feel comfortable in your body.
3. Foster Self-Compassion
Are you kind to yourself? Do you give yourself grace if you make a mistake, hurt someone’s feelings unintentionally, or when you have a healing setback? Self compassion allows you to understand your healing, and that’s tough work.
You learn you don’t need to punish or judge yourself for navigating your healing. You learn this in your practice by honoring your progress, letting go of the need to perfect a pose, and instead, focus on how it makes you feel.
You deserve as much grace as you can give yourself in your journey, and trauma-informed yoga focuses on themes like self-care, love, and compassion.
4. Find Balance In Daily Life
Life gets busy. You have responsibilities, obligations, and constant demands to tend to. If you don’t pause and stop for rest, you’ll soon face exhaustion.
Your trauma-informed yoga practice gives you something that seems simple but is extremely powerful: rest. You learn that rest is not only self-care, but essential to finding balance in your daily life.
You understand that life can pause for a little (even 5 minutes is enough) so you can recharge, reset, and find the balance to carry forward.
5. Create Powerful Intuition
You might feel you can’t trust your intuition or that it failed you. I invite you to remember that intuition is not about predicting the future. Your intuition is still powerful. You just need the right tools and enough space to trust this inner resource.
Your practice invites this through chakra work and provides moments to explore what feels best in each pose. You may face confusion at the beginning of your practice, but overtime you’ll find moments of clarity and learn that your intuition didn’t fail you. You learn you can still trust yourself.
6. Embodiment Becomes Second Nature
Embodiment is a close cousin to intuition. It’s about asking what you need, and giving yourself the movements that feel right to you. In traditional yoga classes, you may go through the motions and not understand how to capture this “embodiment” piece everyone talks about.
Your trauma-informed practice gives constant reminders that what feels best for you is the best way to do a pose (without risking injury). This creates an embodiment practice instead of another going-through-the-motions class.
Here’s an example of traditional yoga cues:
Let’s move into a child’s pose with your knees as wide as the mat. Send your hips toward your heels and stretch your arms forward. This should feel really good in your low back and hips. Breathe slowly and deeply, sending your breath into your belly.
Here’s an example of trauma-informed yoga cues to promote embodiment:
In your time, I invite you to bring your knees as wide as feels comfortable for you. As you’re ready, send your seat back and extend your arms forward or to any variation you choose. Know you can come out of this pose at any time. You have the option to place a bolster under your chest for more comfort, or do anything to make this your best version of the pose. I invite you to breathe in any way that suits you or perhaps send your breath into your belly.
Both examples are wonderful ways to take a child’s pose, but the trauma-informed cues offer more room for embodiment.
7. Your Confidence Skyrockets
One theme explored in trauma-informed yoga is boundaries. Your solar plexus chakra (located near your abdomen) is where your boundaries arise. When you work in this area, you ignite your confidence center and strengthen your ability to set healthy boundaries.
Trauma-informed yoga teachers also understand that trauma survivors may feel unsafe to take up space. Gentle poses and opportunities allow you to practice this without overwhelming you or asking too much too soon.
8. You Still Receive The Benefits Of Traditional Yoga
Along with the benefits of trauma-informed yoga, you’re still doing yoga! This study explores the many benefits of a yoga practice:
- Lowers resting heart rate and blood pressure
- Improves sleep quality
- Relieves stress, anxiety, and depression
- Improves flexibility
- Builds muscle
You’re still receiving the benefits of a traditional yoga class and the ones that trauma-informed yoga provides.
9. More Patience With Yourself
It takes time to step into your body, connect with yourself, and find what feels best for you. In trauma-informed yoga, you are encouraged to take all the time you need.
When you give yourself unlimited time to do whatever you like in your practice, you learn to be patient with yourself and your needs.
Other classes might carry from one pose to the next, leading to feeling rushed. You might judge yourself for not moving fast enough or keeping up. Your time on the mat is a wonderful exercise for giving yourself time.
10. Mindfulness Translates Into Everything You Do
What I love so much about yoga is that my practice translates directly into my daily life. How you talk to yourself on the mat is how you talk to yourself in life, and practicing mindfulness leads to doing this on your own outside your practice.
You may notice you take a deep breath before eating or notice how water feels on your skin when taking a warm shower. These little moments add up in monumental ways.
You’ll arrive in the present more often, which is a huge milestone for trauma survivors. This allows you to manage difficult moments in your healing if you know how to gently return to this moment, right now.
11. Self-Care Becomes Priority
Self-care is not selfish. It’s how you fill your own cup before filling others. Your trauma-informed yoga practice is a self-care practice at its core.
You also learn through its gentle approach that your time to yourself is precious. Recharging is crucial, and rest is something you deserve always (you don’t need to earn it.)
You’ll take this into your life and understand when you need a break. Or maybe you just need an extra five minutes in the bath. Either way, it’s strengthening your ability to know that you, your self-care, and your wellbeing matter.
12. Perfection Takes A Back Seat
Because of trauma-informed yoga’s nature, the focus is more on your journey instead of perfect magazine photo alignment. Alignment is still important in poses so you avoid injury, but once you find healthy form, you’re free to explore as much as you choose.
You won’t need to worry about keeping up with the teacher, bending into shapes that don’t work for your anatomy, or doing every technique in the exact way it’s traditionally taught.
You’ll take this with you and give yourself more grace when you don’t do something perfectly. This is powerful for your healing journey.
13. You Develop A Tool Belt Of Calming Strategies
On the more technical side, you’ll discover different techniques that work with you and your body. You learn strategies you can use when you need a quick moment to calm racing thoughts, take a gentle break, or a quick moment of grounding before getting out of your car.
These allow you to feel in control of your healing because you know how to work with activating, stressful moments.
14. Your Practice Becomes A Powerful Stepping Stone To Lasting Healing
Trauma-informed yoga is an amazing addition to any care plan. It’s also a stepping stone to seeking additional support. Your practice gives you amazing tools, self-care, and benefits, but it’s not an entire care plan for healing trauma.
When you embody that your healing is important, it’s amazing how you’ll look at additional support options as a step toward lasting happiness.
I welcome you to explore additional support options in your own time and when it feels right for you.
15. Allows You To Embody This Truth: You Deserve To Heal
The most exciting way your life improves when starting trauma-informed yoga is you develop this sense of ownership over your body. The first time I felt this, it changed everything for me (and led me to teaching trauma-informed yoga.)
When you take time for self-care, learn effective strategies, connect with your body, and release stored trauma, you get a taste for how your life can still be beautiful after trauma.
It’s a journey – and a tough one – but everything changes when you first hear that inner voice say to you: You deserve to heal.
Because you do.
Overview
These fifteen ways trauma-informed yoga improves your life is not a definitive list. I still find benefits to my yoga practice I never thought I’d have. I’m excited for you to explore this practice (if you choose) and see the potential it can bring to your healing.
Take care.
