There is supportive research to show that yoga is healing for trauma survivors. I created this post so you can pair research with my personal story to give you a more personal understanding of how yoga can support trauma healing.
Important: This post isn’t designed to give you an expectation for your own practice. We’re all wildly different, and what may have helped me might be different for you. This is to simply give you insight into one survivor’s story, and maybe spark inspiration in your own healing journey.
Can Yoga Help Heal Trauma? 6 Unexpected Outcomes
1. I Started Automatically Taking Deep Breaths When Triggered
I didn’t notice I was doing this until one of my therapists pointed it out during the session. Every time we talked about something difficult, I took a deep breath. I didn’t even recognize I was doing it! I paid more attention in my daily life, and realized that when I faced stressors, I took a deep breath. Anything from before filming or teaching a yoga class to experiencing a trigger in public.
This started because of my yoga practice. Breath is so vital to a yoga practice, and after enough classes and repetition, my body became used to this stress relieving exercise. I noticed I always felt much calmer after a few deep breaths, and unknowingly I took this outside of the classroom. I still put in a conscious effort to take a deep, cleansing breath if I need it, but I also catch myself doing this automatically.
Why does this help?
Triggers or other stressors can send our nervous systems into overdrive, and deep breathing is one way to return to your body and present moment. This happens by activating your parasympathetic nervous system. The more we feel safe in our environment, the easier this gets with time.
If you’re looking for simple breathwork to get started, I welcome you to read this blog post. This lists three simple breathwork exercises to help ease anger after trauma.
2. I Learned Uncomfortable Emotions Didn’t Define Me
Yoga philosophy teaches us that there is no good or bad, and that things just are. This isn’t meant to diminish or lessen how powerful certain emotions can feel after trauma (like rage, grief, and guilt). This helps us realize we are not our emotions, and they will pass.
This has helped a ton in my healing journey because when I’m experience strong negative emotions, I remember that just because I feel terrible, it doesn’t mean I’m terrible. This allows more grace and self compassion on the tough days.
When I remove judgement and instead focus on honoring my emotions, they become easier to understand and work with. This is definitely a huge leap in healing and isn’t always perfect. But it helps, and I include anything that is a healthy strategy in my healing.
3. I Became More In Tune With My Body
For the first year of my healing, I was completely out of touch with my body. I didn’t feel like I belonged to myself anymore. I learned a few mindfulness strategies that helped with anxiety, but nothing seemed to make a lasting impact like my yoga practice did.
I looked forward to my practice and being with my body and breath. This took some time and many yoga classes, but I found that listening to my body instead of trying to abandon it helped immensely in my healing.
This journey started small. First, it was a simple as, “I like this pose and dislike this one.” Then, I started taking more time for intuitive movement and not always doing what the teacher said. Eventually, I added props, experimented with different breathwork, skipped parts of yoga classes I didn’t care for, and did it all without feeling like I was failing somehow.
It wasn’t until I learned about trauma-informed yoga that I realized I was doing powerful work by doing what felt better in my body. This has the potential to strengthen your mind and body connection. I enjoyed doing what felt better to me, and choosing what to skip or add. I felt in control of my choices, body, and ultimately, this led to freeing myself from the “cage” of my body. I felt like my body became mine again.
This Also Helped With Tension Release
The more I learned about my body, the more I pieced together what seemed unrelated. When I’m experiencing more triggers or having a setback in my healing, I feel this in two places in my body: My shoulder, neck, and jaw.
These two areas become tight, sore, and uncomfortable. My neck became tight because I hunch my shoulders by my ears when I’m on guard or frightened. My jaw tightens when I’m trying to fight my emotions or experience anger.
It took years for me to make this connection. With the help of my therapist and consistent yoga practice, I now understand the first signs of this, instead of waiting. One time, the pain was so intense in my neck and shoulder I couldn’t move my head to the left for weeks.
Now, I feel the first signs of it in my body and take a pause. I’ll explore in therapy why I’m more hypervigilant or angry, then do specific yoga practices to relieve tension in those areas. I haven’t experienced intense pain like the one I mentioned before since.
4. It Steered Me Away From Unhealthy Coping Strategies
I’m not quite ready to share every unhealthy coping strategy I’ve tried in my healing (and I’m not sure I ever will be), but I used to cope with uncomfortable emotions by turning inward. I had the mindset that I didn’t deserve good things, and this led me to take out all my anger and hurt on myself. All this did was set my healing back even further.
Slowly, and often times in an overlapping way, I combined healthy strategies to ease out of the unhealthy ones. Yoga helped me find a strategy that focused more on self love than self hate. It took a long time to ease out of self-destructive behaviors, but change takes time.
When I woke up with extreme anxiety, I’d say to myself, “Coffee, then yoga, coffee, then yoga.” This naturally pushed any unhealthy strategies out of the way.
It didn’t always work or instantly turn me into a calm, at peace, loving person. But it kept me away from the rabbit hole of shaming, guilting, then finding an unhealthy coping mechanism.
5. It Introduced Me To The Real Meaning Of Self-Care
Self-care used to mean “bubble bath and nails,” to me. Now, it means something entirely different. A shower is self care. Brushing my teeth, flossing, eating regularly, budgeting my finances, taking a rest when everything in the world says, “push harder or you’re a failure.”
Self-care became something more than a hair conditioning treatment: it became self preservation. I welcome you to read more about self-care for trauma survivors, and how yoga might be a supportive addition to you self-care routine.
How did yoga teach me this? When I show up to my mat, it sends a powerful message: I matter. Time for me and my healing matters.
This doesn’t end once I leave my mat. It ripples through my entire day. It erases this need to perform and replaces it with simply living. Being present, acknowledging that the past is not my present and the future is always one step away from the present.
It brings an overall sense of peace that I made time for myself, and I get to fill my cup. I originally thought this would make me lazy or that my work performance would plummet, quality would go down, and I’d give up.
It actually made each moment more efficient, pleasant, and positive. Rest was all I needed to “hustle.” But at that point, it’s not even a hustle. It’s easy, simple, and enjoyable.
6. It Became The Stepping Stone To Seeking More Support
I was extremely stubborn when it came to seeking help for my trauma healing. I thought it would be dramatic because I didn’t think what happened to me was that bad. (I was still facing powerful feelings of denial then).
My victim advocate asked me every session to go see someone, but I’d say, “Mmm….no.” Friends would tell me additional support was my best option. But, nope. Wouldn’t go. I minimized my experience and tried to deal with it on my own. Eventually, my advocate made an appointment and walked me over to a counselor. I’m extremely thankful I went, but I still wasn’t sure it was right for me at the time.
A few years passed, and I became entirely devoted to my yoga practice. I loved how it made me feel, and it seemed to release feelings that talking about it couldn’t do. Talking only upset me and made me feel cold. (I thought talking about my trauma made me cold because I’d start shaking. I didn’t know this was a trauma response).
After enough yoga sessions, I realized: I’m worthy of support. I didn’t actively pick up the phone and make an appointment. I waited until my annual mental health check-in (something the military does) to make an appointment. It was one of the scariest phone calls, and it happened in the middle of a busy work day, but I knew it was time.
Without my yoga practice, and learning about self love, and learning that choosing myself isn’t selfish, and that my emotions aren’t me, I could finally talk to someone. I truly believe it was the stepping stone that sparked my healing journey.
No one told me to go, no one forced my hand, no one at this military base knew about what happened at my previous one. I finally chose support because I felt a tiny bit of healing and realized I was worthy of more.
Overview
My healing journey isn’t as smooth as I started yoga, went to therapy, now I’m healed. There were many paths, mistakes, victories, setbacks, and regretful moments. I don’t think anyone has a healing journey that is a simple three-step process.
We try, stumble, try again, become frustrated, feel so free and happy we can’t believe it, then stumble six steps back, wondering what just happened. I’ve learned all of the process is the process.
Any small step is a step. A small mindfulness practice became a yoga practice, which led me to therapy, which led me to trauma-informed yoga, which led me to seeking therapy again. The healing process is difficult, but I’ll always include yoga as part of it.
I wanted to share this to show you that a yoga practice can be so much more than a workout. The effects don’t stop at more flexibility. And they just don’t affect me. Here is some research about trauma-informed yoga and its effects on survivors (including sexual trauma and military sexual trauma).
I wish you the best on your healing journey, and I welcome you to explore support options if that’s something that interests you. As someone who was as stubborn as it gets, I understand. I welcome you to take as much time as you need.
Take care.
