What "Trauma Informed "actually means.

What "Trauma-Informed" Actually Means

Trauma-informed yoga isn't about fixing what's broken. It's about honoring that your body holds wisdom you might not consciously remember. It means:

• You're never pushed beyond what feels safe

• There's no "right" way your body should move or feel

• Choice is honored at every moment

• Your nervous system's responses are respected, not overridden

• Practice is an invitation, never a demand

After 20+ years of teaching, I've learned the most profound healing happens when we stop trying to force the body into submission and start listening to what it's trying to tell us. This is why every session—whether in-person workshops or virtual classes—is rooted in trauma-informed practice. Because your body's intelligence serves you when it is heard and honored.

Finding Language for What I Already Knew

Four years ago, I completed my Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) training—a methodology developed by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute. I went into that training already teaching intuitively in ways that honored choice and safety. Years of practice and my own lived experience had taught me to sense when someone needed space, when an instruction felt like pressure, when the room held tension that had nothing to do with the poses. What TCTSY gave me was language. Suddenly, what I'd been doing instinctively had a framework. There were words for why I'd stopped adjusting students without asking. Why I offered choices instead of corrections. Why I never said "you should feel this here."

The instruction format is radically different from my Kundalini training, where the teacher holds clear authority and students follow specific sequences with precision. Kundalini is powerful—transformative—but it's directive. The teacher transmits the kriya; the student practices the sequence. TCTSY flips this. Every instruction becomes an invitation: "You might notice..." "If it feels right, you could try..." "Take what serves you, leave the rest." The language is careful, considered, stripped of assumption about what anyone's body should do or feel. This isn't better or worse than Kundalini—it's different. And for people whose bodies hold trauma, whose sense of agency was violated, this difference matters profoundly.

What the Research Shows

The science supports what I'd sensed. Studies on women with PTSD found that yoga nidra significantly reduced PTSD symptoms, self-blame thoughts, and depression, while improving sleep quality and stress-coping abilities. Research shows that trauma-sensitive yoga reduces emotional distress and increases interoceptive awareness—the ability to perceive and understand sensations inside your body. For many trauma survivors, this capacity has been severed. To survive, they learned to disconnect from their bodies' signals. Women in trauma-sensitive yoga programs reported increased ownership, control, and connection to their bodies, emotions, and thoughts. Key themes included greater interoceptive awareness, emotion regulation abilities, and sense of control over their lives. This reconnection to internal sensation happens through practice that explicitly invites awareness in a shared, authentic experience.

Reconnecting to Internal Awareness

Traditional yoga often asks: Can you do this pose? Can you hold it longer? Can your body look like this? Trauma-informed practice asks: What do you notice? How does this feel inside your body? What does your body need right now? The shift is subtle. The impact is profound. When you've survived trauma—when someone else controlled your body, when your "no" didn't matter, when you had to leave your body to survive—reconnecting to internal sensation is both terrifying and essential.

Interoceptive awareness allows us to recognize body signals, regulate emotions, and make choices based on what we actually need rather than what we think we should do. It's the foundation of self-regulation, the pathway back to embodiment. In my practice, whether teaching pelvic floor work, breathwork, yoga nidra, or meditation, I create space for this journey. Not through telling you what to feel, but through inviting you to notice what's already there.

The Power of Shared, Authentic Experience

Here's what makes interoceptive yoga different from therapy or meditation alone: We each experience our own sensations in a shared, authentic experience. You're not alone with your body. You're in community, each person on their own interoceptive journey, held in collective safety. This matters because trauma often happens in relationship. Healing requires relationship too—but relationship that honors your autonomy, respects your boundaries, and returns choice to your body.

I needed both trainings. Kundalini taught me the power of practice. TCTSY taught me the power of language, choice, and interoceptive awareness. Now I integrate them—ancient practices shared through trauma-informed frameworks that honor each person's right to feel what they feel, choose what they need, and reclaim their body as their own. Because healing doesn't happen through being told what to do. It happens when we're given the safety to discover what we need, moment by moment, sensation by sensation.

Experience trauma-informed practice in the workshops and virtual sessions.

📧 info@startwhereyouareyoga.com
🌐 startwhereyouareyoga.com

Virtual classes starting February | Saturday workshops ongoing at Pass Creek Hall

📧 info@startwhereyouareyoga.com