Teaching Trauma-Sensitive Yoga by Brendon Abram

Author:Brendon Abram
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623172251
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2018-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

What is in a word? A lot of meaning. And for someone with trauma, a lot of that meaning may be hidden. For the survivor of sexual abuse it is fairly obvious that terms like bend over are inappropriate. For those whose trauma is related to death, calling Savasana “Corpse Pose” is decidedly unwise. Final relaxation might be a better choice. Ultimately, it is impossible to come up with a vocabulary that is 100 percent trigger-proof, but there are some adjustments we can make.

Just ask. There is no reason why we can’t encourage our students to tell us when they find a word to be triggering. Of course, they may not be comfortable doing that in front of others. It could be done as part of the registration process, by having a suggestion book or box available in the classroom where they can make comments, or by letting them know they can speak to you privately or send you an email.

What to call a pose. Some will argue that even the word pose can carry extra and disturbing meaning, and would suggest using words like shape or form instead. I have mostly stopped naming poses altogether. Naming a pose implies a specific expression of form to be aspired to. In TSY, paying attention to moving toward the destination is more important than arriving there. Breaking the pose into steps and cueing to experience sensation as we move through these steps is a more reasonable focus. By the time we cue the last step, everyone has found their personal expression of the pose, so maybe naming it really isn’t that important. If you do decide to come up with neutral terminology to describe poses, you may wish to think about whether it is appropriate to use Sanskrit. For soldiers, the foreign language may be a trigger; for others its unfamiliarity may be unsettling.

Body parts. As with naming the poses, referring to different parts of the body in a manner that is not triggering can be challenging. Choosing language that is as neutral as possible will minimize the risk of triggering someone in the class. As well, it is not always necessary to cue specific body parts. For example, from an experiential perspective, it is often enough to direct them to certain regions of the body and encourage them to find sensation on their own. Sometimes you can access a region of the body without even mentioning it. For instance, asking people to roll their shoulders down and back will also open the chest. Below are some examples for some of the more obvious parts where substitutions may be warranted.

chest = “front of the body” or “heart center”

buttocks, pubic bone, groin, tailbone = “base of the body”

inner thighs = “inside of the legs”

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