Trauma Sensitive Yoga
Research & Insights
Resources and Information
Trauma Sensitive Yoga: What is it?
TSY is body-oriented and spiritually nourishing. It is instructive
and emphasizes choices. TSY provides structure to
help foster our internal sense of safety, personal agency,
and choice in cultivating our capacity for
self- awareness and emotional regulation.
Current Trauma Sensitive Resource & Research Inspirations: Spring, 2021
Very excited by this resource! Highly recommended reading for all who seek and facilitate yoga within trauma recovery:
Embodied Healing: Survivor and Facilitator Voices from the Practice of Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
edited by Jenn Turner
"The idea of embodiment, of connecting to our inward wisdom and experiences, intrinsically implies a wordlessness in understanding oneself on such a level. As one research participant recounted to me in regard to her trauma-sensitive yoga experience, 'there's energy, there's mystery, there's connection, solidarity. It's power...it adds another dimension to the healing....'. Embodied Healing skillfully describes and processes the spoken and unspoken treasures, explicit words, and implicit feelings into a collection of stories, narratives of resilience, of individuals reentering their bodies following the aftermath of trauma and of individuals supporting others in reentering and refriending their bodies. Reading Embodied Healing is like embarking on a journey with each voice, student and facilitator."
paraphrased from Viann N Nguyen-Feng,'s beautiful forward in Embodied Healing
Facilitator's Resources: Awareness Dimensions in Teaching
Somatic Dominance in Yoga Teaching is the current topic for Trauma Sensitive Yoga Resources & Insights
What is Somatic Dominance?
A very good question, which has many teachers and students in the yoga world conversating, examining, and defining, right at this moment.
It's tender work, and thank you for being curious and willing to consider.
One way to thinking of somatic dominance is how a yoga teacher may be embodying the teacher-student power differential, consciously or unconsciously, in the yoga practice experience. Some styles of teaching include authoritarian, collaborative, therapeutic, and others.
For Trauma Sensitive Yoga experiences, this awareness is a key factor of what creates a definitive Trauma Sensitive Yoga environment. TSY endeavors to allow the student to be the authority and choose to collaborate or to self-care as needed at any moment. Research indicates it is not enough to say these things in a yoga class; they must be modeled and embodied by the teacher, or perhaps "Guide" may be a better term that communicates the somatic (manner) of
Featured Somatic Discussions:
There are many of these discussions within Embodied Healing.
WHAT DOES SOMATIC DOMINANCE FEEL LIKE IN YOUR BODY WHEN YOU'RE DOING IT?
How ingrained in how we are trained to teach yoga is Somatic Dominance?
(especially take a look at the comments from Patty Townsend, who advises an examination of the topic, individually and as a community).
Featured TSY Resources:
Trauma Theories: Trauma Informed Essentials as published in ACESConnection.com
Bending Without Breaking: A Narrative Review A TSY for Women with PTSD
as published by Elsevier and Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga
a program of The Center for Trauma and Embodiment.
Texts for Yoga and Trauma Recovery:
Yoga for Emotional Trauma by Mary NurrieStearns,
David Emerson's Overcoming Trauma with Yoga
and Bringing the Body into Treatment.
For questions and more information, contact:
Becky Morrissey, PhD (abd), LPCC-S, LICDC-CS, C-IAYT, TCTSY-F
