Trauma-Sensitive Yoga in Therapy: Bringing the Body into Treatment

This practical guide presents the cutting-edge work of the Trauma Center’s yoga therapy program, teaching all therapists how to incorporate it into their practices.When treating a client who has suffered from interpersonal trauma—whether chronic childhood abuse or domestic violence, for example—talk therapy isn’t always the most effective course.

For these individuals, the trauma and its effects are so entrenched, so complex, that reducing their experience to a set of symptoms or suggesting a change in cognitive frame or behavioral pattern ignores a very basic but critical player: the body.In cases of complex trauma, mental health professionals largely agree that the body itself contains and manifests much of the suffering—self hatred, shame, and fear.

Take, for example, a woman who experienced years of childhood sexual abuse and, though very successful in her professional life, has periods of not being able to feel her limbs, sensing an overall disconnection from her very physical being.

Reorienting clients to their bodies and building their “body sense” can be the very key to unlocking their pain and building a path toward healing.