In the article, Befriending Your Body, clinical psychiatrist Bessel van der folk explains how yoga can help individuals that have experiences trauma work through their emotional scars. He is the author of a book that examines how trauma effects the brain and the body and specifically how treatments such as yoga can help. He explains that trauma is much more than the actual event that happen some time ago. Trauma actually settles into your body and becomes part of yourself. People who have experienced trauma become afraid of their own physical sensations, which causes them to become short of breath and their entire body to become tense. Yoga is so beneficial for trauma patients because of the yogic breathing. Yoga helps us be able to feel all of our body’s sensation. It is for this reason that yoga is a gentle and safe way for people to start to befriend their bodies and work through the trauma that has become stored in their body.
I learned that trauma is not just an event but a physical sensation that individuals feel. I learned that yoga can help those individuals face those triggering body sensations and work through the pain of the experience by using breath work and mindfulness. I did not know that yoga is equally or more beneficial that the best possible medications to alleviate traumatic stress symptoms for patients dealing with trauma. This article supports my conclusion that yoga is a tool for mental, emotional and physical healing for individuals.
Befriending Your Body: How Yoga Helps Heal Trauma. (2018, August 10). Retrieved July 13, 2019, from https://kripalu.org/resources/befriending-your-body-how-yoga-helps-heal-trauma
Mindfulness, Meditation & Yoga 