Trauma Sensitive Yoga and Women Veterans

By: Campbell Schanz

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Yoga Village feels passionately about providing mindful movement and connection to our community. It is a core principle of who we are. The integration of Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) has allowed us to partner with schools, rehabilitation centers, hospitals, and more, to share the benefits of this practice with a variety of different audiences. 

In the last decade, research has shed light on PTSD within Veteran populations. Many suffer from depression, alcohol, and substance use disorder. Both traditional cognitive processing therapies (CPT) and trauma sensitive yoga (TCTSY) have been shown to help aid Veterans towards a better quality of life. 

Trauma covers a large domain of feelings and experiences, and more complex traumas usually require a body and mind oriented approach in the healing process. With this in mind, a study was conducted on women Veterans facing PTSD not just from their time away, but also from military-related sexual traumas (MST). This study was conducted within the Southeast part of the United States, and the majority of its participants were African American women. 42 of the women were allocated into the treatment groups. One portion of them were randomly assigned CPT as a model for recovery, and the others were assigned to the trauma sensitive yoga group. 

Qualitative Assessments were assigned to both groups in order to gauge their experience within the two interventions. 

Notably, some participants who were enrolled within the TCTSY program were worried about how their current pain and other limitations may be affected by yoga. In the post interview sessions, there was a significant decrease in participants' pain and an increase in their feelings of calmness and peace. Participants also noticed an increased awareness within the body, and some even desired longer and more frequent yoga sessions, as noted in their post interviews. 

Comparably, the pre-interviews within the CPT group included reports of participants feeling nervous and scared of judgement. In addition, they wanted the sessions to take place in an area that didn’t trigger PTSD symptoms. As a whole, the therapy was useful to some participants who “enjoyed challenging their thoughts,” but for many others, the process was difficult. 

In the discussion oriented portion of the study, it was illustrated that most of the participants joined because they wanted an alternative method to combat their PTSD that was not talk therapy. While talk therapy can be incredibly helpful, it sometimes neglects to connect the mind and body to past experiences. Especially within multi-tiered traumas such as complex PTSD, the use of trauma sensitive yoga is extremely helpful in breaching a sense of safety that is hard to coerce with talk therapy alone. 

No study is truly complete without an area of improvement. Within this intervention, those who participated in the trauma sensitive yoga noted the barriers to TSY hardest to overcome were the commute, lack of physical space, and time of day. 

While all portions of the study are extremely useful, breaking down barriers to TSY interventions is imperative to the work that Yoga Village does. To minimize commute time and increase accessibility, we meet folx where they're already gathering and offer TSY within pre-established partner sites. Our efforts continue to consider how location and spatial ease plays into one’s healing process. 

We love hearing new information and perspectives on how trauma sensitive yoga helps to support communities, and we will work hard to ensure that barriers to yoga continue to be broken down within our practices. 

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