As I stated before in a post about what yoga for trauma is, this practice revolves around mind-body wellness. I’m Jen Stuart and, in today’s post, we will explore together how yoga heals and all the physical benefits you can get when you implement Trauma Sensitive Yoga in your recovery journey.

Physical Body Benefits

• Better connection of the body-mind relationship

Usually, people who go through traumatic events have a blocked relationship with their bodies due to the pain they had to bare. This may have caused them to unlink themselves from their bodies to avoid suffering bodily discomfort. But, by refraining from feeling negative sensations, they also miss feeling the positive ones. 

The role of yoga in healing trauma is to bring the client back in their body, restoring their physical and emotional connection so people can re-learn. One of the techniques it uses is interoception, which allows people to tune into sensations that come from the inside of their physical bodies, moment to moment. 

• Learn to feel body sensations

Some body parts can hold more trauma than others and people may disconnect from them. Those areas may become numb, ache, be dissociated from the person, etc.  One of the most beneficial life improvements trauma survivors can get from practicing Trauma Sensitive Yoga is to learn to take effective action and choose to move away from discomfort and move into comfort. They become able to self-regulate and stabilise, manage their stress levels, cultivate better personal routines, and more. 

• Attenuates insula and neo-cortex damage

The insular cortex is the part of the brain that gives positive or negative emotional values to corporeal states. The neocortex is involved in a wide variety of cerebral processes, being one of them the sensory perception. The damage on any of these areas produces an inability to experience joy, happiness, among other positive sensations, as well as the negative ones. Mindfulness-based training attenuates the insula response to an aversive interoceptive challenge, a crucial part of how yoga helps heal trauma.

• Reduces body pain

Healing trauma with yoga is possible because it operates on the mind and the body. Among the benefits of yoga for trauma survivors, is the reduction of body ache. After dealing with a traumatic event(s), some people suffer from migraines, skin irritations, occasional headaches, allergies, food intolerances, etc. All of these physical manifestations can be categorised as nociceptive or neuropathic pain.

Nociceptive (nerve pain) can be divided into two, according to the location of the pain. It’s visceral if it’s felt internally, in the organs; and somatic, if it’s felt in the muscles, tissue, and skin. Visceral pain is produced by inflammation of the organs or their compression. Somatic pain, which can be denominated as superficial (muscles, tissue, and skin) or deep (joints, bones, and tendons), is produced when pain receptors are easily stimulated.   

Trauma Sensitive Yoga has been proved to regulate the pro-inflammatory gene expression, as well as to boost the anti-inflammatory glucocorticoid receptor. These results are the product of a combination between visualisation and imagery guided exercises, mindfulness, breath focus, intoreception, along with other instruments yoga for trauma uses to route trauma survivors toward their recovery. 

For further information about how you can embrace Trauma Sensitive Yoga benefits, visit Journey with Jen.