Trauma Informed Care & Education: Yoga, Restorative Justice, Healing Arts & Nonviolence

You are resilient. We are resilient. Humans are resilient.

Our work supports participants in building resilience and releasing trauma by working with the body, with special attention on the breath, nervous system and brain. 

There are many ways to work with trauma. What’s experienced in the body as trauma to one person may not be experienced as trauma to another. 

Trauma is not only about a specific event or experience. It is the body reflexively responding to a perceived threat, it doesn’t matter how big or small. 

The experience of trauma stays in the body, but can be released through various somatic movements and healing arts practices that can go beyond cognition, words and language.

Trauma impacts memory (in the body and brain) as well as the brain’s amygdala, and the parasympathetic nervous system which controls the rest and digest functions of the body. It also impacts the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the body’s flight, fight or freeze response. 

When the body experiences trauma, a person’s nervous system can stay stuck in the “flight, fight, freeze” response, in which the nervous system is unable to rest and digest. 

Trauma can be triggered by grief, death, violence (physical, emotional or sexual), a crisis (global, financial, spiritual, health, etc.), sudden change (separation/divorce) or a great loss. 

It can show up as anger, agitation, anxiety, sadness, stress, depression or rigidness; and can lead to emotional unavailability, lack of intimacy or feeling like your heart is closed to love.

Feelings of being stuck, overwhelmed or not enough is another effect of trauma. This can lead to bias and the various “-isms”, which accompany a lack of empathy, pity or compassion with one’s self or others. 

When we do the work to transform trauma within the body, we create spaces and opportunities for healing. This healing can impact our families; past, present and future generations; our community; and the world.

Racial Trauma: Oppression and Violence

Racial Healing: Building Resilience and Strength to Love

Traumas are connected to lived experiences, ancestral experiences or transgenerational experiences of oppression and violence, whether structural, environmental, racial or social.

Even though individuals may come from different backgrounds and experiences and may experience different levels of oppression, there is still a connection in regards to the impacts, symptoms and consequences of various oppressions. There are common threads in these experiences that when discovered or acknowledged can lead to individual, communal and collective healing. 

Racial healing, building resilience and strength to love are complex. It’s important to make space in the nervous system to do the work of exploring the emotional, physical, mental and emotional toll of racism, bias and unconscious bias. We work through the body and use movement to create space for reflection, activism, spiritual growth and compassion.

We’ve studied and practiced healing modalities for over 20 years, and we’ve combined our yoga trainings, educational backgrounds and travels to sacred healing sites around the world to create this Paths to Peace healing program.