Beyond Trauma-Informed Yoga: Cutting-edge Trauma Care Techniques for Women

Gender equality has come a long way since women first got their voting rights. Sadly, however, we still have far to go before women enjoy the same economic equality, financial security, and freedom of choice as their male counterparts.

Women continue to be disproportionately affected by stressful and trauma-inducing events and life circumstances. In the wake of the pandemic, no woman is immune from the impacts of trauma. It’s long overdue to move past simple “trauma-informed” yoga.

This course will provide participants with the skills to compassionately address trauma for women’s health through a yogic lens. This course will move beyond just yoga, however, to include vital signs of Lifestyle and Functional Medicine because trauma is too complex to address with yoga alone.

Whether it is the pandemic and its associated trauma, discrimination in the workplace, violence inside the home, psychological trauma or verbal abuse, and perhaps the worst of all, trauma suffered at the hands of the healthcare or yoga industry itself, this course will provide a holistic framework for compassionately addressing it.

Yoga cannot address every aspect of a woman’s need who has suffered through trauma, but it is a vital part of the care that should take place to nurture recovery. This course will equip you with specific evidence-based strategies for trauma-informed care to begin the healing process for others, and/or yourself.

Why Is the Vagus Nerve Important When Working with Trauma Care?

The word vagus means “wandering,” hence it is known as the wandering nerve. The vagus nerve impacts the gut-brain body axis as well as cardiovascular and pulmonary health, which have a ripple effect on the entire mind-body complex.

In trauma situations, the vagus nerve is one of our body’s far-reaching “radars” for neuroception - or our ability to properly interpret risk or threat. If we consistently misinterpret threats, we are set up for a poor vagus response, which can send us into fight, flight, freeze, or worse, dissociation, shut-down, and even death.

Because of the close link between the vagus nerve and the voice, vocal biomarkers are emerging as one of the chief ways to gauge the impact of trauma in a woman’s life.

The voice is increasingly recognized as a tell-tale sign of health. It is the new biomarker for wellness and can impact not only trauma recovery but everything from mood regulation to digestive functioning to sexual functioning and core strength.

Join Dr. Ginger Garner as she guides you through innovative and cutting-edge approaches to trauma care. This 3-hour course will offer holistic yoga-based trauma care approaches for women who have suffered trauma or the impact of stressful life events.

What You Will Learn

• How our definition of trauma is evolving and what it means for our approach to working with trauma.

• What studying the voice can reveal about trauma in general and dysfunction in the pelvic floor specifically

• How vagal tone impacts self-regulatory mechanisms and the implications for interventions that impact women’s health.

• How to impact vagal tone in order to offer self-care tools to work with trauma in a psychologically informed manner.

• Evidence-based strategies for addressing trauma using yoga as the vehicle for care delivery.

• Key yogic breath work, postures, and mindfulness techniques that support care for women who have experienced trauma.  

Audience – PTs, OTs, and fitness professionals, yoga teachers or yoga therapists, or anyone who wants to learn self-care tools for working with trauma.

This Course Also Includes:

• Yoga Practice Video: Enjoy a yoga practice video that accompanies this course designed by Dr. Ginger Garner.

• Recordings of All Webinar Sessions: It’s generally acknowledged that many people only retain 10-20 percent of what they learn in a workshop. You will get access to the recordings of all webinar sessions - both MP3 (downloadable) and MP4 (streaming online), enabling you to go back and listen to the workshop as many times as you like.

• Transcripts of All Sessions: Ever wanted to refer to a certain part of a course? Even the best note-takers miss a point every so often. With the transcripts of the webinar sessions, you can go back and refer to particularly important passages or clarify sections you were in doubt about.

This course qualifies for 3.25 non-contact hour CEs with Yoga Alliance.

FAQ

What is trauma-informed yoga? Isn’t all yoga trauma-informed? 

Trauma-informed yoga is yoga that takes into consideration the background and experience of the individual and makes real-time adaptation and modification for the health and well-being benefits of the individual. Not all yoga is trauma-informed or sensitive, just like not all yoga is therapeutic. Group classes often happen on a drop-in basis, which doesn’t allow the teacher to have prior knowledge or screen or trauma. It is important, especially when working with high-risk populations for trauma, like expectant women or mothers or military service members, to screen everyone for a history of trauma and to make our classrooms and practices safe spaces for individuals to heal and recover. 

What is trauma care using yoga? 

Trauma-informed yoga isn’t enough, we need trauma care in yoga. Trauma care in yoga moves beyond trauma-sensitive or trauma-informed yoga. The latter assumes you have screened for trauma and teach classes that may be sensitive to someone’s trauma, so as to not teach in a way that could cause a trigger in the individual, but it isn’t necessarily addressing the trauma. Trauma care provides targeted evidence-based strategies for addressing trauma using yoga as the vehicle for care delivery. This does not replace mental health or medical management for trauma, but it can be a positive adjunct to managing it.