Trauma-Informed Yoga for Therapists & Their Clients

Offering foundational concepts and techniques for integrating Yoga into psychotherapy, each session explores both practical and philosophical overlap between the practices of yoga and trauma treatment. Students will practice and learn to lead 4 gentle yoga sequences, 4 yogic breathing techniques, and 4 grounding resources for offering yoga safely and effectively to clients with trauma histories. These skills are also useful as self-care to mitigate risk of burnout for those working in stressful environments. No prior training in Yoga is required.

Participants will be able to:

• Define Sanskrit terms Yoga, Asana, Ahimsa, Swadhiyaha, Atman, Prana, and Pranayama in English and describe how each term relates to trauma therapy.
• Choose appropriate timing for utilizing yoga postures, concepts, and breathing techniques in clinical practice, including resourcing/stabilization, during trauma processing, and post-treatment integration.
• Solve trauma-related challenges including negative beliefs, difficult emotions, and painful sensations that may emerge during yoga practice using skills of external grounding, window of tolerance, internal resources, non-judgemental awareness, self-compassion, and/or choice.
• Understand social justice concepts of empowerment and oppression and how they relate to offering yoga in psychotherapy in a trauma-informed manner.
• Practice effectively and safely leading 4 different yoga scripts: Yoga Unites/Trauma Divides, Non-Judgemental Awareness, Finding Our Centers, and Grounding Yoga Sequence.

This day-long workshop includes 4 sessions 90 min each for a total of 6 hours total.

6 CEs | 3 EMDRIA CEs