How Trauma Sensitive Yoga and TRE Heal You From Your Trauma
How we heal from our trauma is an individual experience. What might work for me might not work for you. Here are two alternatives
There are numerous methods that go into trauma healing. Everything that ranges from traditional, cognitive, behavioral therapy, EMDR, ketamine, treatments, yoga, therapy, and other physical forms of exercise based therapy and so much more. In today’s episode we’re going to focus on TRE and trauma informed yoga.
So, what is TRE?
According to my research TRE is tension releasing exercises. Essentially, TRE is an innovative series of exercises that assist the body and releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension, and trauma. According to ineffable living, there are seven different , TRE exercises to help support recovery.
What About Trauma Informed/Sensitive Yoga? What is that?
Find out in this week’s latest episode from Dopamine Deficient, my podcast relaunched under a refreshed mission.
Tune in here:
Learn More about Caroline here:
https://www.topazhealing.com/about-caroline
https://www.instagram.com/topaz.healing/
https://linktr.ee/topazhealing
Check my sources for this episode and further learning here:
https://nyctherapy.com/therapists-nyc-blog/5-trauma-therapy-techniques-for-busy-people/
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/trauma-informed-yoga/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25004196/
https://kripalu.org/resources/how-yoga-helps-heal-trauma-qa-bessel-van-der-kolk
https://psychcentral.com/health/what-is-trauma-informed-yoga#trauma-informed-teaching
https://traumaprevention.com/what-is-tre/
https://ineffableliving.com/7-trauma-release-exercises/
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PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sarah Potter 00:01
Hey there, I'm your host, Sarah Potter. Let's just cut to the chase here. living a happy life is challenging for those with mental illness but not impossible. On this podcast, we'll be serving you a slew of mental health advice from professionals in this space, ways to heal and nourish your heart and soul and kick down the door on mental health stigmas ready to get started strap in for today's episode. Here's the thing about healing from trauma. It's complicated, not just because of the way the mind works and all of the potential mental illnesses that could potentially be developed by trauma. But because there are so many different ways someone could heal from their trauma. how we heal from our trauma is an individual experience. What might work for me might not work for you. Often in my tic tock videos and on YouTube, I say how wonderful EMDR therapy is, but it is also not for everyone. There are numerous methods that go into healing trauma, everything that ranges from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR ketamine treatments, yoga, and other physical forms of exercise based therapy and so much more than just the things I listed in today's episode are going to focus on tre and trauma informed yoga. So what is Tre? According to my research tre is a tension releasing exercise. Essentially, tre is an innovative series of exercises that assist the body in releasing deep and muscular patterns of stress, tension, and trauma. According to ineffable living there are seven different tre exercises to help support recovery. The first exercise is stretching the ankles the second stretching the calf muscles, third, stretching the upper legs, fourth, stretching your inner hips and back. Exercise five is stretching the front of the body. Exercise six consists of wall sets and stretching your inner thighs and glutes. And exercise seven is a four part sheet. I'll give you the details in a later episode of what those exercises look like. Right now, I want to bring in an expert who's going to talk about trauma informed yoga. Meet Carolyn.
Caroline Pegram 02:40
So my name is Carolyn Pegram. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and I'm a trauma sensitive yoga facilitator. Carolyn works with complex traumas, otherwise known as C, PTSD. These are traumas that happen throughout the lifetime of a child and into adulthood. How does past trauma from your abuser manifest in your body? Like what are the physical symptoms of trauma. So oftentimes, that looks like relational wounding throughout the lifespan since childhood into adulthood, I approach trauma healing trauma therapy from a somatic approach, which means I really, really focus and incorporate our bodies and what the body has to say about, you know, our lived experience and where we're at, it's gonna look different for everyone, it's really hard to say like, if you've experienced a, then you'll have B, C, you know, like, it's just not that linear. But a lot of what I see just kind of anecdotally show up in my office, right, it's kind of a chronic holding pattern, right? And you can almost see it in people, the way we hold ourselves and our spine, there can be this sort of hunched over protecting the heart space, protecting the stomach space that has all of our internal organs. And our culture too, are kind of encouraged to hunched over and the things that we do but think that there's a lot of muscle and fascia tissue kind of patterns that we see. And then other things like gastrointestinal issues, chronic pain, chronic migraines, we see a lot of this manifests in the body in a lot of different ways because the body is so complex, and our nervous system which is impacted by trauma has such a wide effect on how our body functions and how our bodies show up. That really trauma can look different depending on just the human that you're standing in front of when it comes to any kind of trauma work like my philosophy that I've gotten to this point in my in my career and my professional life and my personal life because I'm also you know, a survivor of complex trauma. I'm also someone like all of these things I'm talking about that we're talking about. I myself experienced on a personal level too and what I have found isn't like titration. So slow, steady, bite size approaches to doing trauma work is key. And I say that because a lot of times when we start talking about Cymatics, or trauma healing, there's this for a lot of folks who want to dive in and go head first. And to be fair, like our nervous systems are so incredibly wise and like have fine tuned itself through evolution. So well that to try to, like, do exercises, or do these therapies and just go head first is, our nervous systems are gonna be like, Wait, that's not safe, we need to orient we need to go slow. Right. So I say that first and foremost, that anything we're talking about, is, I think, helpful to be done in a slow pace with the support of other safe people, because healing trauma, often, oftentimes a trauma occurs in relationship, and therefore, the healing really, really, really needs to take place in safe relationships. And so some of the more somatic and by somatic I mean, body based movement that I use, in my practice, both personally and professionally are two things. One is called trauma sensitive yoga. And that is a particular school of practice, through the Center for trauma and embodiment out of Brookline, Massachusetts with David Emerson. And this practice is, it's yoga, yes. But essentially, what it is, is it's a practice of making choices with our own bodies. Right? And so the focus is not like, what does the form look like? What does the movement look like? It's about, I'm being invited in this moment to move my body with other humans. And do I want to move my body in this way? And if I do move it in this way, how does it feel for me? And just cultivating a curiosity because one of the things that we know can happen when we are triggered in our trauma, and we're kind of back into a different time in place is our ability to impair a step, which means to feel inside of our bodies kind of goes offline. So trauma sensitive yoga is all about how can we be online with our own felt sense, because our felt sense is such a key piece. And us feeling safe in the world. And trauma oftentimes kind of steals that from us, we have to abandon ourselves in order to survive. So trauma sensitive Yoga is a huge component that I like to bring in. And it's all about building choices and decreasing hierarchies and power. So if I'm doing it with someone, I'm never telling someone what to do. Yeah, all invitation and they get to choose what they what they feel like.
Sarah Potter 07:53
Incorporating trauma informed or trauma sensitive yoga is such a fantastic addition to any type of talk based or cognitive based therapy that you might be doing. especially so for those with complex trauma. Here's the thing about trauma sensitive yoga as Carolyn mentioned, it's not designed to take you back to the source of your pain. It's purpose serves to help you become more aware of what's going on in your body. As Carolyn put it, we're taking your body from being offline to helping it become online. Once you can tap into yourself in an online format, you can work on releasing all of the built up emotions, stress and tension that you incurred during your time with trauma. A key element about trauma informed yoga to keep in mind is that it differs greatly from traditional yoga practices. With trauma sensitive yoga sessions. Teachers are aware that people in the class may be living with trauma. So they'll offer options that make students feel less vulnerable. Or if you're someone who works with the person like Carolyn, you may be in a private comfortable setting, where you have the ability to make more active choices to choose and make choices with your body. Trauma sensitive yoga is an incredible option, not just for those who have suffered from trauma, that those who have specifically suffered from sexual abuse or sexual based traumas. Because it's not about forcing you to do any one thing or pushing you through an EMDR session or psychotherapy. It's about learning to make choices for yourself, again, that pertain to your body. It's important that your trauma informed yoga teacher always works to respect your personal space and what works for you in a trial.might inform the yoga session breathwork also plays a huge role. So while you may not be working on yoga poses to help release some of the tension and stress incurred from trauma, working on breathing may also allow you to calm yourself down during times of high stress or high anxiety. If your trauma makes you feel more depressed, you can try to bring that energy up and focus on the inhale of your breath. We've talked a lot about how great trauma sensitive yoga is, what it is specifically and how it works. What about some of the benefits of trauma sensitive yoga or trauma informed yoga and a randomized control trial from J CLIN psychiatry. The study showed that trauma informed yoga significantly reduce the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, and the effects of it were comparable to research in psychological and medicinal methods. The method in which this information was uncovered was done by surveying 64 women with chronic treatment resistant PTSD. The women were randomly assigned to either trauma informed yoga or supportive women's health education. Each woman did their randomly assigned work as a weekly one hour class for 10 weeks. assessments were conducted that pretreatment, mid treatment and post treatment and included measures of the DSM five PTSD, affect regulation and depression. The study ran from 2008 through 2011. The primary outcome measure was the clinical administered PTSD scale. At the end of the study 16 of 31 participants, which is approximately 52% of the group no longer met criteria for PTSD. Compared to six of 29 women in the control group, both groups exhibited significant decreases, with the decrease falling in the large effect size of the range for the yoga group, and the medium to large effect size decrease for the control group. The control group in this study focus was primarily on supportive women's health education. And while this group specifically experienced a significant decrease in PTSD symptoms during the first half of treatment, this group of women did not experience a consistent and constant decrease of symptoms, similar to the trauma informed yoga group. To sum it all up, trauma informed yoga out of this group of women allowed 51% of the entire group that was studied over the course of three years to see a complete elimination of PTSD symptoms. After listening to this portion of the podcast episode about trauma informed yoga, maybe you're still experiencing some hesitation, maybe you're thinking, I want to try something else before I dive into trauma informed Yoga. But what else is there?
Caroline Pegram 13:13
The other somatic based therapy I use is from I believe that name is David first Sally. And it's called trauma release exercise. He is originally a massage therapist who started working with folks internationally that's and people who have lived in war zones. And one of the things that his theory discusses is that as humans, we have what's called a poly vagal nerve in our body. And a poly vagal nerve is responsible for keeping us safe, it receives information from the outside of our bodies and delivers that and lets us know what we need to be doing on the inside of our bodies to respond to our environment. And what he says is that this vagus nerve has all mammals habit, we have an ability through this nerve through our nervous system to actually induce a tremor response when we are under serious threat. And so we can see this in the wild with other mammals say there's a deer, you know, trying to get away from a mountain lion, the deer just barely escaped, that runs, runs, runs. And then when it gets to safety, it has all of this adrenaline built up all of these hormones released to get it to safety and whatever is left over needs to be discharged out of the body because if we're carrying around all this stress hormone, and we don't need to be running from the line anymore, then we're stressing our bodies out so we'll see this mammal just dropped to the ground and almost looks like it's having a seizure but it's not it's having a natural tremor response see this you know if we had a fender bender, if we've been you know, just nearly in a unsafe situation we get out, we might notice we're shaking or tremoring. Yeah, unfortunately, as humans, we've been conditioned out of this natural response, right? When that happens so often what do we say we go, oh, no, you're okay, don't shake, you're fine. Right? Well hold someone try to hold them still, that actually is really counterintuitive to what our nervous systems already know how to do. So this therapy, this approach, anyone can do, and he designs it and has put it out into the public so that people can do it, you know, without necessarily having to have a therapist, do it with them always. Yeah. And it basically we engage muscles in the body that are connected to our fight flight response, which in our calves are guys are so as muscle, that largest muscle that connects our legs to our stomach, we fatigue those muscles, and then we lay down and we breathe. And what I have found is that all people that I come into contact with, I've seen have this ability to engage a very deep tremor, that releases some of this stored energy, some of the stored, yeah, energies with us words, it's coming to mind. But when you think about all the energetic the synapses, the hormones that get rushed into the body, when we're in a state of stress, the tremoring helps to kind of move that out and release it. When you have patients that you're helping embrace this methodology or this, this tactic and processing their trauma, how like, they're facing so many of these online issues and prejudices about trauma therapy, and how we process trauma in our bodies, how do you help them overcome those things and become comfortable experiencing and embracing some of these more physical based exercises you do with them? I think a lot of the people I work with, you know, by the time we're engaging, and we're getting into this work, you know, they're they're pretty ready. And they're pretty sick of like other people kind of weighing in on how they're living, which I think is, you know, kind of that motivation, how but, you know, one of the things that I have found people who are critical of how other people navigate their mental health or dedicate, you know, their energy to their own mental health and healing, I think that the folks who are critical of that often have a lot of fear, a lot of their own discomfort around their own sense of emotions, and felt emotions and internal experiences. And I think that, when I'm working with folks that all kind of identify as we can really empathize with how terrifying it is, to feel our shit, to sit with it, to be reminded of it to have people mirror it for us, one of the things that can be helpful is leaning into that empathy of wow, that human who is really misunderstanding or really critical, you know, without pathologizing them or, you know, therapy, sizing them we can see very clearly like there's so much fear in this person. And I can really empathize and relate with that. And when I can tap into that more wise, empathic self, like there's a lot less power that their criticism is going to have, right, and we can kind of release them and allow them to be in their own journey in their own their own path and not have to internalize that as much.
Sarah Potter 18:42
With trauma informed yoga, as well as Tre, we're truly focusing on ourselves, beginning to understand what it feels like to come back into our own body and feel all of the emotions and physical sensations of healing. With these two fairly physically based trauma healing methods, it can be really easy to be incredibly intimidated by what is the potential healing solution for you. Oftentimes, our internal fears we have about trying something new or trauma informed yoga or tre are lacking compassion for ourselves. We're looking at how other people approach trauma healing online, or we're even internalizing the toxic explanations of others on how these methods might not work, or how they're Frou Frou and have no real sense or belonging in the psychological world. When we look at ourselves outside of therapy, when we're interacting with others, online and reacting to the ways in which others interpret trauma, healing or trying to normalize trauma as just being a part of life, and don't even want to heal from it, it can be really difficult to see what other kinds of tactics we could be implementing in our life that make us feel comfortable and be less reactionary to what we see online or experience in the world. earlier in the episode, I mentioned how trauma informed or trauma sensitive yoga and tre may benefit someone who has experienced sexual trauma, this still remains true. And these methods are specially helpful when we as a sexually traumatized person, are reactionary, to the ways in which people criticize our bodies or sexuality, or how we see other bodies get criticized, and how reactionary we may be to that. So I asked Carolyn, what tactics do you think someone could implement in their life to really be less reactionary to what they see online, or the way in which someone criticizes their body?
Caroline Pegram 20:54
Well, and I think it all comes back to like this having compassion with ourselves, and getting like having a radical compassion, right, which means we get to the root, which means like, understanding and embracing, like, I understand, I have really big feelings, and my really big feelings come from really big things that happened to me all throughout my life and like, think the universe or whatever, you know, that I still can connect to these feelings and cultivating this kind of sense of appreciation for ourselves and, and really experiencing empathy and like compassion, you know, once once, we can offer it to ourselves, that compassion, being able to say, Wow, and these men are these people in my life like, are so repressed, right? So when we cultivate compassion for others in our own healing process, it's not as much for them as it is for us. And when we go, okay, given all of the context, given the history, given what these individuals have been fed about how to manage their own emotions, their own traumas, like of course, they're going to act like complete assholes, of course, they're going to act explosive, of course, you know, they're bottling everything up. And that's not okay. And at the same time, like, wow, I really am going to turn towards the safe men or the Safe Kids in my life. And I'm going to engage with them in a way that hopefully models and create a different way of navigating these things so that the sleep cycles are perpetuated.
Sarah Potter 22:30
Outside of radical self compassion, and having compassion for others. Carolyn describes reconnecting with the world outside her office or the world outside her home. full transparency real quick of the audio from a heart interview got really choppy in this last bit, so I'm going to communicate the things that Carolyn mentioned. She states, normally a huge part of her practice includes activities like rock climbing, being outside and communing with nature, working on feeling like and connecting with things that make her feel as though she is part of the world, rather than a human kept away from the world. These things have been her saving grace because as she describes, I am no different from anyone else when it comes to surviving complex trauma. In addition to therapy practices that she also implements for her own self and healing from complex trauma. Carolyn also has a mini RV that she leans on for animal support. Animal therapy is also a wonderful trauma healing tool. But that's a discussion for another episode. Thank you so much to Carolyn for being on this episode, and explaining all of the important things that go into understanding trauma sensitive yoga, as well as Tre. If you'd like to learn more about Carolyn, you can find her at Topaz dot healing on Instagram. If you're looking for a psychotherapist in Utah, I highly recommend following up with Carolyn. She was recently rated the best psychotherapist in Utah. You can find her at our website at Topaz healing.com. When you head over to her Instagram page, don't forget to check out her link tree page with tons of really informative and helpful information regarding trauma sensitive somatic healing. In the next episode, I'm going to dive into tre a little bit more and what it is exactly as well as going over specific exercises and the ways in which you can perform them in order to try this method of trauma healing out. Thank you so much for listening to dopamine deficient today. If you've loved what you've heard, and you learn something invaluable, please share it with us in the reviews on iTunes and Spotify. The more feedback we get and the more reviews we get, the more this message will hit for other people and help them too. And if you are neurodivergent and you want live support, hit the community up in discord. Keep the conversation going. And follow me along on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube at SarahalPotter. Spelled S-A-R-A-H P-O-T-T-E-R, just like Harry Potter. Keep the magic going. And we'll talk to you next week.