by Lara Land | Feb 20, 2023 | COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
This week on the Beyond Trauma podcast I touch on a sensitive but important topic, my work bringing trauma-sensitive yoga to the NYPD. This offering began in 2015 and continues to this day more sporadically through the work of the nonprofit Three and a Half Acres Yoga. In this episode, I interview former Sergent Annie Labrada who experienced my offerings as an officer and went on later to get certified in yoga and then trauma sensitive yoga through Three and a Half Acres.
Police officers and other first responders are exposed to trauma multiple times in a single day and are at high risk of traumatization through that exposure. This is something we discuss in detail in the episode. Their traumatization can result in hypervigilence, dissociation, or a combination of both that can impact their work, making them either edgy and over-reactive or uncaring and disengaged. Yoga practice is one way of moving and releasing the stored trauma response and potentially softening those responses so they can be more calmly alert and engaged during their service. This was why it was so important to Three and a Half Acres Yoga to provide trauma sensitive yoga to officers in Harlem and greater Manhattan.
Annie attended my classes downtown at NYPD police headquarters and later in Harlem. Soon after she became certified in trauma sensitive yoga and began teaching for NYPD Blue Karma Yoga, an NYPD sports team that got yoga widely taught and accepted amongst officers. Three and a Half Acres Yoga partnered with them on a health and wellness event for cops in Central Park. These classes became an outlet for highly stressed officers to process their trauma through their bodies instead of intentionally or unintentionally exposing others to its implications.
Getting the okay to bring offerings like this one to the NYPD is nearly impossible from outside the force, so I was glad to see insiders having some success. Unfortunately, like many programs, it’s been challenging to maintain trauma sensitive yoga in within the NYPD, largely due to personnel change. Annie and many of her colleagues retired in the last year and Annie is now with her family in a pretty exciting place which you can hear all about on this episode.
What do you think about offering trauma sensitive yoga to the NYPD and others in positions of power? Take a listen to the episode on the Beyond Trauma Podcast and send me a message with your thoughts.
by Lara Land | Feb 13, 2023 | COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Creating safe as possible spaces is at the heart of trauma-sensitive yoga trainings and all my teachings.
It’s something teachers, coaches, and facilitators of all activities and teams, including in the workplace should learn how to do. The beautiful thing is that workplace, school, sports and yoga classes, and events can be made exceedingly safer by implementing even a few of the skills I and other trauma sensitivity trainers teach.
Many people misunderstand these safer spaces as providing a way for people to avoid their fears and yet, it is actually the opposite. It’s by entering safe as possible spaces that trauma survivors are able to relax enough to expose themselves to stress-inducing situations and work through them.
The safest and most effective way for a trauma survivor to do this is at their own pace. Just like in exposure or desensitizing therapies, they must have the tools to consciously relax the body once the sympathetic nervous system response is activated. They can do this immediately using the breathing and relaxation techniques taught in yoga and later increase the amount of time they allow themselves to be stressed until the body gets used to it and no longer becomes dysregulated in the position. It’s a practice and an important one that has resoundingly positive ramifications off the mat in real life.
This is the same in any environment, including the workplace, sports teams, or school. However, this is only consistently only possible if the student, player, or practitioner is in charge of how much they expose themselves to the stress and only if they have a coach, teacher, etc whom they trust and who can help them through the process. Only in the case of a licensed and very skilled exposure therapist does this rule change. As most of us aren’t that, we need to step back on the pushing and adopt a stance where the practitioner leads and we celebrate their pace. They will grow at their pace. This is not something we need to worry about. We need to worry about the safety side.
Exposure is all around us. Safe spaces are not.
See my upcoming trainings and workshops to delve more into this and more aspects of trauma sensitivity in yoga and in the workplace.
by Lara Land | Feb 6, 2023 | BOOKS, COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
I first started working with Besty Polatin when she was my Alexander teacher at Boston University where I was studying Theater.
Alexander Technique was one of the solid handful of body-based models I strongly attached to during my time at University and which pulled me in the direction of body-mind healing as a profession and core interest in my life.
Besty’s interpretation of the Alexander Technique and emphasis on doing less caused me to look at my life in a new way. I started questioning the busy work I was hiding behind and began focusing on actions that birthed larger results and left more space in my life. I also began to realize where I wasn’t taking responsibility in my life and shift that dynamic.
To this day I do Alexander Technique exercises and use the guiding principle of doing less in my yoga poses and classes. I will often ask my students what tensions they can eliminate while still keeping the shape of the yoga pose.
What I didn’t know during my Boston University years was that Betsy Polatin’s body of work contained so many more modalities and eventually culminated in her own framework which she describes in her book Humanual. Betsy uses breathwork, centering, somatics, and other techniques all with trauma sensitivity. Her fresh and impactful look at trauma and the artist has made her a go-to for all kinds of artists and performers seeking to get unblocked and fully express themselves. She even has a course on trauma and the artist with Somatic Experiencing founder, Peter Levine.
Betsy and I discuss all of this in the latest episode of the Beyond Trauma Podcast and conclude one thing is certain: Bodywork isn’t about the body at all. It is human work, capable of releasing all types of trauma.
by Lara Land | Jan 29, 2023 | BOOKS, COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
I was honored last week to speak on Adam Keen’s Yoga and Mental Health panel with many esteemed colleagues including Eddie Stern, Shanna Small, and Gregor Maehle. Each of us were asked to speak on a specific topic. The question I was asked to address was the role of touch in yoga and if it could be therapeutic. Below are some of my thoughts on this very sensitive topic. As you will see I decided to focus not directly on that question but on the topic of touch and boundaries and their origin to give folks more of a context and the information they can use to make their own decision.
Where does our sense of boundaries come from?
Our first sense in the embryo is the sense of touch. It begins at our nose tip and grows throughout our largest organ, our skin. Soon we begin to move around inside the womb. It’s there that we first discover the sense of what is me and what is outside of me. Later, when we are little and begin to crawl, we experiment with boundaries by moving away from and back to our primary attachment figure, a figure so important to our development.
The primary attachment figure provides us with essential eye contact, appropriate reactions, and… you know it… touch. Touch is so necessary that we can not grow or heal without it. With it, our colds go away faster and we are generally happier. During the conference, I shared my personal stories of experiencing touch deprivation during my first year of college and again during the pandemic. What can I say… I’m a hugger!
Touch is wonderful and necessary, however, there are some real questions as to whether it can be totally consensual in a yoga classroom setting where it’s hard to argue that there isn’t some power imbalance, no matter what the teacher does to try to even that out, and a desire on the student’s part to please their instructor. Also, when it comes to the powerful physical adjustments often associated with Ashtanga Yoga, they are clearly designed to push us past our body’s natural and necessary boundaries which is problematic, especially from a trauma sensitivity framework.
Trauma survivors, in particular, have many issues around safe boundaries since those were often violated during the traumatic event or events. In addition, the trauma response inhibits the prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain that regulates our social relationships, signaling what is appropriate and inappropriate. The fogging of this part of the brain can cause survivors to have very leaky and confusing boundaries. This is further magnified by the very frequent trauma response instinct to try to recreate the conditions of the traumatic event in order to respond to them differently. This, in addition to a common trauma survivor feeling that one’s life isn’t really theirs (disassociation), leads to unskillful boundaries and unnecessary risks.
Awareness of this phenomenon and the fact that almost everyone who walks into a yoga room is likely dealing with some kind of trauma or traumatic stress should make yoga teachers more, not less respectful of their student’s boundaries. Instead of pushing yoga practitioners past them with intense adjustments such as the ones we commonly see in the Ashtanga Yoga practice, instructors should validate, support, and celebrate boundaries and encourage their students to work at their edge and even back away from that edge to self-regulate as necessary. As Eddie Stern mentioned in his comments following my observations, a simple touch on the shoulder or hand on the back is enough to move prana and signal support. This is the kind of touch we should be considering as we hold space for our yoga students.
The subject of trauma sensitivity in yoga has been at the core of my work for the last twenty years and is summarized in my forthcoming book, The
by Lara Land | Jan 23, 2023 | BOOKS, COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
As a trauma-informed yoga teacher trainer and trauma sensitivity trainer, you would think that I would know and have expertise in every type of trauma.
That, however, is not the case. Definitions of trauma keep evolving and expanding to include survivors yearning to get their voices heard, and it is deeply important that we listen. It’s how a trauma survivor frames their story that is important and that needs to be acknowledged and believed.
Thenmozhi Soundararajan opened my eyes to the trauma of caste. Though I have spent years in India and was very aware of caste oppression, it wasn’t until her telling of it, that my understanding deepened into a bodily knowing of how traumatic the experience of being caste oppressed is and how much it still very much exists both in east Asia and here in the United States.
Caste oppression also involves religious oppression. It is taught in religious texts that certain castes are not allowed to read, speak or listen to. They are deprived of religion and taught it is due to their karma leaving many wondering what horrible thing they did in their past life. It is cruel and it must be acknowledged and stopped.
I am so grateful to activist and artist, Thenmozhi Soundararajan for sitting down with me to discuss the important topics of caste and religious trauma and how some of us are perpetuating this in yoga spaces even as we are trying to respect Indian culture.
Take a listen HERE and please don’t forget to rate and review!
by Lara Land | Jan 16, 2023 | BLISS BOOK BONUS, BOOKS, COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT
I am so excited to announce that the pre-order bonuses for my forthcoming book,
The Essential Guide to Trauma Sensitive Yoga are now up! There are three bonuses: A Trauma-Sensitive Body Scan, TWO Bonus yoga Sequences, and an exclusive virtual Q&A with me a week after the book launch.
All of these are carefully created bonuses, but the ones I especially want to point out are the additional yoga sequences. What I really want to get across is that they really aren’t extra but were actually meant to be a part of the book. Because of this, I am hoping with all my heart that you will take advantage of the pre-bonus offer by purchasing your copy of The Essential Guide to Trauma Sensitive Yoga before its publication day, May 2nd.
The book is a compilation of over two decades of practicing and guiding trauma-sensitive yoga and teaching yoga teachers and other healing professionals how to share in these practices. It is for both yoga teachers and practitioners and will also support folks who are neither of these but are interested in stress reduction and connecting to their breath and bodies. It includes over 260 photos of yoga poses, many of them in chairs. These simple exercises will support anyone looking to release traumatic stress from their system.
Yoga teachers Kino Macgregor, Seane Corn, Dianne Bondy, and others have already read and reviewed the book. Check out their reviews and more about my first offering with Shambhala Publications and purchase your pre-order copy HERE.
CLICK HERE FOR 30% DISCOUNT ON
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO TRAUMA SENSITIVE YOGA
DIRECT FROM SHAMBHALA
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