The Essential Guide to Trauma Sensitive Yoga

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Setting Healthy Boundaries

Setting Healthy Boundaries

by | Jul 7, 2024 | COACHING, COMMUNITY, LAND BLOG, LARA LAND, Self Improvement, SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Setting healthy boundaries is a crucial aspect of maintaining well-being, fostering healthy relationships, and ensuring personal growth.

Boundaries help define our limits and protect our mental, emotional, and physical health. This week I have renowned psychotherapist Dr. Sharon Martin on the Beyond Trauma Podcast to discuss the importance of boundaries and provide practical strategies to establish and maintain them. This blog will delve into her insights and offer actionable steps for setting healthy boundaries in your life.

Understanding Boundaries

Boundaries are guidelines or limits that a person sets to define acceptable behavior from others. They are essential for maintaining a sense of identity and protecting our emotional and physical space. Dr. Sharon Martin emphasizes that boundaries are not just about saying “no” but about creating a space where you can thrive without feeling overwhelmed or taken advantage of.

Types of Boundaries

  1. Physical Boundaries: These pertain to your personal space and physical touch. For instance, you might not feel comfortable with hugs from acquaintances and prefer handshakes instead.
  2. Emotional Boundaries: These involve protecting your emotional well-being by managing your emotional responses and not taking on others’ emotional burdens.
  3. Time Boundaries: These help you manage your time effectively, ensuring you have time for yourself, your work, and your loved ones without feeling overcommitted.
  4. Mental Boundaries: These protect your thoughts and beliefs, allowing you to have your own opinions and not be swayed by others’ undue influence.
  5. Material Boundaries: These relate to your possessions and finances, determining what you are willing to share and what you prefer to keep private.

The Importance of Healthy Boundaries

Dr. Sharon Martin highlights several key reasons why healthy boundaries are vital:

  • Self-Care: Boundaries allow you to take care of yourself by prioritizing your needs and well-being.
  • Healthy Relationships: They promote mutual respect and understanding, reducing conflicts and misunderstandings.
  • Reduced Stress: Clear boundaries prevent you from feeling overwhelmed by reducing unnecessary obligations and emotional burdens.
  • Enhanced Self-Esteem: By valuing your needs and setting limits, you reinforce your self-worth and confidence.

Signs of Unhealthy Boundaries

Unhealthy boundaries can manifest in various ways, including:

  • Overcommitment: Constantly saying “yes” to requests, even when you don’t have the time or energy.
  • Guilt and Resentment: Feeling guilty for setting limits or resenting others for taking advantage of you.
  • Inability to Say No: Struggling to refuse requests, leading to burnout and frustration.
  • Lack of Privacy: Allowing others to invade your personal space or share your private information without consent.

How to Set Healthy Boundaries

Dr. Sharon Martin provides a comprehensive approach to establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries:

1. Self-Awareness

Understand your needs, values, and limits. Reflect on past experiences where boundaries were crossed and how it affected you. This awareness is the first step in recognizing where boundaries are needed.

2. Clear Communication

Communicate your boundaries assertively and clearly. Use “I” statements to express your needs without blaming or criticizing others. For example, “I need some quiet time after work to relax.”

3. Consistency

Maintain your boundaries consistently. It’s essential to reinforce your limits even if others push back. Consistency helps others understand and respect your boundaries over time.

4. Practice Self-Care

Prioritize self-care by regularly checking in with yourself and ensuring your needs are met. This might involve setting aside time for hobbies, relaxation, or seeking professional support when needed.

5. Seek Support

Don’t hesitate to seek support from friends, family, or a therapist. Discussing your boundaries with trusted individuals can provide encouragement and accountability.

6. Be Prepared for Resistance

Expect some resistance when you start setting boundaries, especially if you’ve previously allowed others to overstep. Stay firm and remind yourself of the importance of maintaining your limits for your well-being.

Setting healthy boundaries is a continuous process that requires self-awareness, clear communication, and persistence. Dr. Sharon Martin’s insights offer valuable guidance on how to establish boundaries that protect your well-being and enhance your relationships. Remember, boundaries are not about shutting people out but about creating a safe space where you can thrive. Start small, be patient with yourself, and recognize that setting boundaries is an act of self-respect and care.

For more in-depth advice and a look into personal relationships, work boundaries, and boundaries with children, take a listen to Beyond Trauma. 

Boundaries and Trauma Sensitivity

Boundaries and Trauma Sensitivity

by | 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