Trauma Sensitive Language

One of the first things folks tend to recognize when they commit to yoga or meditation practice is the incessant internal dialogue going on in their heads.

Our inner voice or really voices have full conversations with each other, make things us, or narrate experiences we already know about.

If we repeated their language out loud, folks would surely think we were nuts. 

When we believe everything our inner voices tell us, that is problematic as well. 

Learning to understand, not stop, our inner dialogue is what we do in our mindful practices.

Thinking we shouldn’t think is one of the major misconceptions beginner and long-term meditators make. It’s much more about experiencing with awareness the ways thoughts arise and disappear so as understand their nature as well as looking at habits of content on occasion. This is all work I practice with my students on retreats, in workshops, and during private and group lessons.

What I want to talk to you TODAY about is how we talk to others which is highly related to how we talk to ourselves, so much so, that adjusting one will often regulate the other.

I want to relay as strongly as possible the difference in experience when the body hears, “You need to…” versus “You might want to try…” OR “You always…” versus “I’ve noticed you tend to…”

Try it now if you like.

These are widely different experiences and they have extremely different repercussions on our nervous systems.

Language is a habit. It develops through what we hear as a child and take in later in life. All habits can be rewired.

This is the bulk of what I teach my trauma informed workshops and trainings. I spoke about it more specifically in this recent VIDEO