SAAM 2025 WEEK 2: HOW DOES TRAUMA-INFORMED YOGA WORK?
Sarah Beranbaum, PhD
Co-Author of Trauma-Informed Yoga: A Capacity Building and Wellness Strengthening Intervention for Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence and Affliative Staff
How does trauma impact the brain and body, and how does trauma-informed yoga help regulate those responses?
Individual responses to trauma can vary widely, as can the duration of distress following a trauma. When someone experiences a serious, possibly life-threatening event, they are likely to have an automatic strong physical reaction, known as the fight-flight reaction or freeze response. In the fight-flight reaction their body is preparing to escape or fight away the threat by directing blood and oxygen to hands, feet, and big muscle groups. In the freeze response, their body is attempting to reduce physical and emotional pain. The automatic fight-flight or freeze responses can become associated with cues, such as certain smells, sounds, or places, which may cause someone to react as though they are in danger again.
Surviving a trauma can cause the fear and threat detection center of the brain, the amygdala, to become hyperactive while the decision making, regulating part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, and part of the brain in charge of memory and distinguishing between past and present, the hippocampus, become under-active. Together, this may cause a person to be hypervigilant to threat and have strong emotional and behavioral reactions to perceived threat that can be difficult to regulate.
Trauma-informed yoga focuses on psychological safety while building skills to tolerate and regulate physiological and emotional states that have become dysregulated by trauma exposure and to strengthen internal body awareness as a means of enhancing self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-regulation. Research has found that yoga has positive effects on depression, anxiety, acute stress reactions, post traumatic stress symptoms, and dissociation.
What did your research reveal about the benefits of trauma-informed yoga for survivors’ mental and physical well-being?
Numerous benefits from participating in Exhale to Inhale’s trauma-informed yoga classes were identified in a multi-year research study. Participants who engaged in ETI's TIY reported feeling less stress and anxiety following a TIY class. Body pain and discomfort were also found to be reduced from before to after TIY. Participants reported increases in self-efficacy, such that they felt more capable of responding to daily life challenges and making decisions. Research also revealed that trauma-informed yoga is a capacity building intervention, which means that participants learn body-based coping skills that can be practiced off the mat as a means of reducing stress, increasing self-efficacy, and building tolerance and acceptance for physical and emotional sensations.
Are there specific techniques or practices in trauma-informed yoga that have been particularly effective in calming the nervous system and promoting healing?
Trauma-informed yoga includes a variety of practices that reduce distress, soothe the nervous system, and promote healing.
The physical postures in the practice (strength or aerobic exercise) have been found to reduce mental health symptoms, including depression and anxiety and improve mood.
The mindfulness component of TIY, in which someone practices noticing their thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the present moment without judgment reduces amygdala activity (fear reactivity) and reduces distress associated with mental and physical pain.
A third TIY practice that is particularly calming to the nervous system is elongating one's breath. Each time we exhale, our heart rates slow down and we activate through the rest-and-digest, or self-soothing, side of our nervous system. Gently extending the length of one's exhale can help reduce stress, slow down racing thoughts, and feel calmer.
——————
Welcome to Week 2 of our 2025 Sexual Assault Awareness Month Series: Move, Heal, Empower. Join us in bringing healing through trauma-informed yoga to survivors everywhere—donate today.