Reddit reviews Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body

There is a whole new branch of mental health treatment taught through qualified and well-trained yoga therapists who specialize in trauma. If you're interested in it, the current gold standard for trauma treatment is laid out in some books:

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Koch, MD

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity by Nadine Burke-Harris, MD

Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body by David Emerson

Yoga for Emotional Balance: Simple Practices to Help Relieve Anxiety and Depression by Bo Forbes

It's becoming apparent that yoga is actually a massively useful tool in rooting out and treating trauma, which is often at the root of mental illness.

I get that you were making a comment about the way people tend to dismiss the pain of mental illness by saying "suck it up", but yoga therapy really is a great course of treatment.

Think about how breathing acts during bouts with anxiety or panic. Practicing yoga conditions and trains your body to slow down and bypass the trauma triggers and subsequent bodily response to keep you breathing instead of passing out or going into panic mode. And that's just one small benefit of practice.

Trauma is just now beginning to be understood by the greater medical community, and yoga with a trained therapist can make a world of difference.

Programs like this one are beginiing to help millions of people.

So the "get over it" part can go fuck itself, but if you suffer from anxiety, depression, or trauma-related mental illness, you really should keep hydrated and do yoga.

Trauma sensitive yoga resources
Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga
Trauma Recovery Yoga
I've never linked anything on Reddit because I've only posted a few things but for those of you who are interested in yoga geared toward trauma survivors these resources are a great starting point.

I second u/All_Is_Coming as well, seeing as this is your first death be patient with yourself. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to process grief. If you're worried about it, you sound very normal to me. You may find that your yoga practice may drive you to tears in an emotional sense, it happens to me a lot actually. I assume this is pretty normal. Remember, we store our emotions in our bodies so when we use our bodies we release those feelings.


I recently read "Overcoming Trauma through Yoga" and found a lot of really useful information in there. Maybe you'll find it useful, too.

https://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Trauma-through-Yoga-Reclaiming/dp/1556439695

My pleasure :) since you already do yoga, also have a look at this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Overcoming-Trauma-Through-Yoga-Reclaiming/dp/1556439695/ref=mp_s_a_1_1 - it’s good. My favourite say is: if you’re tired, learn to rest, not to quit. Take care!

Since all addiction is a form of medication for internal pain usually stemming from trauma of some sort i would recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Trauma-through-Yoga-Reclaiming/dp/1556439695
Pranayama is really good for me to keep off pot & cigarettes. Good luck!

I'm a student (currently obtaining my masters in mental health, with a focus on trauma and crisis).

Having literature, such as this will greatly improve my electric knowledge base.

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Sure, you can research David Emerson who's involved at Kripalu, or there's Bessel van der Kolk who is a badass, you can listen to a great interview with him from the show On Being. There's also Stephen Levine.

Here's a Kripalu article that quotes van der Kolk.

And there's psychologists that talk a lot about somatic holding, or at least subconscious holding patterns. An easier read would be stuff from Daniel Siegel(I know it kinda looks like pop psych but it's actually pretty good), one of my favorite authors on trauma is Donald Kalsched, which is a bit more dense and more about work through talk psychotherapy. But often I find myself applying his concepts in yoga classes as a way to understand what's going on inside mentally/emotionally that's connected to my physical experience. Also sheds some light on how I relate to other students and the teacher.

Then there's the bodywork stuff, cranial sacral therapy or somatic body work but there's too much misinformation for me to guide you. All I can say is that I have a yoga teacher that also gives me bodywork sessions that supplement my yoga practice, and the inner growth I've experienced has been profound.

Out of all of this, if you're going to research anything I would highly suggest the van der Kolk interview, which you can download and listen to.