New Approach Treats Trauma Through Yoga

thank you for posting this! as someone who has suffered through PTSD because of war... I am deeply interested in reading this... Right now my company is working with a yoga studio and starting to do some profound things with special needs children, especially those with developmental complications.

Many of people's posts I think on Evolver are very abstract, sometimes quite visionary, but often lacking practicality methinks. I wish that more people would take a cue from Pinchbeck, who is intensely practical as well as lucid. Personally, I think it is the mark of someone who is actually facing and not avoiding their trauma to be practical.

Personally I believe that there is nothing more practical for healing deep wounds of the psyche than meditation and yoga. For the last several days I have been reminded of the emotional scar tissue in my heart.I have seen enough people popped in the mideast, my personal friends have been randomly popped at a trance party in seattle (the "capitol hill massacre") but that does not make me special, the sadness of it all, the common experience of trauma induced through sexual violence or through armed violence can also bring us together insomuch as our trauma does not feed our personal addictions and our egos.

Many of us have trauma from addictions, extra layer of traumas right on top of the one's the addictions were trying to mask, living in a society defined by economic relationships and full of conditions and judgements. I'm wondering if you have learned anything about the serial abuse of alcahol, cigarettes and tetrahydrocannibinal etc. I think it's a delicate balance, for most people in this civilization, it is one or another form of addiction (coffee, cigarettes, junk food, television etc) that holds us together.

But on the other hand, it seems that the war traumatized addict needs to just "let go" of holding on to remaining functional by abusing pot or alcahol. I am interested in this relationship of trauma-addiction-disintegration. I have seen yoga have brilliant effects on special needs children with their own kind of traumas (gut traumas, brain traumas, heart-brain traumas).. they go on their path of healing because of yoga. I think that there is a way for all who have been malaffected by war... but I think the key is "together". Trauma is a subtlety carried by the body, in breathing practice and in physical exercise my emotions surface but never seem to release completely. When we fall apart, our friends keep us alive.