Has anyone had success with yoga?

[FindingMyself88]

Ok so my T really wants me to work on being mindful and in the "moment". She has recommended me to try looking into yoga for relaxation as well as making me more aware of my body. I hold my trauma very much in my body, I don't think I have a relaxed muscle anywhere. I stay tense. My doctor says this is the cause of my migraines returning, my neck is as hard as a rock!

Has anyone else had success with yoga? I tried watching a video yesterday and while nothing really came up for me, I do feel it helped loosen me up a tiny bit for a little while. I am also on muscle relaxers now, so I don't know how much can be contributed to the yoga.

If you have had success, can you share some tips or maybe some websites where you can get free/cheap videos? I am NOT comfortable with taking classes and my T agrees it might not be the best. She is sure that as I try this and we dive into EMDR, emotions are going to surface. It is hard enough for me to share any emotions with her, much less a class of people I don't really know.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I disagree with your therapist.

If you have serious body memories, then becoming mindful of the body can be extremely distressing if the trauma itself has not been processed. Nobody should be diving anywhere when it comes to trauma. EMDR and therapy to help stabilise between sessions is helpful for some. But if that is working well, then there will be no need to then go home and practise yoga to help bring up memories and emotions.

Saying that, AFTER processing some of my trauma, I joined a tai-chi class (which is also about mindfulness and being present in the body). There have been times when it is difficult because of my trauma. But I have found it to be the next step in my recovery. It helps me to relax and has brought an awareness of my body through movement. So I do feel that yoga and tai-chi can be very beneficial for trauma survivors, but when they are ready emotionally. I think you will just be put off if you use it to try and bring up emotions stored in the body.

 

[StellaBlue]

I started trauma-focused yoga last week (today was my 2nd session). We are NOT doing specific trauma work, but rather adding more tools to my toolbox in terms of self-care, grounding, becoming more aware of my body, etc. I am lucky enough to be able to afford private sessions, so the concentration is solely on me for 60-90 minutes. For these two sessions, we've spent about half the time talking about things - non-judgmentally looking examining what I'm doing right and she makes suggestions for gently changing things that might not be so helpful (such as increasing my daily water intake). She also focuses on what I'm feeling - physically, as in "where in your body are you feeling this" - when we talk about things.

I was very up front with her that I can not dive into "trauma work" - and she has no desire to do that.

The yoga part (so far) has focused on Restorative poses and Yoga Nidra...all gentle, all with the goal of becoming more relaxed and more aware of my body. Today we agreed on a short daily routine that I'm going to try for the next couple of weeks.

It's still too early to say how this has or will impact my trauma work, but I feel like anything that involves being in and moving my body is good.

 

[Springer80]

I found it helped me relax physically and helped slow me down. This is just regular yoga, no trauma specific stuff.

Although I was doing it just for the physical relief, I think it helped me begin to access the level of emotional vulnerability I needed to get to. But very slowly and without me even realising becase it wasn't my intention. I would sleep better and dream more and shifts that took place would settle in to stay rather than fleetingly pop up then go.

All this was slow though, I started yoga in 2009/10, I had a burnout 2011/12 (mainly because I started yoga as part of my 'conquering the world and my illness strategy :rolleyes:). Just this year I am starting to feel relaxed normally :eek:, with less and less effort and the days I feel like this are increasing. I have been talking to my therapist about the crazy notion that enjoyment may be possible after this slightly alien relaxation thing becomes second nature.

I don't know if you have a fear of groups/crowds etc but just doing normal yoga wasn't triggering for me. Your basically just stretching your muscles and slow breathing to calm your nervous system down. I did it on an entirely practical/physical level. No direct trauma processing required, only muscular relief.[DOUBLEPOST=1404507250,1404507053][/DOUBLEPOST]Ps the shoulder/neck pain thing. I went to an osteopath to get my bones cracked back into place. It was heavenly. Massage wouldn't work but this did. I think it's like a permanent spasm thing. I only went the once but it was £35 amazingly spent. Try it, try it, try it.

 

[Springer80]

If I had to give you a tip it would be about the breathing. This is more important than reaching funny positions. But you don't force it, anymore than you force your ears to listen to music, but you do drink it in, so to speak and the more you do, the more oxygen gets to your muscles and the more your brain slows down.

A few times, I have done it enough to get into a state that is like you are being breathed, rather than breathing and it is the most wonderful sensation. Total relaxation and I slept like a baby for ages afterwards and felt different the next day.

More focus is given to the out breath. You know if your frustrated with something and inadvertently do a long sigh and you feel slightly less wound up. Well that's your body automatically doing the exact same thing. With yoga you just adopt that and take it for a walk.

 

[Seasounds]

The issues of yoga, association to body sensations (e.g. embodiment, mindfulness, etc.), relaxation, and re-traumatization, are different topics, yet intertwined. For me:

• Yoga exercises, like massage, can be relaxing (tension reducing and releasing) overall, if you work with a professional who isn't tense, and outcome driven, because then you are likely to get tense and be outcome (vs process) driven--especially if you are trying to be perfect ;). FYI there are a lot of different styles of yoga-exercise teaching. Some are relaxed and some are 'oh so perfection driven'. Personally, I get too concerned about doing the right thing in a class, and do better practicing yoga exercises by myself-exploring them, as I go.
  
• Association to body sensations can be encourage through a variety of relaxation exercises and meditations (Vipassanna, Mindfulness, etc.). This process was beneficial and challenging, for me. Having been frozen in fear, these exercises allowed me to learn how to selectively relax muscle groups, (become more relaxed, overall), and feel freer.
  
• Throughout the relaxation exercises and meditations that I did, body memories opened up; this was overwhelming at first. I stopped them for a while. After I got into therapy, and developed the skills and support to process the memories, I found balance. I had the ability to 'be with my experience in the present, I had the ability to be aware of when I was being triggered, and I had the ability to process it.
• Mindfulness, in addition to mindbody awareness, implies the ability to be both the observer, and the experiencer of, body sensations and emotions. The process has the intention to help people, to discover that they can make new choices, about the thoughts they think, and the actions they take. 'Choice' thinking, instead of 'non-choice thinking' (e.g. "I don't have a choice", "I have to"), was very empowering.
  
• Re-traumatizion, or better put, being flooded with memories before I had the skills to precess them, decreased, as I gained emotional processing skills.
• A sense of relative control developed, as I found that I could do some relaxation exercises--that would calm me down, by stopping my mind from racing, or I could do body-awareness meditations-which seemed to open and release past traumas.
• The above processes above mixed with good therapy, choosing peaceful relationships and peaceful settings, have been my toehold on developing a new reality.

• For me, EMDR has always 'way' destabilized me.

• I think the means to getting through PTSD is different for everyone.:)

 

[FindingMyself88]

Thank you everyone for your input. @Meadowsweet I think I may have mis-communicated what I was trying to say. She doesn't want me to try yoga as a form of reprocessing or any trauma work. The yoga is simply to make me mindful of my body, to feel in my body again because I am basically living in a mild dissociative state a lot of the time. However, she is sure that as I become more aware of my body and we start the emdr, emotions are going to come up. We have been and are working on how to handle these emotions in a safe way. This is why she doesn't want me taking a class. She strictly wants me working on relaxation and mindfulness. I will be seeing her twice a week to make sure that I process everything safely. Thank you for the tip on Tai-chi, I will research it :)

We are NOT doing specific trauma work, but rather adding more tools to my toolbox in terms of self-care, grounding, becoming more aware of my body, etc

This is more along the lines of what my T wants me to do it for as well. Let me know how your new routine works out! Good luck with it ;)

Although I was doing it just for the physical relief, I think it helped me begin to access the level of emotional vulnerability I needed to get to.

I hope this will happen for me as well. My T wants me to incorporate mindfulness and possibly yoga into the everyday part of the rest of my life. She believes it will really help me with my anxiety. I had a really good time this morning doing some of the same stuff I did last night. I felt more calm than I have in a while. Before I knew it, an hour and a half had passed!

I have seen a chiropractor and had x-rays done. Where a healthy neck has a slight curve to it, mine is completely straight. They think that is partly from my head injury last year, but my doctor also has a feeling that it is from all the tension I have held onto for so long! I just can't afford to keep seeing my chiropractor right now..

A few times, I have done it enough to get into a state that is like you are being breathed, rather than breathing and it is the most wonderful sensation. Total relaxation and I slept like a baby for ages afterwards and felt different the next day.

This sounds heavenly! :). Yes, my T wants me specifically focused on my breathing.

Mindfulness, in addition to mindbody awareness, implies the ability to be both the observer, and the experiencer of, body sensations and emotions. The process has the intention to help people, to discover that they can make new choices, about the thoughts they think, and the actions they take. 'Choice' thinking, instead of 'non-choice thinking' (e.g. "I don't have a choice", "I have to"), was very empowering.

This reminds me of something else me and my T talked about. We started the treatment plan for EMDR and rating my emotions and such. We are taking it slow, so she wanted to go ahead and do that part yesterday. She asked me what negative thoughts I had about myself due to the targeted trauma. We talked about them and she said that thoughts are not always true just because we think them.

A sense of relative control developed, as I found that I could do some relaxation exercises--that would calm me down, by stopping my mind from racing, or I could do body-awareness meditations-which seemed to open and release past traumas.

We also talked about control. Like, I don't like to drive, but riding with my mom scares me. She wants me to start driving more for 2 control reasons. One is so that my mom cannot scare me or take me places I don't want to go. Secondly, she thinks this might help me work on my dissociating issues...

 

[Springer80]

This is why she doesn't want me taking a class.

I find this postion curious, I have to say. Does she mean that once you start EMDR that you shouldn't do yoga in groups alongside in case the deep relaxation takes you off to the same place EMDR does and triggers you? Personally I can't imagine that but I suppose she may have a point.

If she means she doesn't want you doing yoga classes AT ALL, even before you've started EMDR that just sounds a bit barmy.

Personally, when I still had the capacity to be triggered by a stressful situation, it would be by a sudden noise, bumping into a certain person, seeing something violent on tv...ie. external things. These aren't exactly present in yoga classes unless your at still at such a pitch of hyper-vigilance that you're pretty much always on the edge of triggering, especially in groups. If you're otherwise relatively functioning even if it's an effort but you have it managing it down, then lying in a low lit room listening to chill out music on a mat is not a stressful situation?

As for EMDR and semi-permanent dissociative states - well allowing myself to relax into the place where I feel violated, only happened when I allow it and that is in the privacy of my home or a therapy room. Just because I relax does not mean I also give myself permission to connect to that specific place.

Anyway, I don't mean to cause consternation for you about your therapists advise. And you will do what ever you think is the best thing for you, naturally.

I just think the advice doesn't really understand the nature of that mechanism. It is essentially protective in it's nature.

Good luck with it all. Happy breathing! :D

 

[FindingMyself88]

Does she mean that once you start EMDR that you shouldn't do yoga in groups alongside in case the deep relaxation takes you off to the same place EMDR does and triggers you?

You are not causing any consternation! Part of it is this, but not completely. She knows how difficult it is for me to feel emotions, ESPECIALLY in front of others. My whole life I have had to hide my emotions until I have them on lock down. So she feels that if I tried doing yoga in a class, I would keep the emotions shut down and not allow them to come up at all, which needs to happen. If they did "spill over" as they have before, it would make me more afraid of allowing them out in the future. She wants me to become comfortable with feeling emotions as they come. One day, I might be able to take yoga classes, but right now it is better off at home or in safe places for me where I can allow the emotions to come up.

Emotions, not memories…wanted to specify. The memories are already here, but I hold a tight lid on my emotions.

 

[Springer80]

She knows how difficult it is for me to feel emotions, ESPECIALLY in front of others.

See I suppose this is my point. Obviously it is based on my experience. But I went to yoga classes to experience relaxation only. Nothing more and nothing more came out IN the class. The relaxation I felt that continued after the class once I was home may have made me feel softer and therefore more in my body and therefore more able to feel regressive but that was at home.

Subsequently when I went to therapy and or EMDR sessions it was easier to get into that particular state where I could access my dissociated trauma but just because I practiced muscular relaxation techniques in yoga classes didn't mean, for me at least, that my brains defensive neurology suddenly all scrambled and everything just fell out all over the place.

That tight hold, which I still have about articulating love (rather than the fear, which I've now worked through) from that vulnerable place, is still there and I control it, in the sense that my dissociation controls it and I only allow my dissociation to come out when I am in a controlled environment.[DOUBLEPOST=1404515826,1404515665][/DOUBLEPOST]I take your point about hedging you bets in these matters though. Playing it safe is better than causing alarm and entrenching any distress further than it already is.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Just weighing in here on yoga. I had a list of six yoga instructors that I complied from my clients. One really connected with me and I am so grateful to have found her.

She offers several different types of yoga. I told her I have PTSD and was nervous about getting triggered. Oh, I should add here that she is also a therapist and a Maine Guide. She recommended that I take her Yin Yoga class. It is done lying down or sitting. It is a practice using bolsters and other supports to take the stress out of the large muscle groups in order to relax and stretch the small tendons and ligaments. We hold pose for up to five minutes for deep relaxation. She reads poems and affirmations from time to time. Some I like so much I bring index cards to session and write them down to put in my positive affirmation journal.

She is such a fantastic teacher and has a wonderful studio with all the blankets and bolsters we need. Most of the women fall asleep!!

There is much guidance on breathing. I use this outside of session to defuse anxious moods. It also helps that she lives on a beautiful New England road through farms and open land. It is a very peaceful experience.

One more thing. I have a herniated disc in my back. For the past four years I've had severe back pain. One day I was in a pose and my pain evaporated and it's been gone for months. Here's one affirmation:
"We cannot see ourselves in running water. It is only in stillness that we can see. The same is true for the mind."

 

[Chava]

I like Shiva Rea's yoga DVDs (some come with a "yoga matrix" that allows you to mix and match short segments. The lunar flow sequences don't require loads of strength but focus on fluidity...I find them to be calming and a nice way to be with my body in a better relationship. She also has some stuff you can sample on youtube. On youtube I also like "Ekhart" yoga. Try some out...if it feels helpful maybe even finding someone willing to give private lessons?

A book I love is "Yoga for Pain Relief"...applicable for tension too because the author writes about how yoga can help us heal the relationship to our body and gain awareness...and descriptions of gentle sequences.

I do a mix of my favorite forms of yoga, qigong, and Pilates....very helpful for mindfulness, slowing down, honoring my body and building kinder relationship to it, empowerment, and creating good feelings in my body....all of this fits well on a list of great resources for trauma survivors. For me, it goes hand-in-hand with therapy and my whole life feels better when I honor myself by making time for yoga or other mindful movement.