Today’s guest is Anne Halleck, licensed mental health counselor and certified yoga teacher here in Indianapolis. She works with women and teen girls providing trauma informed group yoga. Trauma informed yoga is a specific type of yoga that can help women and teen girls regain their confidence, get unstuck and live life in a more full way.
In this episode you will learn:
- Yoga has eight different stages
- Yoga is not only exercise, but increasing mindfulness and awareness
- Anne provides Trauma Informed Yoga groups for women/teen girls
- Eight weeks long
- Closed groups
- Psychoeducation on what is trauma
- Some talk therapy
- Each week introduce new mindfulness practice (some yoga and more breathing techniques/meditation)
- Gain new skills to help calm the body and mind
- Can process emotions during group and be held in supportive way in moving through intense or strong emotions
- Anne had been doing group work separately and her yoga practice separately, then brought both modalities together for trauma work
- Bringing awareness to the body can help reduce the stress levels and stop avoiding sensations that can seem scary
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Benefits of trauma informed yoga
- Gain awareness of emotional and physical self
- Stop the avoidance of feeling the emotions
- Decrease avoidance of autoimmune issues, chronic pain or eating issues
- Build confidence
- Talking and practicing the skills
- Increase distress tolerance and self-soothing
- Increase awareness of your self-talk
- Be more in the moment, present
- Help getting unstuck out of freeze mode
- Yoga is for every body type
- Yoga is a mindfulness practice not necessarily a religious practice
- Gain confidence in giving yourself permission to be vulnerable in a group and decrease minimizing or comparing what you have experienced.
- Trauma can be:
- Major losses
- Emotional trauma
- Abusive relationships
- Neglect
- Natural disasters
- Symptoms can include:
- High anxiety
- Flashbacks of event
- Re-experiencing trauma
- Being on edge
- Avoiding things that remind you of the trauma
- Some statistics for women
- 1 out of 4 women is sexually assaulted in their lifetime (CDC states 1 out of 2 women experience sexual violence victimization)
- Of the 1 out of 4, 70 percent have a trauma prior to 18 years old
- Many sexual assaults happen by someone the family knows or acquaintance
- It is possible to get unstuck and regain your confidence
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Anne’s contact information:
@AnneHalleckCounseling on FaceBook
annehalleckcounseling@gmail.com
Book Recommendations: (Maybe be affiliate links)
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Overcoming Trauma through Yoga:Reclaiming Your Body by David Emerson and Elizabeth Hopper, PH.D.
Other websites:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics
http://www.ncadv.org/learn/statistics
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/infographic.html