Healing Trauma with Yoga & Mind-Body Techniques

by Beth Shaw

This book is a user-friendly guide to learning about trauma sensitive yoga, who needs it, and how to implement the practice. This book provides easy to understand, applicable, and valuable information for many populations so anyone can embrace the gift of yoga. As our world grows smaller through technology, we can grow more distant and alone. Tragedy seems to present itself as pervasive and overwhelming, however armed with the many tools of yoga, we discover resiliency and hope.
Trauma is an emotional response to an event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Trauma is a subjective experience and represents a threat to personal safety physically, emotionally, or mentally. Trauma activates our sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is necessary and important as a survival response. Trauma becomes a problem when it is chronic or so severe in perception that the SNS is never turned back off. When the sympathetic nervous system is continually activated, it rewires the nervous system and physical changes take place in the brain and the endocrine system that make healing more challenging. Chronic activation can turn into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition that can cause serious physical and mental illness. Whether or not a trauma becomes a chronic stress seems to be related to the intensity and severity of the incident and also to past trauma exposure. This book will explore these changes and just how trauma gets stored in the body as well as offer a trauma sensitive format of YOGAFIT as a body based program for healing.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2019

Reviews

[Reading Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay I've been reading a bunch of trauma informed yoga books and I'm beginning to get a little suspicious and see where YA is coming from. See, a while ago, Yoga Alliance stepped back from the idea of a particular certification for teaching yoga and trauma. They do still encourage the idea of trauma-informed yoga--that a yoga class can be a place of healing but also exacerbation of traumas (like a sexual assault trauma survivor might find happy baby to be an upsetting pose). It all feels very DSM to me--where it's obvious that the trauma yoga community is just, basically, making shit up as they go along.

Beth Shaw is a considerable presence in the yoga world--she's been eclipsed by the fancier and more instagram pretty types like Kino or what's her name from Strala--so I'm not saying this book is bunkum. It's just, well, nothing that groundbreaking. The things she teaches in this book are rudimentary. The Applications chapters really could be recycled from ANY basic yoga book. I suppose if you've never done yoga and you're looking for something, this is a good start, because she does cover things like pranayama (one paragraph for each, which feels a bit...thin and I'm not sure how well a beginner can learn from her paragraph), and a few basic asana, and she touches on mantra and sound healing (basically her gist is 'you should try it!' rather than offering anything in particular of her own. Just...book a sound healing. Okay.....).

Even so, as a beginner level book for yoga and trauma...it's been done better? I made the 'mistake' of reading Nischala Joy Devi's amazing book the Healing Power of Yoga, and I guess that quality of science and specifics has become my gold standard, and this...is like bronze. Not terrible but not really that great.

[Lisa Cobb Sabatini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a review copy of Healing Trauma with Yoga by Beth Shaw from Goodreads.

Healing Trauma with Yoga: Go From Surviving to Thriving with Mind Body Techniques by Beth Shaw is an excellent guide for individuals who suffer from conditions brought about by trauma in their lives to improve their physical, mental, and spiritual well-being through yoga. The book is well written and easy to follow, and addresses various traumas, how they can come about and the affects on the body.
The book is also an excellent reference for all beginners and casual practitioners to learn about applications of yoga as well as the terms used in the practice. Step-by-step instructions are provided for a variety of poses.
Included in this handbook for those suffering from trauma are "survivor stories". These brief vignettes offer real life experiences, along with those of the author, that many readers will identify with and all readers will draw inspiration from.
Each of us encounters some difficulties in life, and Healing Trauma with Yoga helps individuals to recover and find peace through the practice of yoga.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an easy to read overview of yoga and how it can help to solve issues related to trauma. It is perfect for the person new to yoga. Beth gives a understandable definition of trauma and yoga. It is wonderful how she weaves YogaFit, her brand of yoga, throughout the book to include the essence and seven principles of alignment. My favorite part of the book was the opening page of each chapter including quotes from the Bhagavad Gita. Beth shares her story of trauma but trauma is highlighted in all of its many forms and manifestations by the other stories people contributed to the book. These stories illustrate how trauma effects everyone differently and why no one solution will fit all. I was somewhat puzzled to not see a bibliography (one of my favorite parts of every non-fiction book) but Beth does give credit to many authors and others who contributed to the book. The book did send me back to look at how to do tree and frog pose as the photos in the book do not align with the words. I will refer to this book often for dealing with my daily stressors and well as sharing its insights with others.

[Terrin Marino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beneficial! Good practical advice, poses, natural remedies and a healthy dose of vulnerability toward healing trauma!