Embodied Healing
Survivor and Facilitator Voices from the Practice of Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
Chiropractors and massage therapists stay in demand because they know how stress is held in the backs, necks, and shoulders of their patients. Fortunately, with some manipulation, those aches and knots can usually be relieved. But chronic stress is a different beast, and is now known to compromise immune systems and increase the likelihood of more serious illnesses like cancer and heart disease. Obviously, what happens in the mind definitely doesn’t stay in the mind. And then there’s the trauma of sexual violence, warfare, forced migration, and severe domestic abuse—different beasts altogether.
In Embodied Healing, Jenn Turner showcases the extraordinary success being found by therapists using body-based treatments to help trauma patients heal. Through twelve essays on Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) written by a diverse group of trauma survivors, yoga instructors, and therapists, the book offers concrete evidence that trauma exists in both the mind and the body, but that effective treatment may best be approached through the body.
Recovering from severe childhood abuse, Nicole Brown Faulknor writes of how she lost the ability to live externally because she internalized the tormented parts of herself. Using TCTSY, “I have quietly begun to learn to move through the traumatized parts of myself … first by learning that I had a body and this body had feelings, and that I could feel my body as well as claim my body. My body belonged to me.”
Using yoga and the power of movement as a much-needed counterpoint to talk-therapy in the treatment of trauma, TCTSY is beautifully captured in this engaging project.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
