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Every yoga class should be a trauma-informed yoga class

Tonight I’m teaching the B Yoga Basel teacher trainees all about yoga and trauma-sensitivity: everything from Bessel Van Der Kolk to Resmaa Menakem to creating a culture of consent to polyvagal theory to patriarchal guru power dynamics and whether yoga teachers should even BE offering hands-on assists anymore. 

With an estimated 1 in 4 folks walking into your yoga class with a history of trauma, this was always important. But considering that the whole world has been experiencing collective trauma since March 2020, and Turkish and Syrian folks just experienced a literally earth-shattering loss of life and home, and Ukrainian refugees continue to flee mass suffering and genocidal war crimes, knowing how to teach trauma-informed yoga feels more essential than ever. 

I’m (pleasantly) stunned by how much has changed on this in the yoga world in the last decade. Ten or twelve years ago, we assumed that even in a class of 150 sweaty heaving bodies, every student should be touched at least once. Like touch-without-consent was only a good thing. 

Thank goodness the industry has woken up to trauma-awareness since then. There’s been a true outpouring of scholarship and activism in the last few years, and we’re all better for it. 

Teachers: there are so many subtle ways we can cultivate agency, encourage self-regulation, and help folks feel physically and emotionally safe in our classes. Let’s keep at it, together, until every yoga class is a trauma-informed yoga class. 

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What is the shape of your suffering?

The thing that first drew me to Buddhism was its honesty about the fact that sometimes, well, life just sucks. And that’s how it is. For everyone.

It was so refreshing. 🌱

Eighteen years ago today I sat in the front pew with my family for my dad’s funeral. It was a grand and sweeping celebration of life that he had planned out himself, complete with soaring hymns and a sanctuary full of kind, devoted Lutherans who’d been like family to us throughout his years of campus ministry.

To be honest, I don’t remember much of the wake the day before, or the lunch afterward, or any of that week — it’s all a smoky haze of grief.

But I do remember, very clearly, the Christian platitudes that came our way, about how he “was in a better place” and “God had a new angel” and “it was part of God’s plan,” and how they all felt supremely spiritual bypass-y, as well-intentioned as they were.

That spring, I was taking a course in my graduate program on Buddhism in Contemporary America. It became a beacon; a solace.

The Buddhist teaching that “Life is suffering” (aka the First Noble Truth) felt like the only honest thing in that season of grief.

It gave me such quiet comfort to know that even this most unfair of losses — my young father, lost to cancer at age 58; me only 26, witnessing my peers cherish decades with their not-dead parents — was in fact just a part of being alive. A normal, universal aspect of this whole being human and having a body thing.

So that was the shape of my suffering back in May 2005, which, of course, brought me to yoga, and to meditation, and a life devoted to living and sharing these practices. 

What’s the shape of yours? It ebbs and flows over time, of course — from loss and death to aging and disappointment, uncertainty and malaise, the job you wanted and didn’t get, the love you found and lost, the child you wanted and never got, or the being you adore whose own suffering breaks your heart.

Suffering is baked-in to the human experience. The sooner we can be real about that, and connect on that level, dropping the bullshit small talk and really diving in together, the sooner we’ll find a flash of peace amidst the shadows. 

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You understand suffering. That’s why you should teach.

Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been reading (and loving) Susan Cain’s new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

In one chapter, Cain tells the story of how renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg helped to bring Buddhism to the West, finding refuge in meditation practice after suffering profoundly in her youth.

The young Salzberg’s teacher in India, Dipa Ma, tells her she’s ready to teach — not because she’s done some 200 hour training, but because she deeply understands suffering.

I love this and believe it to be so true. 

Sure, there are countless 22-year-old Instagram yoga teachers performing all kinds of athleisure-clad stunts while spouting New Age clichés about positive thinking and the Law of Attraction.

But the only teachers I am really drawn to these days are those who have truly known suffering and loss and have come out the other side. People who have been *through it*.

Who cares what they look like in yoga pants, or whether they can touch their toes?! 

Yoga and mindfulness colleagues, this is where we really have something to offer; a reminder that can keep us grounded when the pressure to do superficial bullshit (like making those cringe-worthy reels to keep up with the algorithm) feels overwhelming.

This practice is all about relieving mental and physical suffering. We can dress it up in athletic poses and expensive mala beads, but those are just trappings of the profound soul lessons — and potential for true ease, relief, and liberation — that all lie underneath.

So don’t worry about the damn reels or the washboard abs. Stay true to the teachings and just say real things that help people deal with their toughest shit. That’s what folks need the most right now, anyway. ✨

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Spare

I just finished reading Prince Harry’s autobiography.  (This is the German version in a bookstore downtown — note the Deutsch name.)

It was fascinating, and heartbreaking, and overwhelmingly human, and full of death. In spite of all the very-real spoils of wealth and empire and colonialism and blue-blood privilege, the guy has suffered massively.

Reading his story reminded me of the Buddhist teaching of the First Noble Truth, that quiet, frank reality that life is full of suffering, and our response to that pervasive suffering (or our resistance to it) is what determines the quality of our days.

I remember playing with Princess Di Barbie dolls as a little girl, and watching the news of her tragic death on TV in late August 1997, as I moved into my first college dorm. I remember reading People Magazine stories as a teen, gossipy profiles characterizing Harry as the wild one, the naughty one, the one who couldn’t seem to get his shit together. So it was fascinating to see him debunk so many of the supposed truths of his childhood — “truths” that the media had literally created out of thin air. The poor guy has been chased his whole life; treated like an animal in the zoo, a cash cow for paparazzi and shady journalists alike. 

These days, our house is blessedly-free of princess culture; I’m grateful to have a son who doesn’t give a shit about royalty or princess stories or any of that fairy tale hoo-ha. The way American culture saturates children (girls, in particular) with cringeworthy princess mythology makes me nauseous. It’s no wonder everyone assumes “royalty” live a perfect, pain-free existence. It’s aspirational bullshit. This guy certainly hasn’t.

Since Harry’s book release, I’ve so enjoyed seeing this embodied, grounded, warm adult version of himself moving through the world. His The Late Show with Stephen Colbert interview was especially poignant; knowing that Colbert also lost a parent young in a tragic plane crash gave their easy conversation a bittersweet undertone.

Cheers to this dude.  It hasn’t been all roses — but he seems to have really done the work. I hope he and his little family find room to breathe in the years to come.