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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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The history of yoga. In three hours. No big deal.

Tonight I’m teaching The History of Yoga to the teacher training cohort over at B. Yoga Basel. This is one of my favorite things to do and I’m so glad to be jumping back into this rich and often-raucous material.

Of course, it’s a total joke to think you can teach the history of yoga in three hours, but I always remind students this is just their very first introduction — and that they’ll spend the rest of their lives learning and unlearning this stuff, especially as the nature of what we know evolves, and as the people with privilege and power shift.

Because it’s all, always changing.

The sociologist in me always starts out with the heady stuff about the social construction of reality and postmodernism and context and identity. (Don’t worry, it gets easier from there.)

But then I love to use Sanjay Patel’s work (like the gorgeous Ganesha pictured here, from his children’s book Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth) as a perfect example of what happens when yoga history and philosophy meet storytelling and art and identity and the 21st century. Follow him at @gheehappy for such great stuff.