About Trauma Center trauma sensitive yoga
Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) classes create a predictable and non-judgmental space where people who experience complex trauma may connect, befriend and reclaim their own bodies.
Trauma sensitive yoga can play an important role as an adjunct to talk based therapies in the healing process for those affected by trauma. In these classes, participants take steps towards developing a more positive relationship to their bodies.
Techniques include different yoga forms and breathing practices that participants can use to experience their own bodies in a safe way.
“Yonnie is the best teacher I’ve come across in my 25+ years of practice. Sensitive, rigorous, kind, honest, experienced and incredibly knowledgeable; as a counselor I particularly recommend her to my clients for trauma-sensitive movement and embodiment therapy.
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What is TCTSY?
Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) is an empirically supported, adjunctive treatment for developmental & complex trauma (sometimes referred to as complex or treatment resistant Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga was developed by service users, trauma clinicians and yoga teachers at the Justice Resource Institute in Massachusetts.
The TCTSY model was included on the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) database published by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the United States.
What are the aims of Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga?
The practice’s methodological aims are to support possibilities for interoception, choice making and agency.
The practice’s delivery has been co-developed through a facilitator and client centered inquiry into what constitutes a safe, non-traumatizing therapeutic alliance. The result is therapeutic alliance specific to TCTSY.
You can download the TCTSY info-sheet. For more information on the evidence base, theoretical foundations, research and the practice of TCTSY, please refer to our governing body’s website www.traumasensitiveyoga.com
How do Trauma Centre trauma sensitive yoga classes differ to any other yoga classes?
The goals of a Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga classes are practicing present moment experiences by noticing sensations in our bodies and practicing making choices for ourselves based on those sensations.
The environment aims to be safe and free of objects and sounds that one might typically see in a yoga class such as props, incense, essential oils, music or images of any kind.
This class does not involve any physical assists. Participants are offered choices in every yoga form, and invited to notice what they feel. Participants are empowered to make their own choices about how they wish to move their own bodies based on how they feel.
The facilitator will not be checking on every student as there’s no right and wrong. They remain on their mat and will only leave the mat if there needs to be an adjustment to room temperature or lighting. This will be communicated in advance.
The practices are chosen with an awareness of potential vulnerabilities of participants. Over time, where suitable, practices may be chosen in collaboration with the class.
This class is informed by the latest research in the area of trauma recovery from the fields of Trauma Theory, attachment Theory, neuroscience and hatha yoga.
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