Trauma-sensitive Yoga in Therapy

Bringing The Body Into Treatment

Author  David Emerson Foreword by  Joseph Spinazzola and Jennifer West
Trauma-sensitive Yoga in Therapy

This practical guide presents the cutting-edge work of the Trauma Center’s yoga therapy program, teaching all therapists how to incorporate it into their practices.

When treating a client who has suffered from interpersonal trauma—whether chronic childhood abuse or domestic violence, for example—talk therapy isn’t always the most effective course. For these individuals, the trauma and its effects are so entrenched, so complex, that reducing their experience to a set of symptoms or suggesting a change in cognitive frame or behavioral pattern ignores a very basic but critical player: the body.

In cases of complex trauma, mental health professionals largely agree that the body itself contains and manifests much of the suffering—self hatred, shame, and fear. Take, for example, a woman who experienced years…