I am grateful you are here. Would it be interesting to take a few deep breaths and notice your body before you read further?

You are in the right place. The time is now.

At The Trauma-Conscious Yoga Institute we are about the “three E’s:” Embodiment, Empowerment and Evolution in Trauma Healing and Trauma Education.

To oversimplify it, embodiment is having a conscious awareness of and connection to one’s body. And it is the ability to maintain this connection without going into a trauma responsive state of hyperarousal (fight/flight/active freeze) or hypoarousal (immobilization/shutdown/freeze with collapse).

Today, I’d like to present a bit of the neuroscience that backs this understanding that embodiment (connection to the body) is essential to trauma healing.

Did you know that 80% of the information we receive from our internal and external environments is bottom-up*? This means that our bodies register sensory input from the environment first, and then the messages perceived from our bodies go to our brain for further interpretation. This happens by way of the vagus nerve.

In other words, the majority of our lived experience is alive in the body before it ever reaches the brain. So much of what our bodies are housing is below our conscious awareness. This includes our personal lived experiences and those that we’ve inherited intergenerationally, alike.

This is why a somatic approach to psychotherapy or healing, such as The Trauma-Conscious Yoga MethodⓇ , which integrates somatics and trauma-conscious yoga, is essential for successfully resolving trauma and freeing it from the body.

The wisdom around the importance of the body in relationship to trauma healing is not a new, modern-day scientific finding, as it is often presented to be. Our Indigenous, earth-centered ancestors across the globe knew in their bones over a millennia ago, what is now supported by Western research and neuroscience- trauma must be healed in the body. Talking our way through trauma may be helpful to some, but it alone does not resolve trauma, nor does it set us free.

The body is the vehicle for transformation and liberation alike. And, we don’t have to go into the details of our past traumas to liberate them from our bodies. We benefit greatly from approaching and befriending the body and the parts of us holding the traumatic wounding.

So much of what we are holding within us is ready and waiting to be freed, if we can pause, listen and befriend it. Let’s do this, Friend. The world needs us.

If you’re starting to get interested in evolving your understanding of trauma healing and how to approach it in the body, check out our full curriculum for TCYM Level 1, which includes an in-depth exploration of the neuroscience and polyvagal theory: click here​.

In loving kindess,

Nityda