How Do I Become a Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher?

You know what trauma-informed yoga is and what makes a class or teacher good. Now, let’s look at what it takes to become a trauma-informed yoga teacher.

I’m already a yoga teacher – how do I become a trauma-informed yoga teacher?

• If you haven’t already, get your 500-hour certification! More training means a better understanding of yourself, how to help others, and gaps in knowledge. If you go through a Yoga Alliance certified training, you will be able to put “RYT-500” in your credentials, and eventually “eRYT-500” (e = experienced, available after teaching for a while).
• Take a course specifically on trauma-informed yoga or an aspect of trauma: yoga for grief, yoga for pain, yoga for cancer, etc. There are a lot more options now than ever before, as so many trainings are still virtual.
• Teach more yoga to more kinds of people. If you live in a place where most of the people are the same (body type, skin color, ethnicity, age, etc.), intentionally start teaching in places where people look and sound different from you. The more kinds of people you meet, the more capacity for empathy you will hold. Volunteering or working at shelters, youth groups, schools, businesses, etc. are great ways to meet more kinds of people.

I’m a healthcare professional – how do I become a trauma-informed yoga teacher?

• Start with your 200-hour yoga teacher training! For versatility, look out for teacher trainings that are registered with Yoga Alliance – this way you can add “RYT-200” (Registered Yoga Teacher – 200hours) to your credentials.
• Once you’ve completed your training, teach and take a bunch of yoga. Meet all kinds of different people so you can see the variety in bodies, personalities, injuries, and illnesses that exist in yoga world.

Suggestions for anyone pursuing trauma-informed yoga teaching:

• Read a lot of books. A great place to start are the following:
  • The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk
  • Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky
  • Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Peter A. Levine
• Learn how to listen. This is a learnable skill and one that most of us don’t learn through family or school. Take a class on active listening and/or nonviolent communication. Practice listening to your friends and peers, then ask for feedback.
• Know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Are you teaching in the hopes of helping others? Why? Are you teaching in the hopes of healing your own trauma? Keep an eye on your intentions as they shift over time.
• Learn appropriate vs inappropriate questions. It is never appropriate to dig for details that have not been offered to you. Do not ever ever ever ask for details on a death, war stories, or specifics of a traumatic incident. If someone wants to tell you – and you’re open to listening – it will happen when the time is right. Appropriate questions to ask usually include things like: How are you feeling right now? Where in your body do you feel that? Do you want to share more?
• Understand your population. If you want to teach veterans, learn the culture. If you want to work with people experiencing homelessness, learn about the wide variety of paths that lead to that experience. If you want to work with grieving parents, learn what kind of words or questions could be triggering and which ones help parents feel heard.
• Normalize experiences. There is nothing worse than sharing a deep personal experience with someone and being met with a big reaction or judgment. When someone opens up to you (that’s a big deal!), keep your body language neutral, make eye contact, and lean into empathy (vs sympathy). Confirming responses is often helpful (e.g. “Of course you felt like that.”) and so can encouraging prompts (e.g. “Do you want to say more about that?”). Leaning in – versus getting weird or ending the conversation because you’re uncomfortable – is going to built trust.
• Learn how to build and maintain trust with the people you work with. Brene Brown has a whole book on the nuances of trust, including boundaries and holding a vault as you learn information. The book is “Braving the Wilderness.” Highly recommend.

 

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