Yoga & Mindfulness

The good news is there are tools you can use to treat yourself. The issue with PTSD is its hold on the mind. With PTSD, “the nervous system gets stuck” in a fight-or-flight response long after the traumatic event has passed (Mintie and Staples 4), further reinforced by the mind and the negative or painful thoughts and beliefs we develop. This is where mindfulness comes in. We learn to work with the mind, to make friends with our thoughts, in order to transform our thinking and heal our trauma. The venerable Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died in 2022 at the ag of 95, reminds us that regardless of our personal struggles, happiness is possible in the present moment. Mindfulness is an invitation to come back to the present moment and find peace and joy. As we come back to the present moment, we are freed of the power our thoughts have over us and can begin fresh. This is a simple practice that has profound implications, but it takes practice to break our old habits and thought patterns in order to heal. As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron reminds us, “these practices awaken our trust that the wisdom and compassion that we need are already within us” (Start Where You Are 4).

The word “Yoga” means Union, and it is an integrative practice that brings together all parts of the self: body, mind, emotions and spirit. Yoga is a practice that has its roots in ancient India and is estimated to be at least 3,500 years old. While Yoga started as a spiritual discipline, today it is practiced by people of any, or no, religion. First imported to the United States in the early 20^th century, Yoga is now a mainstream practice. According to Norton, 14 percent of U.S. adults say they have practiced yoga in the past year — up from 9.5 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, the number of meditation practitioners has more than tripled since then — from 4 percent to 14 percent (“New Study Finds”). The emphasis of all yoga practice, which distinguishes it from exercise, is its attention on internal experience versus external appearance. It’s a highly individual practice in which each person adjusts their style and approach to best fit their specific circumstances.  As Brendon Abram explains, “The essence of trauma is disassociation, disconnection from self and others and moving away from reality. Yoga is about connection. It is self-realization, finding the truth about… who we are….In this respect, it’s the polar opposite of trauma” (3). For this reason, Yoga and Mindfulness are age-old remedies anyone can practice to heal themselves.

The practice of Mindfulness and Yoga also bring the important reminder that we are not alone in our suffering, whatever it may be. Many, many others struggle with the same kinds of trauma, and rather than minimizing the experience of our own pain, this reminder works to further validate it. There is comfort in knowing that as humans, we all struggle, we all hurt, we all get stuck. And, so, we practice mindfulness and yoga as a means to work toward our own healing and for the healing of everyone who suffers just like we do. As Pema Chodron writes, “If we learn to sit still like a mountain in a hurricane, unprotected from the truth and vividness and the immediacy of simply being part of life, then we are not this separate being, alone in our pain and distress” (Comfortable with Uncertainty 26).  

Taking the initiative to heal ourselves through mindfulness and yoga practices, we, in the words of author Mark Wolynn, “forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for generations to come” (24). Wolynn, whose groundbreaking book It Didn’t Start with You emphasizes how trauma can be passed down through our DNA to our children and grandchildren, stresses that the necessity to heal is not just for our own well-being and benefit but for our children’s and the world at large. By avoiding our pain and suffering, he argues, we prolong it. And by facing it we heal. Wolynn explains the mind’s inclination to want to heal the past by “traumatic reenactment”, what Freud called “repetition compulsion”, which “is an attempt of the unconscious mind to replay what’s unresolved so we can ‘get it right’” (15). Explaining the mind’s rationale for the habitual thoughts that unwittingly work to prolong the suffering of our PTSD-related injury, he writes, “my mind continually taunted me with worst-case-scenario thinking and the lie that if I just worried hard enough, I could insulate myself from what I feared most….I eventually learned that it was less about what I could or couldn’t’ see and more about the way I saw things” (4).

For whatever reason, we all know, and research substantiates, that the human brain gravitates toward and tends to fixate on what’s wrong. As work neuropsychologist Rick Hanson puts it, negative thoughts are like Velcro and positive ones are like Teflon (qtd in Wolynn 77). The first step toward healing is understanding that we can through practice learn to correct that imbalance by noticing more of what’s not wrong. We tend to believe our thoughts and experiences are solid, fixed and permanent, but this is not true. Through mindfulness, we come to see that our thinking, habits and experiences are flexible, fluid and therefore capable of change.

Judith Herman, M.D. reminds us that “[a]trocities refuse to be buried” and that “[r]emembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites for…healing” (1). The Meditation video included here offers one mindfulness practice that teaches us to acknowledge, face and embrace the anguish of trauma. This may feel counterintuitive at first, but the practice is to breathe into our pain and make space for it—rather than alternating between reliving the event and numbing out by avoiding, distracting, self-soothing and other forms of “dissociation” (1), both of which work to prolong our suffering. Herman warns that “far too often secrecy prevails and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative, but as a symptom” of it. By telling our story and sitting with our pain, we begin to transform it, breaking this cycle. Wolynn explains, “With new thoughts, new feelings, new sensations, and a new brain map engrained, we begin to establish an inner experience of well-being that starts to compete with our old trauma reactions and their power to lead us astray” (51). One of many studies on meditation, this one conducted by the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 2013, “revealed that meditators, after only eight hours of meditation, experienced clear genetic and molecular changes…which would enable them to physically recover from [trauma and] stressful situations more quickly” (qtd. In Wolynn 52). The takeaway is clear: we humans are resilient and with the tools of mindfulness at our disposal, we have the power to heal our own trauma.

Yoga teacher and author Mark Stephens explains that “the etymological root of therapy, the Greek word therapeuin, means “minister to, treat medically,” but we also find the Greek therapeia “healing,” which has the added meaning of healing and “to make whole” (xi). The intent he says is the same, to restore “the wholeness of being…to heal, accept the intrinsic beauty and inviolable worth of ourselves, and share in a more fulfilled life” (qtd in Abrams xi). While therapy plays an important role in the process of healing trauma, experts emphasize the limits of talk therapy alone and the importance of mindfulness practices in enabling people to heal themselves. As Wolynn learned from the many patients he has helped, “old patterns can be released so that new pathways and new life possibilities can open (216).  It is our hope that anyone suffering from PTSD can benefit from these practices, heal from their trauma and enjoy a happy life free of suffering.