Trauma-releasing yoga (TRY) is a simple practice designed to relieve and resolve both chronic and traumatic stress through the integration of three evidence-based techniques:
- Increasing somatic awareness;
- Manipulating connective tissue that stores somatic memory; &
- Fatiguing the psoas, our fight-or-flight muscle, to induce the body’s natural shaking response.
Some benefits include: reduction in physical pain and improvement in health; increased energy and sense of calm; greater resilience; less reliance on unhelpful coping mechanisms; reduced stress and trauma-related symptoms, including anxiety and depression; and better sleep and rest.
The EXPERIENCE
TRY focuses on body awareness in the present moment, enabling the recognition of choice relating to one’s body, and developing the ability to take effective action based on that knowledge. The easy and accessible practice includes the fatiguing, lengthening, and relaxation of the leg and psoas muscles, which triggers the body’s natural tremor response.
This somatic release is the nervous system’s way of discharging trauma, long-held tension, and unconscious muscle contractions and hold patterns. This instinctual shaking, evident in both animals and humans, restores the body to it’s natural state of balance.
Most often experienced only somatically (in the body, not emotionally or cognitively), the release consists of movement such as swaying, shaking, twitching, and/or vibration that begins in the legs and may work up the spine.
Healing doesn’t happen in isolation, but in community.