The Whole-being Well-being Yoga Approach

Trauma Conscious | Healing Centered | Growth Oriented

At Svälja Yoga (pronounced “svehl-yah”) all of our offerings are trauma-conscious. Through our Whole-Being Well-Being approach, we support people on their own unique healing journey. We share the wisdom and practice of yoga in a way that is accessible, inclusive, and honors choice. Yoga means to unite. Yoga is a pathway to well-being and to the realization of our innate wholeness. We guide participants to connect with their internal resources and potential for healing, transformation, and growth. Through this exploratory journey we rediscover home, deep within: our true selves.

“Yoga is not about achievement. It’s about remembering, remembering who I really am.” —Judith Lasater

Trauma-Conscious Yoga Guides: At Svälja Yoga all of our yoga guides are certified yoga instructors from an accredited school. Each instructor has additional specialized training in trauma-conscious yoga and is oriented in our unique Whole-Being Well-Being Yoga Approach. With an increased sense of awareness and sensitivity to integration, we guide practices in a compassionate manner which offers invitations and options to enhance well-being. Our goal is to support individuals as they connect with and strengthen their own inner resources and internal bodily wisdom. We believe that people are the experts on themselves. In our yoga practices everything is an invitation; nothing is an obligation. Yoga is not about achieving a “perfect” practice or posture; is not about looking a certain way to the external world or to appease a teacher. Yoga is about traversing our internal landscape to connect more deeply with ourselves—mind-body-spirit. We practice interoception, which is to intentionally turn inward. We tune-in to how we feel on all levels of our being: bodily sensations, quality of thoughts and emotions, and intuition. Ultimately we begin to befriend ourselves with more compassion and kindness, listening to our deepest needs and desires. Our practice becomes an act of self-love, shedding layers of stress, trauma, and self-limiting beliefs. The more we practice, the more we can experience an inner-sense of safety, wholeness, and well-being. We learn to trust our Inner Knowing. From this place, we make skillful decisions and take effective action that is more in alignment with our highest good.

“We practice all of this on our mats to equip us to face and bear whatever may arise off our mats.” —Kyle Leia

Our Foundation

Our approach is grounded in yogic practice and philosophy, evidence-based Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga, and trauma-informed practice and Adverse Childhood Experiences research. Additionally, we are informed by social work which “is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work.  Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledge, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance well-being.” INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS

The Person-in-Environment is a key social work concept we subscribe to which states, “that a person's behavior can largely be understood by looking at their environment, including their past environment (such as trauma experience). This perspective provides a holistic and comprehensive view which includes many environmental aspects including religious, political, familial, community, socioeconomic class, race, gender, and educational.” Although we have personal power and the capacity for healing resides within us, we understand that healing happens in community. Drawing on both our internal resources and external resources and supports is essential to the healing process. You may have heard the saying by Denise Frohman, “your wound is probably not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility.” Although, we can be empowered and take effective action on our healing journey, we believe that healing is also our collective responsibility. We must acknowledge and work to dismantle the systems of oppression that exist which cause and perpetuate trauma. Many of us have tremendous inner-resources; however, connection to community has been identified as a protective factor in the experience of trauma. Profound healing rarely occurs in complete isolation.

When engaging with trauma recovery, an important lens to view people (especially ourselves) through is compassionate curiosity, “what happened to you?”; rather than a more judgment laden perspective, “What’s wrong with you?”

At Svälja Yoga we strive to create a safe and supportive community wherein trauma transformation, healing, and growth is possible. We live our yoga. We show up on and off the mat in our community to advocate for social justice and collective reconciliation and healing. We are committed to our own inner work so that we can contribute to a more loving, just, and peaceful world.

“Know the depths of yourself. Make an impact on the world.” —Hilary Buckwalter Kesti

Yoga Acknowledgment Statement: Honor, Don’t Appropriate

I acknowledge that yoga teachings do not belong to me and that I must not distort any aspect of the practice for personal gain, such as using a sacred word or symbol inappropriately or out of its intended context; including in a marketing slogan or on merchandise. Yoga practices and philosophy are deeply rooted in physical, mental, and spiritual disciplines originating in ancient India. Many lineages and styles of yoga have come from the East to the West. Generous teachers have opened up these transformational practices to support all humanity in becoming more whole by uniting body, mind, and spirit. In sharing the gifts of yoga so freely shared with me, I vow to honor and credit the cultures and lineages from which yoga originates. I respect these teachings and the Sanskrit language and use them mindfully. I am ethically committed to recognizing, in myself, and then redressing any actions that culturally appropriate yoga.

Whole-Being

Through the stressors, difficulties, and traumas of life we can become fragmented. The disconnection of mind-body-spirit can leave us feeling broken and as if something is wrong with us. We may experience a wide array of negative social, psychological, and health outcomes. Yoga means to unite and reveals that our essence is whole. This wholeness is innate; it is our birthright. Danna Faulds, in her poem Birthright states, “untouched by fire or the storms of life, there is a place inside where stillness and abiding peace reside.” This is our Inner Sanctuary, our abode of peace. Our Whole-being is the beautiful mosaic of our mind-body-spirit, the entirety of our life experiences. Our Whole-Being holds all of our existence, the darkness and light, sorrow and joy, imperfections and beauty. Resting in our true nature allows us the space to carry and bear our reality with compassionate presence.

“When carving stone, the sculptor removes everything that is not the statue. The art of revealing beauty lies in removing what conceals it. So, too, Patanjali (in the Yoga Sutras) tells us that wholeness exists within us. Our work is to chisel away at everything that is not essence, not Self.” —Judith Lasater

Well-Being

Our well-being is an internal felt-sense of safety, security, contentment, and peace; it is our homeostasis, our center. Well-being is the experience of remaining within our window of tolerance by being in skillful relationship with our emotional state with clarity and conscious awareness. We self-regulate through managing disruptive emotions and impulses; doing so calms the nervous system. From this place we can effectively respond to the difficulties and challenges of life, instead of reacting in potentially detrimental unconscious ways.

Trauma-Conscious

Trauma is defined in a variety of ways and varies in size, scope, intensity, and impact; it is a universal part of the human condition. Peter Levine, a pioneer in the trauma field and creator of Somatic Experiencing, defines trauma as, “the perception of threat and the incapacity to deal with it.” He shares that, “we need to really hone in on the fact that people can be traumatized by any event they perceive (consciously or unconsciously) to be life threatening.” The Body Wise Institute defines trauma as, “something happens that overcomes us – it is too much, too fast, too soon - and there is not enough time to integrate the experience.” Or, “trauma is an experience of extreme stress or shock that is or was, at some point, part of life; an experience that threatens our entire organism (body, mind and soul) by causing a rupture in our capacity to assimilate and self-regulate.”

Trauma-Conscious yoga is theory and practice rooted in the understanding that traumatic events have real, psychological, and physical impacts on individuals. Trauma affects our ability to feel safe, grounded, present, and connected. When we practice yoga we bring our full selves, the totality of our life experience—mind-body-spirit. At Svälja Yoga we are committed to a higher level of awareness and integration of the origins, impacts, and outcomes of trauma, including in all aspects of guiding yoga and interactions with participants. Our trauma-conscious approach upholds a systematic trauma-conscious framework and prioritizes the respect for and safety and self-agency of each individual. We are committed to compassionately guiding individuals in a way that supports them to connect with and know themselves more deeply.

Healing-Centered

Communities, and individuals that experience trauma, stress and difficulty are agents in restoring their own well-being. This is the resilient path; the intentional engagement in choices and behaviors that make a difference in your day-to-day experiences and long-term outcomes. This is drawing upon your internal resources and strengths, and your external resources and supports. In our yoga practices we provide opportunities to cultivate and refine skills needed to respond effectively to the difficulties of life. Nora McInerny states, “The truth is that we don’t really ‘move on’ from grief but move forward with it.” Nor do we “move on” from trauma; we move forward with it by fully processing and integrating our wounds so they can heal. We do this with immense self-love by acknowledging our wounds’ presence and impacts (the ways they have forever shaped us). We nurture a belief in our wholeness; we connect with our true-Self and with the experience of safety. We learn to accept and live with the reality of our difficult experiences. We see that we are no longer defined and driven by our trauma; we come to identify with our strength, our resilience, and the gifts we have to offer the world through our healing insights and personal awakening.

“Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, and calm, a Self that has been sheltered from destruction by the various protectors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure survival. Once those protectors trust that it is safe to separate, the Self will spontaneously emerge, and the parts can be enlisted in the healing process.”
—Bessel van der Kolk

Growth-Oriented

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains transformation following trauma. It was developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, and holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward. "People develop new understandings of themselves, the world they live in, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life," says Tedeschi. This is where transformation occurs. We can find meaning from our difficult and painful experiences and become ignited with more passion, aliveness, and appreciation for life. We don’t just bounce back to our baseline, as with resilience. We are shaped in a new way that leads us to something greater than would have been possible had we not endured the “terrible damage” in the first place.

“Each of us go through “terrible damages” — a divorce, a heartache, a breaking, a clinging depression, an exile, a financial ruin, a lingering disease, a loss of a loved one, a death, a loss of dignity, a violation. May it be that despite such terrible damage, the tree of our life does not die. May it be that there is a vitality in our roots, and that the charred tree of our experiences gives birth to a hundred new blooms dancing around us, newer versions of ourselves that leap to life from what we would have deemed to be our death.” —Omid Safi