Trauma Yamas

PSST…I have a huge secret to share; you’re doing yoga all wrong.

For many of us, yoga is an “exercise” that helps us calm the mind and stretch the body. Many people, particularly those in a fragile state, use yoga as a low-impact way to practice exercise while protecting the body from any sustained injury. Examples range from elders to football players both of whom practice yoga for increased agility and range of motion. In both cases, they turn to a practice of yoga to benefit from its low-impact way of continuing to exercise the body. Still, others, like myself, turn to yoga and meditation to begin a journey of healing from within.

These are all hugely beneficial reasons to engage in yoga in order to gain a healthy quality of life. However, none of these practices consider the full spectrum of what yoga is and what yoga can do for your life, not just your mind and body.

Ready to practice full-spectrum yoga healing? Click the link below.

Trauma Yamas

Yoga is a science, several thousands of years old. Like many ancient alchemical processes, yoga was a secret practice only available to those sages and gurus, predominantly men, who were initiated into the healing arts. Such sages and gurus would study, practice, and teach only to a select few, again, mostly men and in some cases their female children; in each case done only in secret. Maintaining this secret was thought to be necessary to protect the “magik” of the alchemical process, believed to be the process of turning lead into gold. For this reason, many religions ban the practice of yoga and teach that it is “devil’s work.” I have family members who, right now today, fully believe yoga to be the work of the devil. This belief is largely because, when done correctly, yoga is a pathway to immediate manifestation.

The science of yoga has given birth to systems of physical, mental, and spiritual practices. These practices commonly focus on the body via asana (poses), the mind via dhyana (meditation), and spirit via pranayama (breath work). This trifecta is aligned with what Christianity views as "the trilogy" or the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These yogic practices of aligning the body, mind, and spirit bring a person into a state of congruence where the mind and body are aligned with the soul’s direction. In this state, the thoughts, actions and movements, which many yoga practitioners think of as prayers, become coherent, allowing for a clear communication channel between you and the divine. From this state of clarity, we think, speak, and act as our authentic selves. When we are our authentic selves, it is akin to singing our own tune, marching to the beat of our own drum. This is how we raise our vibrations, setting our unique voice above the noise of all that surrounds us. Only when we are in complete alignment with our authentic energies can we divinely manifest new realities fully aligned with our greatest good, and not simply the ready-made templates commonly referred to as what we are “supposed” to do. When we are navigating as our authentic selves, we magnetize to us the specific gifts that are meant only for us.

This is divine manifestation: The art and science of self-development and self-possession.

Today, divine manifestation is still widely kept secret. The difference is that today it is only kept secret because people prefer immediate gratification. We want what we want (not what we need), and we want it NOW!

We are all struggling and want to do whatever it takes to be immediately freed from our suffering. This desire for fast and now can be achieved through spiritual bypassing, a term coined by John Welwood, a prominent psychotherapist and author. Welwood defines spiritual bypassing as using “spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental tasks.”

This use of spiritual ideas and practices is what I call shadow manifesting. Shadow manifesting is what I think of as the fast-food of healing. Like your favorite drive-through burger spot, shadow manifesting is what we often turn to when we want a quick fix to long-term hunger. Just like fast food, shadow manifesting gives us a quick feeling of relief but is actually nothing more than empty calories that will quickly fade and only leave us longing for more.

Shadow manifesting is shallow manifesting.

Shadow manifestation is what we see all over our social media feeds. It is the “all you gotta do is” and “pray until something happens” or worse, “fake it til you make it” mantras. This toxic positivity is spiritual bypassing, and it is what causes us sustained suffering from our traumas and triggers and leaves us feeling like we keep “hitting a brick wall.”

Ready to stop banging your head against the wall? Join Trauma Yamas

Trauma Yamas

Here’s another secret: people manifest this way every day. We can see shadow manifesting at work throughout the world, especially in politics, entertainment and capitalism more broadly. Think of the number of people who have achieved fame and fortune; celebrities who seemingly have everything they could want…except happiness. This is because what many aren’t aware of is that shadow manifesting only leads us deeper into the darkness and will inevitably result in more trauma.

Trauma can be physical, emotional, and psychological, and each can occur in myriad ways. Trauma can happen as a one-time event like a car accident or violent attack or, it can happen on a consistent and ongoing basis through persistent and repetitive stress events. In either case, trauma can shatter one’s sense of reality, causing one to question safety and security, leaving one feeling hopeless and helpless in what is perceived to be a dangerous world.

At this stage, entering our third year of pandemic measures, we are all experiencing the latter, long-term stress. However, if you are a person of color in this country, you undoubtedly feel like you are drowning in trauma. For POC, our lives have been irrevocably impacted by persistent violence, both directly and indirectly. This trauma dates back to the trans-atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow era, mass incarceration, the school to prison pipeline and the constant barrage of extrajudicial murders that far too many POC have either directly experienced or have experienced indirectly through media consumption.

As a Black American woman, I suffered a form of PTSD - persistent traumatic stress resulting from a lifetime of patriarchy, racism, classism and sexism. As a yogini, I turned to my yoga practice to heal these traumas. This is how Trauma Yamas, a system of healing from persistent, lifelong, repetitive trauma, was born. Yama, according to the Vedas, is a Sanskrit term most widely used in yogic practices to mean, restraint or moral discipline.

Trauma Yamas is a full spectrum integrative healing yoga practice that guides us in the discipline of restraining our traumas in order to live yoga, not simply do yoga. I think of this as the difference between human beings and human doings. Trauma Yamas is a spiritual self-care practice that involves health, healing, and wellness practices designed to rectify the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental imbalances resulting from daily life. The mayo clinic identifies self-care as a central component to recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Trauma Yamas is a healing approach to self-care that honors the integration, balance, and harmony of mind, body, spirit, and emotions to promote a sense of being and inner peace.

If spiritual bypassing and bumping into brick walls is working for you, fantastic. On the other hand, if you are exhausted by daily struggles and stressors and you’re ready to do the work to clear trauma from your body and navigate life as your authentic self, join me for a complimentary session of Trauma Yamas Yoga.

Click the link below to sign up.

Join Now