Gail Parker

This essential manual meets the increasing need for yoga teachers to be trauma-informed and trauma-responsive, and aware of how poses, breathwork, and meditation can impact the body. In detailing all aspects of trauma as it relates to yoga teaching, this guide lays a strong foundation in fostering trust and building authentic connections with students safely and confidently. Yoga teachers will benefit from a number of yoga practices for self-regulation, self-determination, and agency, as well as guidance on polyvagal theory, communication, setting boundaries, and yoga teacher self-care. It also includes a de-escalation protocol for in-session trauma responses and how to cultivate a trauma-informed teaching environment. Written by an internationally renowned author duo, this is a universal resource for yoga teachers looking to empower themselves and their clients from all demographics and in all settings.

Building on the foundations of Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma by Gail Parker, this workbook offers a range of self-care practices that strengthen the psychological immune system, increase resilience, and support post-traumatic growth. Ethnic and race-based traumatic stress is a worldwide phenomenon. Regardless of race and ethnicity we are all impacted by its damaging effects, from those who are wounded to those who do the wounding. We are witnessing health care disparities based on race and ethnicity that are causing great suffering, and also witnessing a global awakening to the pandemic of racial violence and its pernicious effects on all of us. Transforming Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress with Yoga is a self-care study guide where each chapter includes a reading for contemplation on an area of ethnic and/or race related traumatic stress, an illustration of a Restorative Yoga pose with instructions on how to get into it and accompanied by positive affirmations to repeat while in the pose. This is followed by a therapeutic journal writing instruction with blank pages for journal entries to reinforce the affirmations and to identify the psychological, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits of the posture presented.

Presenting ways in which Restorative Yoga can contribute to healing emotional wounds, this book invites yoga teachers, therapists and practitioners to consider the psychological impact of ethnic and race-based stress and trauma. It aids in the process of uncovering, examining, and healing one's own emotional wounds and offers insight into avoiding wounding or re-wounding others. The book describes how race-based traumatic stress differs from PTSD and why a more targeted approach to treatment is necessary, as well as what can trigger it. It also considers the implications of an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and global yoga community, as well as the importance of creating conscious yoga communities of support and connection, where issues of race and ethnicity are discussed openly, non-defensively and constructively. By providing a therapeutic structure that assists those directly and indirectly impacted by ethnic and race-based stress and trauma, Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma provides valuable tools for aiding in the processing of stressful experiences and in trauma recovery.