Helping Children Cope Using Trauma-Informed Yoga

Photo by Jyotirmoy Gupta on Unsplash

Melissa Dieker is a social worker in St. Louis, Missouri and she's found a unique way to help kids who are hurting. She's helping them to work through their anxiety by using trauma-informed yoga.

These kids come with a variety of problems, from mental or physical abuse, to living through a fire, to dealing with grief from losing a parent - and they need to find constructive ways to deal with the trauma.

Dieker, after reading several study results on the effectiveness of this yoga technique, began using it with some of her troubled kids. The efforts were encouraging, and she soon had a waiting list of kids. She decided to open her own yoga class to be able to help a greater number. She now has a studio, called Complete Harmony, in Maplewood, Missouri.

The aim of trauma-induced yoga is to disrupt post-traumatic stress syndrome, help calm nerves and impulsiveness, and reverse conditioned fear responses. Prolonged fear or a major traumatic crisis causes their brains to be on alert for danger all the time. This state of hyper-awareness exhausts the child and causes anger or withdrawal, even to the point of causing them to completely shut down due to the inability to cope. Some of the kids have lost touch with their emotions, having buried them deep within, and some have even lost touch with their body sensations by blocking or forgetting what pain even feels like.

Yoga poses can be complicated but things are simplified for the kids. Poses are called "shapes" and nothing is an order - everyone is "invited" to try the exercises. Even the most reticent children find themselves joining in. She also uses art and playtime in the classes to keep everyone involved. The classes are kept small so that each child can feel like they are getting direct attention.

The classes usually begin with strong shapes, which Melissa calls "superhero shapes" to help her students find courage. Then they do "grounded" shapes to help them feel powerful. "Stomping" helps them to release stress.

The goal of this trauma-informed yoga is to give each child ways to calm down, ways to find the courage to talk to someone, ways to become grounded and strong. Deep and calming breathing is also shown to the children as a way to deal with their stress.

I applaud this social worker from Missouri for caring enough to take her job above and beyond and try to help these kids in a real and substantial way. I wish that something like this could be available for all the suffering children in the world.

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This blog was originally posted on Narrative.