welcome to discover a new future a show geared to that power and women to be the best versions of themselves i'm your host faith saunders so many of us are walking around with trauma issues that are impacting our everyday lives in a negative way but we have become so used to this is that we don't even realize what's happening with us and my guest today pam doing to help individuals to be able to cope in terms of dealing with everyday life using your god there so i really appreciate you being here with us today thanks for inviting me oh that over i kind of putting things into you know kind of putting things in perspective for or yours and one of the things that i did was i did some research for to us you know preparing for the show and one things i came across on social work today was that there's a growing evidence that modified yoga when taught by specially trained individuals men and employed it after puberty context can be off to heal it can be a killing too and can be very empowering for individuals who have experience trauma so there is a lot of research that i have been done around integrating trauma into term integrating yoga in terms of helping individuals who have had talk a little bit more about what that is in the wild and post and resolve traumatic symptoms can result in not only in terms of mental health issues but it also can impact your physical wellness also sure so we're talking about really very important topic that can be back in a lot of people but they're just not aware of what's happening so again pam thank you so much for being here you're welcome so share with us a little bit about what is seven seeds ok sure be happy to seven seed yoga is a professional service delivery what we do is we deliver trauma informed yoga and meditation instruction into different treatment facilities we also provide community education and professional training on trauma ok one zero so how did you get involved in all of this that's a great question of well you know start at the beginning try to give you the ten words or less prayer but i you know i am a person in recovery i am also a domestic violence survivor had a lot of violence in my home as a child and that impacted me a great deal i never really understood how much but at one point in my adolescen i started to run away from home and i became involved in their mental health system in the child care system and what i experienced there while there was positive as well what i experienced there was not so compassionate and not so helpful i was restrained i was secluded and i was overmedicated as a child  and i never really got the treatment that i needed and i that pattern kind of continued into my adulthood in and out of treatment and using drugs to cope with stuff and for me what happened was a profound transformation once i'd be got the basic education about trauma and what how that impacts the body and the mind and you said something before that i would just like to comment on and that's that a lot of us are walking around with trauma and yes most of us do experience trauma but it's the way we are able to cope with that and process that now some people because of their background or their environment are not able to process that and don't have healthy coping mechanisms there's a profound relationship between trauma disorders and substance use disorders the rate is very high i've seen numbers anywhere between fifty and ninety seven percent of the relationship people who are in treatment for substance use disorder are also trauma survivors so like i said basically what happened for me was very powerful when i started to get a basic education about shawn and i started to understand how the trauma response the fight or flight  those hormones and those chemicals that get us going in a survival mode contributed to my reactivity in my inability to tolerate and regulate my own emotions and it also contributed quite a bit to the development of unhealthy coping mechanisms and unhealthy behaviors so once i started to understand about that i learned that i was so disconnected from my body i started to do yoga women and i started to have for me this is what i like to call this is where the healing began for me i was in recovery but the healing really began for me when i started to develop my own yoga practice w that whole all of this came together ok that's on them and you name i find so unique seven seeds yagur what i wanted you come out with that well seven seed yoga the concept of our framework comes from the eastern systems and if you're familiar with shakur systems and so what we do is we kind of use that framework but we use strength based  recovery principles and i'm going to let you know what they are so the shocker system the idea is that there's a in a sense and a descent of different energy centers within the body a lot of times you'll see pictures of this and images of different colors and rainbows so going from the base up are the principles that we use and educate through yoga instruction our safety surrender wholeness compassion event where a person experiences helplessness shock grief and impacts them in a way that is sudden  unexpected and like i said before a lot of people who experience trauma don't necessarily develop p t s d and then there's another  disorder called complex p t s d so trauma is basically any kind of unplanned for event that causes you to feel helpless but it's the way that you're able to deal with that and inability to regulate and tolerate emotion and like you said it affects functioning p t s d is the clinical term for those who display those kinds of symptoms  and one of the large symptoms i think is the way that p t s d affects people's ability to have intimate relationships and friendships they get to be isolated  they can overreact very easily and it can be very difficult to manage if you're not aware that this is an issue you know wow and relationships are such a significant part of our life you know sure i just remember what i was going to say ok it's live laugh and love when a situation impacts our ability to function in terms of living laughing and loving then we know that we have an issue and that's where you're talking inability to function and carry out normal everyday tasks and i can give you an example of my own experience and there was a time where i was hiding under desks and in the woods and i didn't understand it but i was very afraid of people over sensitivity to sound or lights you can be triggered by smells  would your your initiative is doing terms of addressing that ok well you know seven seas yoga is very unique we have a great team of people who are first of all it comes from a place of trying to establish safety and respect openness trustworthiness there's not a power dynamic to the situation and it's meant to empower the person in participating in their own healing and so when i say our yoga is trauma informed we consider the first priority for our clients is safety and what we mean by that is emotional and physical safety right and we help to teach them and learn how to become safe in their own skin a lot of is something that actually assistant commissioner valerie milky just maybe last year had a memo circulated encouraging different treatment facilities to use a trauma informed model why because people were becoming traumatized again in the treatments you know like i had experience as a young person you know they become traumatized again and so you know trying to come at it from a different angle so what else is different is that we are poor on organization so we have people with lived experience of both trauma and substance use disorder we also have a clinical element to it and so there's all these kind of diverse backgrounds are yoga instructors are also either certified in mental health first aid or there are other for otherwise qualified as mental health professionals and so we actually  on clinical coordinator that goes between the yoga and clinical teams to ensure that we're providing a safe space in the programming isn't pushing people too much and that we're educating people about trauma and you know quite honestly i don't know that anyone else is doing it you know there is there are people that deliver yoga into facilities and different rehab earlier there are studies that actually shows this yes yes that the combination of the mind and the body you know our mission is to nurture awareness and healing of the total being and one of the things that we value at seven seas yoga is the idea of wholeness and right we want to kind of move past wellness a little bit in his wholeness because we are whole people we have different aspects of us our minds our bodies and our spirit and this is an essential piece of who we are and oftentimes is neglected and so doing yoga helps to get in touch with that space because it's able to calm and able to  regulate so while people are getting an education you know that we deliver through the yoga instruction they're getting an education about trauma they're also developing coping mechanisms to perhaps maybe when they get out of treatment they'll pick up their own yoga practice just to plant the seed so it is right you know and that can be so helpful in terms of because so often the especially the mental health world there's such a so when i was doing some research i found on your website that you have a twelve week program could you talk a little bit about what that's what what that entails sure sure of course well the twelve week program is basic our basic structure and we can tailor it to really any facility from that point but the twelve week program is the first week we combine knowledge and practice together so the wisdom in the action right a lot of times we're in the search to know and to understand but we don't do the doing the right right so we combine the knowledge and the practice we on the first week of our programming clinician comes with the yoga instructor and the group who is usually selected by the clinicians in the facility based on their backgrounds the clinician and the yoga instructors will be present with the group of clients and we will give them a basic and education about trauma and talk about the fight or flight or freeze response you know and what happens to the body and how that's related to the mind right and the distinction between the mind and the brain so this occurs in the first week so it's a group in the clinician kind of helps the set the emotional space and kind of creating that safe space emotionally the yoga instructors also present our senior instructor is certified in mental health first aid and is a very experienced very grounded yoga instructor and very professional and so we also talk in the first week about some of the myths about yoga you know people think you need to turn yourself into a pretzel and if that's not it it's actually one of the most magical and beautiful things about yoga is that you are where you are and accepting where you are instead of pushing yourself too much and so the first week people get an education the second week we start with the first seed and it goes on so ss week five is compassion week six and so on right at some point during this process the clinician may come into and check on the group to see how they're doing now they're also going to be communicating with the yoga instructor and to see how people are responding if there are any because we want to have a safe space so we want people to feel held and to be able to create that safety in their own body right right so the clinician will come in and perhaps engage with people during throughout the middle in the middle of the programming now also throughout the practice week they're also getting reflective questionings that help them work on and think about the idea of safety and keeping themselves safe and how that how can they create safety for themselves or practicing surrender and so these ideas are reinforced throughout the week with each assignment each week they get an assignment school based on the sea as well so the final the final three weeks but for the last the twelfth week three for three of those weeks combines all seeds  together so they're practicing in the concepts are getting reinforced again and again and in the final week we like to have a celebration and a wrap up in which the clinician comes again and it's a celebration of you know an accomplishment you know and welcoming them to their bodies and empowering them to transform their lives wow wow that's so awesome so ho ho of people be responding to this new approach to you know looking at their their lives in general and well we get a great response from the pilot that we did in a local treatment facility and the feedback that we got was incredible and  although we did measure the results ourselves and we got some reduction in some of the symptomology associated with p t s d and again all the feedback was was very positive people really connected to  both the yoga instructor and our clinician and developed relationships you know with them as well and that was very positive we've also done had great success conferences we've provided conference programming actually two years in a row at the rucker school of addiction studies and people there is great interest about what we're doing and we're currently work being with  tax to develop our infrastructure further have you you're the program is really structured towards individuals in the mental health field when you say but honestly there are so many individuals outside the scope of mental health who need support but they have no as i said where they're walking around and have no clue you know they want to do things differently excedrin but they have no clue because of what had was happening in their lives so there are plans to be to actually expand this beyond the the mental health field and outside of her you know i think really the sky's the limit but we do need to focus on where we're at right now and we do have what we've seen happening throughout the year and in this year the seventy's yoga has been around as a nonprofit we have done great things there's still quite a bit of work to do internally for us but we have seen developing that they we have community programming programming for treatment facilities and also programming for professionals and mental health professionals so the answer is yes i mean the potential is is boundless you know for seven seeds yoga and we are currently one of our actually our clinical coordinator is currently speaking to a yoga studio who heard about what we're doing and really is very interested in having us in her yoga studio in the community so we're excited about five yoga seven seeds or you can ask for information and info at seven seeds yoga dot org ok well oh you guys have some really great things happening thank you yeah we're excited about it yeah it should be a step really part of the you know and it's going to you know i hope that it's able to give people who may not have had the opportunity to at least be able to experience yoga and at least be exposed to it and making yoga accessible making information about trauma accessible so that people can you know empower themselves to transform their own lives what would you say because yesterday i was at an event and i was speaking to one woman and the mental health aspect are you surprised when you talk about mental health people just there are some people just who come out of the woodwork and like start sharing certain things with you and this woman was sharing about her daughter you know and what some of the challenges she has been having what she had she's been having with her daughter and i'm going to ask you this question what would you say to your younger self because when you're talking about you know growing up and you know some of the challenges that you had that came to mind what my conversation with this lady yesterday so these are left asking this question what would you say to your younger self based on what you know about you mean if i had the information i have then you know i think  i would it try to extend compassion and forgiveness towards the young person who really didn't have the ability to develop those positive coping mechanisms and i would like to extend compassion and not judge myself so harshly you know for having you know i must know the way a lot of us don't know the way we're finding our way but i would say easy greater good takes a lot of courage to do that really really really appreciate you coming in on to the show sharing this with those and if there's anything that we can actually do to be of support to you please know that we're here contact at seven seeds yoga and i really appreciate you tuning in every week to listen to us and to hear what we have to share and as you know our goal is to always provide information education and resources that can be of help to you or your loved ones so until next i think positive thank you