What are the thoughts, behaviours, and actions you would like to heal and reconcile with your body? Sharing a journaling prompt and entry I wrote in 2019 while participating in the Girlvana Yoga training in NYC. This is a powerful exercise to help us understand and connect with how we feel about our bodies.
Read MoreExploring trauma-informed yoga principles and approaches to yoga class sequencing. This post is a reflection offered to the First Nations Women’s Yoga cohort participants. Jessica shares some helpful tips from an Indigenous lens and offers some resources for those new(er) to teaching yoga.
Read MoreA 25-minute gentle, vinyasa yoga practice developed for women who have experienced and survived violence and trauma. This practice, Flowing with Creation connects us with the healing elements of the Ocean and the water within us. You can expect fluid flows, hip openers, ujjayi breathing to help calm and soothe the nervous system. Learn more about the Reaching Out With Yoga Project, led by Yoga Outreach in partnership with the BC Society of Transition Houses.
Read MoreClearly, there are many shortcomings of ceremony in the virtual space – we do not experience our senses as fully as we would while sitting in our Bighouse, kneeling in a Sweat Lodge, dancing in a Sundance Arbor, or singing together in circle. We do not feel with our whole bodies when we are sitting in front of a screen – perhaps this will take effort in building up our imagination and visualization capacity. Virtual ceremony is a process of connecting to the sacred by means of technology. It is an ambiguous space/time continuum that we can access to virtually and symbolically exchanging our vibrations with community and loved ones. It is a way we can feel connected, seen, heard, or ask for guidance from our cultural keepers and Elders.
Read MoreJessica Barudin will weave stories, Kwakwaka’wakw values, and research to describe Indigenous contemplative and meditative practices. She will offer reflections of healing intergenerational and historical trauma and strengthening community wellness through Yoga and Ceremony. She will speak to her experiences of co-creating trauma-informed curricula with First Nations womxn and the early impressions of her doctoral project “(Re)Connecting through women’s teachings, language and movement: Culturally-adapted yoga for First Nations Womxn and Girls”.
Read MoreRecently I learned from a Nuu-chah-nulth Elder and medicine man, Dave Frank, who marveled at how our brains are intelligent by design, by stating “Our brains are so smart. Our brains can block out trauma and repress the memories - but our body, our organs and our skin hold the memory of that trauma. That trauma memory lives in the cells until we release it” (oral communication, October, 2020). Trauma reorganizes the brain and how it manages perceptions and cognition by altering how we think, what we think about, and even the ability to think (Bessel van der Kolk, 2015).
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