Many people turn to yoga in search of well-being, relaxation, or balance. But those who have experienced trauma know that “relaxing” is not always easy — and that the body can feel anything but safe.
And yet, it is precisely the body that can become the key to healing.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, psychiatrist and researcher, explains with clarity and compassion in his book The Body Keeps the Score that trauma lives not only in the mind, but is deeply embedded in the body’s physiology — in the muscles, breathing, and even the most involuntary movements.
In this article, we explore how and why yoga can become a fundamental tool in trauma healing — and why more and more therapists, educators, and practitioners are bringing neuroscience onto the yoga mat.
Through decades of clinical research, Van der Kolk invites us to rethink trauma not as a “past event” to forget, but as an experience still active in the present — especially in the body.
According to him, traumatized people do not experience their body as a safe place. They may feel disconnected, dissociated, chronically tense, constantly hypervigilant or, on the contrary, numb and paralyzed. This is due to a nervous system that remains stuck in survival mode (fight, flight, or freeze) — sometimes even years after the event.
“The language of the rational brain is speech. The language of trauma is sensation.” — Bessel van der Kolk
That’s why purely verbal therapies are often not enough: trauma must also be addressed through the body.
In his book, Van der Kolk devotes an entire chapter to yoga’s potential as a somatic practice. This is not yoga as physical exercise or new-age spirituality, but as a space where one can safely begin to reconnect with sensation, little by little.
Here’s why yoga is particularly beneficial:
Regulation of the nervous system
Conscious breathing, slow movement, and repeated postures help the nervous system shift out of hyperactivation and into calm and regulation. This is fundamental for people with trauma, as it teaches new patterns of inner safety.
Reconnection with the body
Many traumatized individuals “cut off” from their sensations as a means of protection: they may not feel hunger, pleasure, or even pain. Yoga, through gentle movement and progressive attention to sensation, allows for a return to embodied presence without overwhelm.
Experience of choice
Trauma is often accompanied by a loss of control.
In a trauma-sensitive yoga practice, students are invited to choose, explore, say no, and adapt.
This restores power and dignity to the bodily experience.
Relational safety
A conscious teacher who respects boundaries, avoids physical corrections, and guides gently can offer a first step toward safer, more secure relationships.
Van der Kolk shares how he integrated yoga into treatments at the Trauma Center in Boston, with remarkable results.
Many patients with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) showed significant improvements in their ability to:
Yoga proved more effective than cognitive approaches alone, because it acts directly on brain regions disrupted by trauma: the thalamus, the limbic system, and the prefrontal cortex.
“After a while, I started to feel my body again. To feel alive.” — Testimony from a patient in the book
Not all types of yoga are suitable for everyone. Practices that are too intense, directive, or involve physical manipulation can actually retrigger trauma.
That’s why specific approaches have been developed, such as:
Trauma-Informed Yoga
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)
Both approaches are grounded in a key principle: healing requires safety, autonomy, and time.
Yoga doesn’t erase the past. It doesn’t “cure” trauma.
But it can change how we experience it in the present.
Through practice, we can learn to:
The Body Keeps the Score reminds us that we cannot think our way through trauma with the mind alone.
We have to listen to the body — and offer it a gentle, conscious, and safe way out.
Yoga — practiced with care, respect, and sensitivity — can become that path.
A doorway into presence.
A chance to begin again — not in spite of the body, but thanks to it.
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