Meet Ulrika, a Swedish teacher and summer graduate of BTIYT who draws from her career in the humanitarian aid sector to create a trauma informed yoga program for professionals working in highly stressful, specialist and specific locations all around the world.
I can't tell you how much I love this!
Ulrika and I trained together in the Sivananda ashram back in 2014 and hadn't seen each other since then. But when she got in touch earlier this year to say she'd been following my work and was ready to become trauma informed and fulfil her vision of supporting fellow colleagues in the humanitarian aid sector, I was thrilled.
Most of my trainees use their personal experience to share with others on the path behind them what they've learned but when this work makes its way into other sectors - with which there is so much intersection and need, and yet just not necessarily a yogic approach to doing it - the impact is HUGE.
I give a lot of support inside Becoming a Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher to understanding why you want to do the work you seek, who you want to serve by offering it and what exactly the purpose and outcomes of your trauma informed yoga program would be.
It's this depth of thinking that brings clarity to your mission and helps you get your work into the places it's needed.
Ulrika used her decades+ experience working in the field to really drill down and understand what challenges and pains her fellow workers in the humanitarian aid sector face and how yoga can support them.
Among them are: working weeks of 6 or 7 days, long hours, insecure and hostile environments with limited access to healthy food, gyms, exercise and nature.
With a lack of social activity in the evenings, or even safe streets to wander, people often lean towards staying in alone and drinking too much. While workers are far from friends and family with limited access to decent internet connection, they're also commonly on short-term, insecure contracts leading to high levels of performance stress. The staff are lonely, don't feel able to share their mental health struggles, sleep poorly and have limited free movement.
Add to all this the fact that aid organisations tend to have low funds and inefficient management and you're left with high staff frustration and people unable to help the affected population swiftly or strongly enough.
So what did Ulrika do?
She designed a 10-week online yoga program using her new knowledge on trauma, yoga and healing for humanitarian aid workers based in the Middle East, Africa and Europe to help them relieve daily stress and anxiety, and improve their sleep, coping skills and response to emergency situations.
Her mission is to support humanitarian aid workers to improve their own health so they can create better circumstances for the most affected populations and continue to do the work they love.
Her trauma informed yoga program combines therapeutic movement, mindfulness, rest/yoga nidra and breath work while weaving in all-important themes to support student resilience and growth such as ahimsa, accepting change, gratitude and celebration.
Ulrika has already garnered interest and encouragement from the Wellbeing Manager within her organisation which is amazing.
We wish her every success with her program!
If you'd like to take your own inspirational journey in becoming trauma informed and applying your knowledge so you can teach, change lives and make impact in a community whose causes you care for...
I'm running Becoming a Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher next June and July.
To join the wait list, click here: