Kintla Yoga and I had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Bessel Van der Kolk M.D.'s new book "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body iIMG_4323n the Healing of Trauma."

I have been keenly interested in how much advancement has been made in the understanding of post traumatic stress in the last few years, especially with Van der Kolk's work, which is starting to get wide recognition.

Trauma is also getting recognized along with the healing effects of yoga, in which yoga teacher David Emerson, who worked with Van der Kolk at the Trauma Center has a book out too that I love called "Overcoming Trauma through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body." 

I was so intrigued with Van der Kolk's new that book I started a book discussion on the Facebook group that Kintla Yoga and I founded, Healing Trauma with Yoga and Story. I was struck by how much in the book about rang true for me and my life. The fact that Van der Kolk is Dutch and had a father who survived a concentration camp during World War II, as mine did, blew me away. That he was studying trauma and seeing how it is in the body, why all that talk therapy didn't much good if you neglected the body. 

For it was yoga and storytelling that really brought me home to my body after a  lifetime series of traumatic events, starting with childhood, but also my husband's and sister's suicides.  I have had to put the book down during certain chapters because His wonderful style of writing uses storytelling so well that the list of traumatic events that were going on in families daily lives became too overwhelming for me and reminded me of my own traumas. The stories of patients and veterans and children were heart-breaking, too.

My mother-in-law died the same week I started reading the book, so I was feeling extra sensitive, as it brought up all the grief from my late husband and the past 11 years. It brought up the grief from my sister, a friend who passed away in St. Croix recently. It means that this work of yoga and stories are powerful!

Recently Van der Kolk posted on Facebook a link to an article, saying, "Writing is one of the most effective ways to access an inner world of feelings that is the key to recovering from genuine trauma and everyday stress alike." 

Join us! Tell us your stories of using yoga to recover from trauma or how you use yoga and stories to help others.