Yoga
Gentle YOGA available at Three Locations in Vermont and New Hampshire
- Wed. 5:30-7pm at The Center for Collaborative Energies, 101 Cottage Street in Littleton, NH (pre-registration requested)
- Norris Cotton Cancer Center NORTH, St. Johnsbury, Vermont (not currently in session)
- The Center for Integrative Health, 45 Lyme Road, Suite 200 in Hanover (not currently in session)
- http://www.yoga-centers-directory.net/
Stress, Chronic conditions, and Trauma: How Yoga Can Help!
Yoga’s physical postures often provide relief from pain. Yoga directly addresses the fight-or-flight response. This neuro-biological response is “hard-wired” into our systems and can often get “stuck” after a traumatic experience or pro-longed stress. The fight-or-flight response is a reaction that prepares the body to fight or flee from perceived threat. Because yoga deals directly with the mind-body connection, it helps retrain the fight-or-flight response. A regular gentle yoga practice has the ability to “re-train” your system so that situations that triggers negative and often hostile, aggression, or a sense of drowning in fear…regular practice of deep breathing, for example, as a means to self-calm. Other benefits include:
- The release of emotional issues.
- Help towards relaxing and strengthening the body.
- Unfreezing bad memories and creating new bodily memories.
- Giving feelings of joy and personal empowerment.
- The mind becomes more clear and open.
- It produces acceptance of the self.
- Life feels better balanced.
- It allows one to safely express stored emotions such as guilt, shame, anger, sadness and grief so those feelings can be understood and integrated.
- A regular yoga practice helps alleviate symptoms of PTSD including anger, anxiety, depression, guilt and paranoia.
Since 2003, Angela has been teaching Yoga to adults and children as a Yoga Alliance Registered Teacher and Certified YogaKids Facilitator.
Angela is registered to teach several types of specialized Yoga classes; Yoga Warriors for military veterans and personnel, YogaKids for children & teens (as well as in the classroom), Gentle YOGA for chronic conditions and general well-being. Her Gentle YOGA classes have been popular at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire and St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Yoga Warriors is designed specifically to assist soldiers in coping with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as well as the daily and specific stresses that military members are exposed to. The classes are also open to those who are first responders, such as paramedics and firefighters, who also witness emotionally difficult experiences.
To download the Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Practice PDF -- an extensive literature review
To read Gentle YOGA: an evolving practice Gentle Yoga Wrenzine 2012
Helpful Yoga Links
The Gentle Yoga brochure
YogaKids brochure
Learn more about Yoga for Military Veterans, Active & Inactive Personnel, and families.
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Practice: A Literature Review written by Angela Jones for Southern New Hampshire University
Yoga at Summer School
Yoga Alliance
YogaKids
Yoga Warriors for Military Veterans, Personnel, and families
Angela’s Art