This article concerns violence, sexual assault, and suicide. This article may be upsetting to readers who are sensitive to these subjects, so please be aware of that.
Rebecca Kase, a clinical social worker who lives on Fox Island, Washington, is 40 years old. She was the victim of a sexual assault and has just gone through more trauma. She attributes her ability to recover from her most trying circumstances in life to yoga.
In order to recover from the horrible experience of being sexually attacked in college, Kase spent years navigating therapy and using techniques she learned from yoga. Kase was given the tools she needed to deal with the shock she felt in 2017 when she observed her father being violent and abusive before ultimately taking his own life before his court date for punishment. The incident tore Kase’s family apart because she and her father had a tight relationship. She claims to have turned her most traumatic experience into her life’s work.
Kase thinks that yoga and the therapeutic techniques she learned from her sexual assault experience helped her prepare for the traumatic and violent encounter with her father. Even though the event was horrifying and painful, Kase claims that it was extremely obvious to him that he had been trained to notice it. “Something is amiss in this room, something my senses told me. I understood what to do. Due to my personal history of sexual assault and the lessons I learned from it, I strongly believed that I was the right person for this.
Yoga and Good Therapy Can Help With Trauma
Kase underwent surgery to remove one of her ovaries just three months after being sexually attacked in college because she had developed cysts. She developed pneumonia, was socially isolated, and fell into depression. She felt even more traumatized after her first therapy session.
Kase claims, “I just didn’t find a lot of psychotherapy to be particularly useful. “I was informed that I was likely to blame. That the sexual assault most likely occurred as a result of my drinking. After that, I saw a therapist, and she gave me a blank stare. I simply retreated internally and carried that around with me.
After some time, Kase discovered a therapist who understood her and supported her healing. She also enrolled in a yoga training program, where she learned philosophy, meditation, and breathwork while being surrounded by a supportive group of people. All of these tools gave her the tools she needed to overcome her sexual assault trauma and subsequently confront the hurt she shared with her father.
Desensitization and reprocessing of eye movement
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, is a different technique that Kase used right away after her horrific experience with her father and is supported by research. She found it to be quite beneficial. Kase is currently a trainer and member of the EMDR International Association.
A skilled clinician assists their patient in identifying a particular memory or aspect of their lives that they want to work on during EMDR. For many people, it is less intimidating because the patient just needs to disclose as much information about the incident as they feel comfortable doing so. Despite the fact that it is frequently used for traumatic events, it may be used to any area of a person’s life when they feel stuck.
It’s a unique form of rehabilitation, said Kase. It is not centered on conversation therapy. According to EMDR, the majority of the symptoms that people seek treatment for are caused by memories that have been stored in an unhelpful way. Consider something that has stuck and is making you feel bad.
Once you’ve decided the event or memory you want to work on, you create a mental picture of it and imagine yourself experiencing it from a third-person perspective. You rank how uncomfortable it is on a scale of 1 to 10.
After that, bilateral stimulation is used to assist in desensitizing the traumatic memory. When a visual, sound, or touch input occurs on both sides of your body, it is known as bilateral stimulation. This can be achieved in EMDR therapy in a number of methods, including staring at an object that is moving diagonally or back and forth, listening to a tape where the sound goes from one ear to the other, or physically tapping your shoulders or thighs in a cross-body, rhythmic pattern. You pay attention to the memories and your surface emotions as they happen.
You rate your discomfort once more after approximately 30 seconds of bilateral stimulation. The goal is to significantly reduce your level of discomfort. This might just require one session based on some people’s experiences. Some experiences may never be fully resolved or pain-free for others.
Yoga Promotes Greater Pain Tolerance
According to a 2013 study in Cerebral Cortex, people who practice yoga could withstand discomfort for more than twice as long as those who didn’t. According to the study, those who practice yoga have more insular gray matter in the parts of the brain that regulate pain. Cells in the gray matter control emotions, memory, and movement. In addition, the study discovered that a person’s ability to tolerate discomfort increased with time spent practicing yoga. Yoga practitioners use methods including breathing, relaxation, acceptance, and third-person self-observation to deal with pain.
The same subjects were examined in a follow-up study that was published in May 2015 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, and it was discovered that yoga may have neuroprotective effects against age-related gray matter decrease. This study looked at postures, breathing patterns, and meditation. The three components of a yoga practice alone and together have a favorable impact on gray matter. Weekly yoga practitioners saw more benefits.
Both papers were co-authored by Catherine Bushnell, president of the International Association for the Study of Pain.
Yoga differs from other forms of exercise in that it has several elements and visibly affects your emotional state, according to Bushnell. “Yoga ought to improve pain perception in all of these ways. We discovered that it actually had a bigger impact than we had anticipated on pain threshold and tolerance.
According to Bushnell, the brain regions in charge of processing both emotional and physical pain are interconnected. Kase discovered that various components of her yoga practice were beneficial both at the time of the argument with her father and years later.
When things became extremely tense and out of control, Kase explains, “that’s when my yoga really helped me because I said, ‘I’m living my dharma (purpose) right now.'” Without yoga philosophy, I wouldn’t have had that perspective, which was quite useful at the time.
Yoga Can Be a Technique for Avoidance
Kase cautions that yoga can also be a technique to prevent feelings from coming up so you can work on them based on her experience as a therapist.
According to Kase, “you sometimes need to feel that stuff and not simply regulate it.” “I definitely hear people say, ‘I feel some distress, I’m just going to breathe through it,’ in therapy when I’m dealing with yogis. So one question I’ll pose is, “What would happen if you could sit through it without breathing through it?
According to Kase, almost anything may be utilized as a strategy to avoid meaningfully working on yourself. But when yoga is skillfully performed, it increases awareness and fosters resilience to tackle challenging parts of life.
A Multi-Faceted Approach to Dealing with Trauma’s Pain
We all go through trauma in life, according to Kase, but certain incidents are more severe than others. The best method for coping with trauma’s agony is a multifaceted one. Finding a qualified therapist who is EMDRIA certified and whose training is current is something she advises being picky about. Finding a yoga group that pushes you to work on yourself and with discomfort rather than avoiding it is also beneficial.
Kase uses yoga and EMDR to help her feel better about the terrible experience she experienced with her father, however she is unsure if it will ever be fully painless. Kase intends to publish a book with her memoir in the future.
