The Direction the Profession is Heading? Teaching Trauma Sensitive Yoga (A Book Review)

Recently, a supervisee said to me during a session, “I think Trauma Sensitive practice is the

direction the profession is heading.” This resulted in a rather fruitful conversation that ended with me making a mental note to do more reading about Trauma Sensitive practice. Upon my next trip to the library, there sitting on a rather obvious shelf was a book by Brendon Abram titled: Teaching Trauma Sensitive Yoga, A Practical Guide. I considered this to be a well-timed message from the universe and picked up the book.

My relationship with yoga has been a lot like the relationship some people have with religion. I’d like to be more regular and involved, but things tend to come up (I know this really means that I’m not making it a priority in my life so I’ll spare you any more excuses). So even though I’m not a yoga instructor, or even a committed yogi, I decided to spend some time on this short book (it’s about 100 pages) and I’m glad I did!

I found this book to be a concise and well thought out overview of Trauma Sensitive practice for both clinicians and for yoga teachers. I also think that this book is a great read for even the most casual of yoga practitioners as it is easy to digest with limited “yoga specific” terminology. All this being said, the reason I am including it in a blog about Social Work Supervision is because of the time this book takes to discuss a topic that comes up from time to time during supervision: Vicarious Trauma.

Vicarious Trauma can be an experience that not only sneaks up on clinicians unexpectedly, but can also affect even the most seasoned of us. Recognizing that you’ve experienced trauma vicariously is not always something that the clinician immediately knows and can take the eye of a fellow clinician to point out. In this book the author writes the following about self-care related to vicarious trauma in regard to “caregivers,” which is the definition the author uses for those practicing in the clinical space:

“Caregivers are advised to consider the importance of maintaining a strong base of social support, to access professional consultation when appropriate, and to engage in activities that promote spiritual renewal.”

This can be a perfect topic and activity for supervision sessions because of the ability for the supervisor to point out that a trauma may have occurred during a supervisee’s work with a client and can help direct the supervisee to the appropriate avenues to process the experience. It is my opinion that the timely recognition of vicarious trauma is essential to helping mitigate the burnout some clinicians experience, and finally, the abandonment of the profession.

Ultimately, the time I spent with this book helped to renew my belief that supervisors should feel empowered to discuss vicarious trauma when they identify it in a supervisee. Additionally, supervisors should be armed with resources for their supervisees when vicarious trauma is identified and have suggestions at the ready for how to process experiences of this nature. Doing so could preserve the emotional health of supervisees and limit the potential exit of another well qualified Social Work professional from their field due to burnout.

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