The Atlas Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher Training Program is an extension of the Atlas 200hr Yoga Teacher Training Program. Since the program was established in 1997, we have endeavoured to be sensitive to the issues of trauma, internal and external bias, and listen to the experiences of our students. Over the years we developed a philosophy of yoga teacher training that was student focused and emphasized the experience over form and tradition.

Early in my yoga teacher training I was fortunate enough to happen upon the “Inner Quest Intensive” at the Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health. At one time it was a required program for the 500hr YTT certification and at the time that I took the program it fit into my schedule and budget and I headed in with no idea what I was in for. During this program we addressed family of origin issues, the iceberg of trauma and grief, and so very much more. At the time I was in the process of waking up to the abusive relationship that I was in, the issues around addiction that I had grown up in, and my enabling nature. Needless-to-say, it was exactly what I needed to continue my yoga path to healing and integrating the past with the tools and techniques of yoga that would help me to move forward, live my dharma and generational healing. This is definitely an oversimplification but as Aruni often says on the last day of the program, “Don’t try to explain this to the ticket taker at the MASS Pike.” In other words, if the person we are talking to did not have the same transformational experience they may not understand our enthusiasm. Our teacher training programs are sensitive to the needs of our students and our teachers in training are taught good inclusive, permissive language and practices that help yoga practitioners to explore the depths and breadth of a healing path with yoga.

We are awakening to realization of the inadequacy of the amount of time that we have to spend on important issues in trauma sensitive training and the idea for this course was born. The Atlas Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher Training Program is an important extension of the training required to become sensitive to the needs and underlying complex issues our clients are coping with and to expand our tool box with affirmative, empirically validated, clinical interventions for basic to complex trauma, chronic, treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other elements of the human experience that we are still discovering. The program is included for all of our yoga teacher training programs. In the future it will be a required course.

In a growing number of professions, including yoga teachers and therapists, firefighters, law enforcement, trauma doctors and nurses, child welfare workers, and therapists and case managers, it is now understood that working with people in trauma — hearing their stories of hardship and supporting their recovery — has far-reaching emotional effect on the provider. The condition has numerous names: secondary traumatic stress (STS), vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue. The symptoms are similar in some ways to post-traumatic stress disorder: withdrawing from friends and family; feeling unexplainably irritable or angry or numb; inability to focus; blaming others; feeling hopeless or isolated or guilty about not doing enough; struggling to concentrate; being unable to sleep; overeating or not eating enough; and continually and persistently worrying about students, when they’re at home and even while asleep.