This workshop will explore how trauma affects pregnant people and offer best practices in supporting them during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and parenthood.

 

Workshop will Include:​

• Introduction to understanding trauma and its impact on the brain, mind, body, families, and communities

• How to identify trauma symptoms and practical applications for healing

• Ways to make your intake and paperwork more trauma-informed

• Tools for regulating the nervous system and how one might discharge and process trauma
  in the body

• Take home tools to restore balance, renew hope and resilience in your clients

• Learn how secondary trauma affects care providers and tools for prevention

• Attendees will leave the workshop with tangible and unique trauma-informed tools to use
  immediately with clients

​

Attendees will leave the workshop with tangible and unique trauma-informed tools to use right way with clients.

​

***This workshop is solely for professional development and is not intended as an intervention for personal healing. Please keep in mind talking about trauma, even in the context of professional training can be triggering***

​

​

Why is this important for all birth workers to know?

Media campaigns like the #MeToo movement have spread worldwide. People are beginning to speak more openly about violence against women. According to CNN, 1 in 3 women will experience violence in a relationship during their lifetime. Approximately 70% of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives and roughly 20% of these people go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD (sidran.org).

 

Therefore it’s likely that one or more of your students is a trauma-survivor, regardless of whether they identity with this term. Students may come to class not realizing that the yoga practice may uncover trauma still held within the mind & body. Most students do not expect to have an intense memory, emotion, or physical response during a yoga class.

 

Without a basic understanding of the signs and symptoms of trauma, we as health and wellness providers lack the tools and skills to support pregnant people through these experiences.

 

For trauma survivors, the experience of carrying and birthing a baby has the potential to be overwhelming. Often these unexpected experiences can create shame and confusion. Leaving a yoga class feeling dysregulated can create additional barriers to healing the original trauma.

 

With a basic understanding of trauma-informed teaching principles, we can participate in creating classes that empower pregnant people rather than trigger and shame them. Armed with with trauma-informed tools, we can begin to build a culture that nourishes resilience and fosters post-traumatic growth.