When “Right” Wasn’t the Point

I was looking for the “right” answer. What came next changed the way I viewed yoga entirely.

I was near the end of a 500-hour yoga therapeutics program when I had an experience that changed the way I saw teaching yoga altogether.

At the same time, I had also just begun a 300-hour Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga certification program. I was still very early in that learning, but this moment in the therapeutics program helped open the door for me into so much of what I would later come to understand through trauma-sensitive yoga.

During one of our practice-teaching experiences, I was working with another student.

I remember looking at the way they were doing the form and turning to the trainer with a question.

I wanted to know if they were doing it correctly.

It felt like a completely reasonable question.

I was the teacher. I was supposed to know what I was looking at. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something or allowing someone to do something incorrectly.

But the trainer didn’t answer me.

Instead, they turned toward the person I was practice teaching and asked:

“How does it feel in your body?”

That question changed everything for me.

In that moment, the person with the most important information was not the trainer.

It wasn’t me.

It was the person actually having the experience.

And with that came a large shift in the power dynamic.

The authority did not stay with the person on the other side of the mat.

It moved back to the person who was actually having the experience.

Their experience mattered.

Their noticing mattered.

What they knew from inside their own body mattered.

I had spent a great deal of my yoga education learning how to see someone else’s movement through my own eyes.

Where was their foot?

Was their knee aligned?

Was their spine positioned the way I had been taught?

Was the form recognizable as the form I had demonstrated?

There can be useful information in all of that.

But this question invited something I had not been paying nearly as much attention to:

What does the person doing the movement know that I cannot know by looking at them?

I couldn’t see sensation.

I couldn’t see effort.

I couldn’t see uncertainty, ease, tension, preference, or the small internal signals that might tell someone they wanted to move differently.

And I certainly couldn’t decide from the outside what an experience felt like from the inside.

It changed how I saw yoga altogether.

I began to understand that teaching was not about creating the experience for someone or deciding what the experience should be.

It was about making room for them to have their own experience.

That meant I could still bring practice into the room, but the experience itself did not belong to me.

It belonged to the person practicing.

That was a significant shift in the power dynamic.

The teacher was no longer the person holding the answers. The person practicing became an active part of understanding what was happening, what they were noticing, and what felt right for them in that moment.

And that changed the way I taught yoga moving forward.

I was no longer as interested in whether someone was having the experience I thought they should be having.

I became much more interested in whether there was enough room for them to notice, explore, and have an experience that was actually their own.

That moment became one of the first openings for me into trauma-sensitive yoga.

I was beginning to realize that this work was not simply going to be another collection of techniques I could add to what I already knew.

It was asking me to reconsider some of the things I thought I knew about being a yoga teacher in the first place.

I had been learning how to become better at seeing people.

This work was beginning to teach me how important it was to listen to them.

There was something freeing in that realization for me, too.

I didn’t have to know everything about another person’s experience.

I didn’t have to determine whether every movement was right or wrong.

I could bring what I knew, offer something to explore, and still leave room for the person in front of me to know something I did not.

In many ways, that one question opened a door.

It invited me away from:

How should this look?

And toward:

What are you experiencing?

What are you noticing?

What feels possible from here?

Years later, I can see how much of my understanding of trauma-sensitive yoga was already beginning to take shape in that one moment.

I thought I was asking a question about form.

What I was beginning to learn was something much bigger:

The person having the experience holds information that the person in the other side of the mat never fully can.

And when we make room for that, something else changes too:

the power in the room becomes less concentrated in the teacher and more shared with the person having the experience.

That changed the way I taught yoga moving forward.

Sometimes the most important thing we can do as practitioners is not rush to tell someone whether they are doing it right.

What we can do is ask:

How does it feel in your body?

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

“I couldn’t get my coffee this morning. I’m traumatized.”

We hear versions of this all the time.

A delayed flight. An awkward meeting. A frustrating morning. Something disappointing or inconvenient happens, and the word trauma gets used to describe it.

The concern is not really about the word itself.

It is about what happens to the meaning of trauma when it is used so casually — and how that meaning shapes the way we see and treat people who are actually living with its effects.

Trauma is not simply having a bad experience. It can deeply affect how someone experiences themselves, relationships, trust, sensation, and the world around them. Its effects can continue long after the experience itself has ended.

When trauma becomes shorthand for almost anything difficult, those effects can start to seem less significant.

And that has consequences.

Someone who is constantly scanning their surroundings can be called dramatic.

Someone who shuts down can be seen as disengaged.

Someone who struggles to trust can be labeled difficult.

Someone who has a strong response to something others see as small can be told they are overreacting.

This is where the watering down of trauma becomes more than a language issue.

It can become a way of minimizing people.

If trauma begins to sound ordinary, then the people living with its effects can start to look as though they are reacting too strongly to something that should not be affecting them so deeply.

That is stigma.

Not only refusing to talk about trauma, but reducing its significance to the point that we stop recognizing what it can actually do to a person.

We can become very comfortable talking about “trauma” while remaining uncomfortable with what trauma may actually look like — mistrust, shutdown, dissociation, hypervigilance, difficulty in relationships, or responses that do not make sense from the outside.

And then the person can carry another burden on top of what they have already lived through:

Why am I still affected by this?

Why can’t I move past it?

Why does everyone else seem to handle things better than I do?

When the meaning of trauma is diminished, our response to people can diminish with it.

We may judge what we see instead of becoming curious about what shaped it.

We may focus on changing someone’s behavior rather than understanding what their nervous system has learned to prepare for.

We may expect someone to “move on” without recognizing how deeply an experience has altered the way they move through the world.

When we minimize the meaning of trauma, we risk minimizing the people living with its effects.

That is the deeper concern.

This is not about policing which words people are allowed to use.

It is about remembering that meaning matters because meaning influences understanding — and understanding influences how we treat one another.

Trauma does not need to become a forbidden word.

It needs to remain a meaningful one.

Because when we understand the weight of trauma more clearly, we are more able to recognize the weight someone else may be carrying.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

Some people grow up learning that care is inconsistent.

That needs are inconvenient.

That love can disappear.

That home can be unpredictable.

That asking for help does not always bring help.

When those experiences happen over and over, they can shape more than memory.

They can shape expectation.

This is how life is.
Nothing is going to change.
I do not really matter.
I am not someone people take care of.

And those beliefs do not always disappear just because childhood ends.

A person can build a stable life and still feel like something bad is coming.

They can be loved and still have trouble trusting it.

They can be cared for and still feel uncomfortable receiving care.

They can finally have choices and still feel unsure that their choices matter.

They can know, intellectually, that they are safe now and still not experience that safety in a way that feels real.

Because safety is not only something we understand.

It is also something we experience.

Present-moment experience matters because it gives us new information.

Not an idea of safety.

Not a memory of it.

An actual moment where something is different now.

I am here.
I can notice what I feel.
I can choose what happens next.
I can stop.
I can change my mind.
No one is taking that away from me.

This is one reason practices like Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) can be so meaningful.

The invitation is not to picture safety somewhere else.

It is to have an opportunity to experience something different in the present moment.

Right here.

Right now.

Not because one experience erases what came before.

But because it can interrupt the belief that it will always be this way.

And sometimes that is where change begins:

not with being told that life is different now,

but with having an experience that lets you feel, even for a moment,

maybe it can be.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

As practitioners, there are moments when we can feel something happening before we fully understand it.

A sense of ease. A tightening in our own body. A pull to move closer. A wish to create more space. A feeling that connection has deepened—or that something has shifted.

These moments can be easy to overlook, especially when we are focused on what we think we should be doing next.

But they matter.

Because attunement is not only about paying attention to the person in front of us. It is also about staying connected to ourselves while we are with them.

We are part of what is happening.

One idea from Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) that deeply informs the way I think about attunement is the shared, authentic experience. For me, that means remembering that we are not outside the relationship looking in. We are part of it.

We Bring Ourselves Into the Relationship

As practitioners, we bring more than our knowledge and training into an interaction.

We bring our own body, our energy, our reactions, our boundaries, and our way of being in that particular moment.

That does not make the relationship about us. It simply means that we are not outside of it.

Our presence affects the space, and the person in front of us affects us as well.

There is something deeply relational in recognizing that.

We do not have to become blank, neutral, or removed in order to be helpful. We can remain connected to ourselves and still make room for another person’s experience.

Our Body Is Part of the Relationship

Sometimes our body notices something before our mind has made sense of it.

Our shoulders tighten. Our breathing changes. We feel ourselves bracing. We notice warmth, ease, a wish to pull back, or a sense of connection.

These experiences do not tell us what the other person is feeling. They are not evidence about someone else.

They tell us something about our own experience of being here with this person, in this moment.

That information can matter.

When we are connected to our own body, we have a better chance of noticing when we are becoming hurried, guarded, distant, or more intense. We can notice before those shifts begin shaping the relationship without our awareness.

Sometimes that awareness can be as simple as:

I can stay connected to what I’m feeling while staying connected with you.

Authenticity Means Staying Connected to Ourselves

Authenticity does not mean sharing every thought or feeling we have.

It means we are connected enough to ourselves that our presence is genuine. Our care is real. Our interest is real. Our responses come from the interaction that is actually happening rather than only from the role we are occupying.

That can feel vulnerable for practitioners.

We are often trained to focus on the other person. To know what to do. To respond well. To keep things moving.

But there are moments when we are uncertain. Moments when we feel something strongly. Moments when we do not know what comes next.

Attunement allows us to remain connected in those moments rather than leaving ourselves behind in an effort to get everything right.

We Do Not Have to Disappear to Connect

Caring deeply about another person can sometimes pull all of our attention outward.

We begin anticipating. Adjusting. Trying to make the interaction work. Trying to make things easier. Trying to be what we think the person needs.

And in that effort, we can lose touch with ourselves.

But connection does not require self-erasure.

We can care and still have boundaries. We can be responsive and still notice our own limits. We can feel deeply connected and still remain ourselves.

There is something important about allowing both people to remain connected to themselves within the relationship.

Each person brings their own body, history, responses, boundaries, and way of being.

Connection can grow from that meeting, without either person needing to lose themselves in the process.

Practicing With, Not Outside

There can also be something powerful about practicing alongside someone rather than standing outside the experience and directing it.

When we participate with another person, the relationship can begin to feel more collaborative. The power dynamic shifts. We are not asking someone to go somewhere we are unwilling to go ourselves; we are sharing in the experience while each person remains connected to their own choices and their own body.

For many of the people we work with, practicing alongside another person can offer an experience they may not have had before—the experience of doing something with someone who feels safer, rather than being directed, watched, or left to navigate it alone.

That can help create a safer space for participation.

When we are practicing alongside someone, there can be less sense of being singled out or observed from the outside. Seeing us participate can also make the experience feel more approachable. We are there together, while each person still gets to decide whether, how, and to what degree they want to participate.

That sense of with matters.

It can shift the relationship from authority toward collaboration, from distance toward connection, and from expectation toward invitation.

Something Is Created Between Us

There are moments in relationships that belong entirely to neither person.

A sense of ease. A moment of closeness. Distance. Warmth. Uncertainty. A feeling that something has changed.

We do not always have to explain those moments.

We do not have to decide what they mean immediately.

Sometimes it is enough to notice that the relationship feels different.

Attunement is not about accurately reading another person. It is about being aware enough to recognize that the relationship itself is alive.

It moves. It shifts. And we are part of that movement.

What Attunement Asks of Us

Attunement asks us to stay connected in more than one direction.

To the person in front of us.

To our own body and internal experience.

And to what is happening in the space between us.

It asks us to notice when we begin to leave ourselves, when we become more focused on managing the interaction than participating in it, and when our own tension, urgency, or uncertainty begins shaping how we are with someone.

And it invites us back—to our own experience, to the moment, and to the relationship.

We do not need to know exactly what another person is feeling.

We do not need to create the perfect interaction.

We do not need to lose ourselves in order to connect.

Attunement is being connected enough to ourselves that we can genuinely be with another person—and allow something real to happen between us.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

It is easier to feel connected to someone when we understand them.

When their response makes sense to us.

When the relationship feels comfortable.

But empathy matters just as much when none of that is true.

When someone is angry, guarded, mistrustful, distant, or making choices we do not understand, something can begin to shift in us. We can become less warm, more certain, more directive, or more focused on changing what is happening.

Empathy is the willingness to stay open to another person’s experience and humanity, even when their experience is different from our own.

It does not require us to fully understand.

It asks us to remain open enough to remember that there is always more to a person’s experience than what we can see from the outside.

When We Do Not Understand

Someone can seem resistant.

Detached.

Angry.

Uninterested.

Unpredictable.

And very quickly, we can begin creating a story about what their behavior means.

They do not want help.

They are not trying.

They are being difficult.

But what looks one way from the outside can feel very different from the inside.

What we experience as distance can reflect caution.

What looks like resistance can have roots in protection.

What appears to be disengagement can be uncertainty.

And sometimes we simply do not know.

Empathy gives us room to not know without turning our uncertainty into judgment.

A person does not have to make sense to us in order to be met with dignity, respect, and care.

Empathy Without Rescue

Helping professionals often want to make things better.

We want to ease distress.

We want people to feel supported.

We want to know that what we are doing is useful.

That desire comes from care.

But sometimes care can become tangled with the need to fix.

Another person’s discomfort can create discomfort in us. We can begin moving quickly toward reassurance, solutions, or change because it is difficult for us to sit beside an experience we cannot make better.

Empathy offers another way.

It allows another person’s experience to exist without immediately turning it into something we need to solve.

Our presence can communicate:

I do not need you to feel differently in order for me to stay connected to you.

That does not mean doing nothing.

It means respecting that another person’s experience, choices, and life still belong to them.

We can care without taking over.

Caring Without Carrying

Some practitioners become cautious about empathy because they associate it with taking on another person’s pain.

If empathy means absorbing what someone else is feeling, carrying their experiences with us, or feeling responsible for making everything better, it can become exhausting.

But empathy does not have to mean emotional absorption.

We can care deeply without making another person’s pain our own.

We can be moved without becoming consumed.

We can stay emotionally available while still knowing where we end and another person begins.

Boundaries do not make us less empathic.

They allow us to stay connected without losing ourselves in another person’s experience.

This is your experience. I do not have to make it mine in order for it to matter to me.

There is something deeply respectful in that.

We are not distancing ourselves from another person’s humanity.

We are recognizing that their experience belongs to them, while allowing our care to remain.

When Our Perspective Carries Weight

Our professional roles give us knowledge, language, frameworks, and ways of understanding behavior.

Those things matter.

And so does remembering that our perspective can carry weight.

When we are the practitioner in the room, our interpretation can easily become the story that gets believed.

Someone can become resistant.

Difficult.

Disengaged.

Unmotivated.

And once we begin seeing someone through that lens, it can shape how we feel toward them and how we show up with them.

Empathy asks us to leave room for something we cannot see.

There is a life behind the behavior.

A history behind the response.

A reason something has come to make sense for this person, even when it does not yet make sense to us.

Our knowledge can help us understand.

But it does not make us the authority on another person’s inner experience.

Empathy reminds us to hold our understanding with enough openness that the person in front of us does not disappear beneath our interpretation.

Staying Human When It Gets Hard

Perhaps empathy becomes most visible when connection is difficult.

When an interaction is not going the way we expected.

When we feel challenged.

When we are uncomfortable.

When our warmth begins to change.

When part of us wants to pull away, take control, fix, or judge.

These moments remind us that we are human.

And they offer an opportunity to notice how we want to show up next.

Empathy does not ask us to abandon boundaries.

It does not ask us to agree with everything another person does.

It does not ask us to accept harmful behavior.

It asks us not to lose sight of the human being in front of us.

Empathy does not ask us to carry someone else’s experience. It asks us not to turn away from their humanity when their experience is difficult for us to sit with.

There will be people we do not fully understand.

There will be moments when we feel uncertain, uncomfortable, or challenged.

And perhaps empathy lives right there.

In our willingness to stay open.

To notice when judgment begins to replace curiosity.

To recognize when our discomfort begins to create distance.

And to remember that the person in front of us is more than the part of them we are struggling to understand.

We do not have to carry their experience.

We do not have to fix it.

We do not have to make it our own.

We can continue to meet another human being with care, dignity, and respect.

Empathy is staying human with someone, even when it’s hard.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

There are moments when we know, almost immediately, that we are in the presence of someone who feels warm.

Something in us recognizes it.

We feel received rather than managed.

We feel that there is room for us.

We do not have to work so hard to figure out where we stand.

Warmth is not always something we can easily describe, but we often know when we feel it.

And we often know when we do not.

For practitioners, that matters.

Because care is not only something we intend.

Care also has to be felt.

Warmth is one of the ways that happens.

It can communicate, without asking anything from the other person:

You are welcome here.

You matter here.

There is room for you as you are.

Why Does Warmth Matter?

Think about what it is like to be with someone who feels distant.

Maybe their attention is elsewhere.

Maybe their expression feels closed.

Maybe they seem impatient, distracted, or eager to move on.

Nothing overtly unkind has to happen for us to feel the difference.

We can begin to wonder:

Am I bothering them?

Do they want me here?

Have I done something wrong?

Do I need to be different with them?

Is there really room for me here?

For someone whose experiences have included criticism, dismissal, rejection, not being believed, or needing to pay close attention to other people’s reactions, those moments can carry even more meaning.

A change in expression.

A shift in attention.

A sense of impatience.

A practitioner looking toward the clock.

A feeling that the task has become more important than the person.

These can seem like small moments.

But small moments are often where relationships are felt.

We can be tired.

We can be thinking ahead.

We can have a full schedule.

We can be carrying something difficult from our own lives.

The person in front of us cannot know all of that.

They know what it feels like to be with us.

That is why warmth matters.

What Does Warmth Look Like?

Warmth does not have to be big.

It does not have to be cheerful.

And it does not have to be performed.

Warmth can be found in ordinary moments.

Looking up when someone enters.

Allowing our attention to turn fully toward them.

Letting our expression communicate that we are glad they are here.

Remembering something about them.

Not allowing the computer, the clock, or the next task to become the most important presence in the room.

Remaining connected when the interaction becomes uncomfortable.

Not withdrawing because someone is guarded, frustrated, uncertain, distant, or responding differently than we hoped.

Warmth is not about getting someone to open up.

It is not about making someone more cooperative.

It is not a strategy for creating a particular response.

Warmth is about how we choose to be with another human being.

Sometimes it is simply the felt message:

I am still here with you.

Warmth Is Not the Same as Cheerfulness

Warmth does not mean smiling all the time.

It does not mean being outgoing.

It does not mean trying to make difficult experiences feel positive.

There are moments when cheerfulness can actually feel disconnected from what someone is experiencing.

Warmth can exist alongside sadness.

Anger.

Fear.

Uncertainty.

Grief.

Silence.

Warmth can be steady.

Gentle.

Sincere.

Respectful.

It can mean that our care does not disappear when the person in front of us is having a difficult moment.

They do not need to make us comfortable.

They do not need to reassure us.

They do not need to respond in the way we expected.

They do not need to become easier for us to remain connected.

That, in itself, can be deeply meaningful.

When Warmth Is Missing

When warmth is absent, an interaction can begin to feel transactional.

A person can feel attended to without feeling received.

We can complete every required task and still leave someone feeling unseen.

We can gather the information.

Follow the process.

Ask the necessary questions.

Provide the service.

And still miss the human being sitting in front of us.

Sometimes the absence of warmth shows up when things are not going the way we expected.

Our expression changes.

Our tone changes.

We become more formal.

More directive.

More focused on getting through the interaction.

We create distance without recognizing that we are doing it.

And the person with us can feel that shift.

They might not say anything about it.

But the relationship has communicated something.

Awareness Helps Us Notice Warmth

This is where awareness comes back in.

Not by asking:

Am I a warm person?

But by becoming curious about something much more important:

What does it feel like to be with me right now?

There can be a difference between the care we feel inside ourselves and the care another person actually experiences.

We can care deeply and still appear distracted.

We can want someone to feel welcome and still seem hurried.

We can believe we are being open while our face, posture, or attention communicates distance.

Awareness helps us notice that gap.

Not so that we can become perfect.

So that we can remain connected to the impact of our presence.

The Person Before the Task

Practitioners have responsibilities.

There are schedules.

Documentation.

Questions that need answering.

Information that needs gathering.

Decisions that need making.

All of that is real.

And in the middle of it, there is a person.

Not a diagnosis.

Not a behavior.

Not a case.

Not an appointment.

Not a task to complete.

A person.

Someone with a history we do not fully know.

Someone who has learned things about relationships long before they walked into the room with us.

Someone who can feel whether our attention is with them or somewhere else.

Sometimes people will not remember the details of an interaction.

But they can carry the feeling of it with them.

Did I feel like I mattered?

Did I feel received?

Was there room for me as I was?

Did the person in front of me seem to care that I was there?

Warmth Is a Way of Being

Warmth is not another technique to master.

It is a way of being with another human being.

Throughout our work, there will always be things that need our attention—questions, schedules, responsibilities, decisions. But underneath all of that is something more fundamental:

There is a person in front of us.

A person with a history we cannot fully know.

A person who has had experiences of being seen and experiences of being overlooked.

A person who does not need to respond in a certain way, make things easier for us, or become someone different in order to be met with care.

This is where warmth becomes more than kindness.

It is in our attention.

Our expression.

Our willingness to remain present.

The way we stay connected when an interaction becomes uncomfortable or does not unfold as we expected.

The small ways our presence can communicate:

You matter here.

There is room for you here.

You do not have to be anything other than who you are in this moment.

We will not always know the impact of these moments.

We will not always know what someone carries with them after spending time with us.

But we can remember that care is felt in the small, human ways we meet one another.

And perhaps that is one of the most meaningful parts of trauma-sensitive practice:

Not having all the right answers.

Not creating the perfect interaction.

But showing up in a way that honors the humanity of the person in front of us.

Warmth can be felt in the way we make room for another person without asking them to be anything other than who they are.

Reflection

What does my presence communicate to the person in front of me?

Is there room for them to be exactly where they are, even when that looks different from what I expected?

What small moments of warmth might matter more than I realize?

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

Trauma-sensitive practice is not only about what we know.

It is not only about the words we use, the choices we offer, or the interventions we provide.

It is also about how we show up.

How do people experience us?

Do they experience warmth?

Do they feel rushed?

Do they sense that we are genuinely interested in them?

Do they feel there is room to hesitate, ask questions, change their mind, or not know what they need yet?

These things matter.

And awareness helps us notice them.

Awareness Begins With Us

As practitioners, we often pay close attention to the people we support. We notice their words, expressions, behavior, and tone.

Trauma-sensitive practice also asks us to notice ourselves.

What is my tone right now?

Am I moving quickly?

Am I listening, or am I already thinking about what I want to say next?

Am I making assumptions about what this person needs?

Am I bringing urgency into the interaction?

What is happening in me right now?

Awareness is not about constantly monitoring ourselves. It is about noticing how we are entering the relationship.

Because how we show up becomes part of another person’s experience.

Why Does This Matter?

We can have the best intentions and still affect someone in ways we did not intend.

We can be tired and seem distant.

We can be focused and appear impatient.

We can be trying to help and move quickly.

We can believe we are being efficient while the other person experiences us as rushed.

When warmth, attention, or connection is missing, a person can begin to wonder:

Am I bothering them?

Did I say something wrong?

Are they judging me?

Do they really want to hear this?

Should I stop talking?

For someone whose experiences have included being dismissed, criticized, controlled, ignored, or not believed, these moments can carry significant weight.

This is why awareness matters.

It gives us the opportunity to notice the relational environment we are helping to create.

What Does Warmth Look Like?

Warmth does not have to be dramatic.

It can be very ordinary.

Looking up when someone enters the room.

Offering a genuine greeting.

Using a tone that communicates interest rather than impatience.

Allowing space after someone shares something meaningful.

Remembering something they told us.

Saying, “I’m glad you told me.”

Not making someone feel they need to hurry.

Warmth can communicate:

You are welcome here.

I am interested in you.

You are not a task I need to get through.

Small interactions can carry powerful relational messages.

When Awareness Is Missing

Without awareness, we can miss the small ways we affect an interaction.

We can interrupt.

We can explain before we have listened.

We can assume hesitation means resistance.

We can move ahead with our agenda even when the person in front of us has shifted.

We can become so focused on helping that we stop noticing how our help is being received.

We can miss the difference between offering guidance and taking over.

We can miss the difference between being efficient and making someone feel rushed.

We can miss the difference between asking a question and creating pressure to answer it.

Awareness helps us notice those differences.

Awareness Includes Power

Our roles can carry authority.

A person can agree because they think they are supposed to.

They can avoid telling us they are uncomfortable.

They can answer a question they would rather not answer.

They can assume we know best.

Awareness helps us remember that what feels like an invitation to us does not always feel like an invitation to someone else.

We can ask:

Am I truly offering choice here?

Have I made room for no?

Have I made room for not yet?

Have I made room for “I don’t know”?

Am I creating space for this person to have a different perspective from mine?

Awareness helps us notice not only what we say, but how our position shapes the relationship.

Awareness Is Where We Begin

Awareness gives us more choice in how we respond.

We can notice our pace.

Our tone.

Our assumptions.

Our warmth.

Our urgency.

The power we carry.

And what seems to be happening between us.

Trauma-sensitive practice is deeply human work.

Awareness helps us stay connected to the person in front of us and to the way we are showing up in the relationship.

Reflection

How am I showing up right now?

How am I being experienced in this moment?

What am I bringing into this interaction?

What am I noticing between us?

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

For some survivors, disappearing meant becoming small.

For others, disappearing may have looked completely different.

You got bigger.

Louder.

Funnier.

You filled the room before anyone else could.

Maybe you learned to make people laugh when things became uncomfortable. Maybe you talked when there was silence. Maybe you became the one with the story, the joke, the energy everyone noticed.

Maybe you laughed at times when other people didn’t understand why you were laughing.

Maybe sitting still felt impossible.

Maybe you needed to know what everyone was doing, where everyone was, what was happening next.

Maybe being in the center of things felt safer than being on the outside.

Sometimes taking up a lot of space can be a way of surviving, too.

There can be many reasons someone learned to be big, loud, funny, animated, or constantly moving. Perhaps being entertaining changed the feeling in a room. Perhaps being noticed felt safer than being overlooked. Perhaps keeping everyone engaged meant there was less opportunity for something unexpected to happen.

Or perhaps that is simply how someone learned to be in the world.

We don’t always know.

And that matters.

Because when someone arrives with a lot of energy, there can be a temptation to believe we know what they need.

Slow down.

Settle.

Be still.

Lower your voice.

Take a breath.

Sometimes these invitations are offered with care. We may believe we are helping someone feel safer or more regulated.

But what if becoming calmer isn’t the goal?

What if we are simply replacing one expectation with another?

Just as healing doesn’t necessarily mean teaching someone who has made themselves small to become bigger, it doesn’t necessarily mean teaching someone who has been big to become smaller.

Trauma-sensitive yoga can offer something different.

There can be movement without someone else deciding how much movement is enough.

Perhaps you move quickly.

Perhaps you move slowly.

Perhaps you make a large movement.

Perhaps you make a small one.

Perhaps you pause.

Perhaps you don’t.

You might begin one way and discover that you want something different.

The practitioner doesn’t have to decide that slower is better.

Stillness isn’t necessarily progress.

Less isn’t necessarily more regulated.

And calm doesn’t have to be the destination.

Sometimes trauma teaches you to become very good at reading everyone except yourself.

You notice the mood in the room.

You notice who is uncomfortable.

You notice when someone needs you to be funny, entertaining, agreeable, energetic, or okay.

You learn how to change the feeling in the room before you ever have a chance to notice what is happening inside of you.

And eventually, other people may begin telling you what you need there, too.

Slow down.

Settle.

Be still.

Calm yourself.

Try to relax.

The intention may be caring.

But there is something important that can get lost when we decide that healing means helping someone become the opposite of who they have learned to be.

Because perhaps the deeper question isn’t:

How do we help this person become calmer?

Perhaps it is:

What happens when this person no longer has to shape themselves around what someone else thinks they should be?

In trauma-sensitive yoga, that can begin in moments that might look almost insignificant from the outside.

You move, and no one tells you that you moved too much.

You pause because you want to, not because someone told you to settle down.

You keep moving because that is what feels right to you.

You try something and realize you don’t want it.

You change your mind.

You begin to notice the difference between doing something because it is expected of you and doing something because you chose it for yourself.

And maybe that is where something very important begins.

Because when so much of your life has been shaped around anticipating other people — their moods, their reactions, their needs, their expectations — discovering that you can have your own response can feel unfamiliar.

What do I want?

What feels right to me?

Do I want to keep going?

Do I want something different?

These are small questions.

But they can belong to something much bigger.

A life that is not always organized around everyone else.

A life in which someone else’s idea of who you should be doesn’t automatically become who you have to become.

Maybe you will discover that you love being loud.

Maybe your laughter will still fill the room.

Maybe you will always have a lot to say.

Maybe sometimes you will want to sit without saying anything at all.

None of those things tells us whether you are healing.

The important thing is that, little by little, they can become yours.

Not the laughter that kept everyone comfortable.

Not the stillness someone else asked you to find.

Not the version of you another person decided was healthier.

Yours.

Your movement.

Your pace.

Your response.

Your way of being in this moment.

Perhaps that is what we are really making room for.

Not a calmer person.

Not a smaller person.

Not even a different person.

A person who is beginning to experience that their life does not always have to be shaped by what someone else wants from them.

A person who can begin to ask:

What do I want?

And discover that their answer matters.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

For some survivors, disappearing was never about wanting to be invisible.

It was about staying safe.

You learned to read the room before you entered it. To notice the shift in someone’s voice, the look on their face, the feeling that something might change. You learned when to speak and when not to. When to move and when to stay still.

You learned how little space you could take up.

Maybe you pulled your shoulders in. Kept your arms close. Made your movements smaller. Lowered your voice. Tried not to ask for too much, need too much, or draw attention to yourself.

Maybe being small became a kind of protection.

Because being seen could feel dangerous.

Over time, that carefulness can become so familiar that it no longer feels like something you are doing.

It can begin to feel like who you are.

You step aside.

You hold back.

You become almost like an outline of yourself — present, but trying not to be too visible.

And then we tell people to take up space.

Be seen.

Be bold.

Be stronger.

Use your voice.

Sometimes these words are offered as encouragement. We want someone to know they matter. We want them to experience themselves as capable and powerful.

But what if that isn’t what they need?

There can be an assumption that healing should look like becoming bigger, brighter, louder, more confident. That someone who once made themselves small will know they are healing when they finally take up more room.

But that can become another expectation.

Another person deciding what strength should look like.

Another person deciding where someone should be headed.

For someone who survived by becoming small, there may have been intelligence in that response. There was a reason for pulling in, staying unnoticed, or moving carefully.

We don’t need to turn around and tell them that now they should do the opposite.

This is one of the places where trauma-sensitive yoga can offer something different.

Not by asking someone to become bigger.

Not by deciding what a movement should look like.

Not by assuming that a bigger movement is a better movement.

Instead, there can be an invitation to move and an opportunity for the participant to notice their own experience.

Perhaps you extend an arm and choose how far it moves.

Perhaps you move slowly.

Perhaps you make a larger shape.

Perhaps you keep the movement small.

Perhaps you begin and then change your mind.

Perhaps you don’t move at all.

The practitioner doesn’t need to decide that more movement is better, that bigger is braver, or that taking up more space means healing.

Because the size of the movement isn’t the point.

The experience belongs to the participant.

That matters because trauma can involve moments when choice, control, or a sense of ownership over one’s own experience was taken away. In trauma-sensitive yoga, even very small decisions can offer an opportunity to experience something different:

I can notice.

I can decide.

I can respond to what I am experiencing.

Taking up space, then, does not have to mean stretching farther or becoming more visible.

It might simply mean beginning to discover that there is no required shape.

No correct amount.

No expectation that you should be bigger than you are.

Perhaps taking up space can begin with something much more personal:

I am here.

I can notice what this feels like.

And I can choose how I want to be in this moment.

Maybe there will be a day when taking up more space feels powerful.

Maybe there won’t.

Maybe strength is extending your arms wide.

Maybe strength is keeping them close.

Maybe neither needs to be called strength at all.

We don’t have to decide what the experience means for someone else.

Perhaps the invitation is simpler:

There is no particular way you need to be here.

You can notice.

You can move.

You can choose.

And you can discover for yourself what taking up space — or not taking up space — means to you.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer

The importance of knowing ourselves in the work of supporting others

When we enter professional spaces, it can be easy to imagine that we are stepping into a role.

Therapist. Facilitator. Yoga teacher. Coach. Clinician. Practitioner.

The role matters. Training matters. Ethics matter. Skill matters.

But we do not leave ourselves outside the room.

We bring our own histories.
Our ways of coping.
Our comfort with uncertainty.
Our relationship with choice.
Our impulse to help.
Our urge to fix.
Our sensitivity to disconnection.
Our capacity to stay present when something becomes difficult.

None of this means the work should become about us.

It does mean that who we are in the room matters.

We are always part of the relationship

Relational work is not something we perform from a distance.

We are participating in it.

The way we listen shapes the interaction.

The way we respond to silence matters.

The way we handle uncertainty matters.

The way we respond when someone says no matters.

The way we notice our own urgency matters.

The way we recognize when we are becoming disconnected matters.

Even when we are highly trained, there are moments when something in the work touches something in us.

We may feel impatient.

Protective.

Uncertain.

Pulled toward fixing.

Pulled toward withdrawing.

We may notice ourselves wanting the moment to go differently than it is going.

These responses are not necessarily signs that we are doing something wrong.

They are information.

The question is whether we are able to notice them.

Knowing ourselves is part of the work

There is a difference between bringing ourselves into the room and making our experience someone else’s responsibility.

The first is unavoidable.

The second is something we need to remain attentive to.

Knowing ourselves can help us recognize that distinction.

We may begin to notice:

Is this urgency mine?

Am I moving toward an answer because it is helpful, or because uncertainty is difficult for me?

Am I offering choice, or am I hoping someone chooses what would make me feel more comfortable?

Am I listening to what is actually being communicated, or to what I expect to hear?

Am I trying to repair something that has not been identified as broken?

These are not questions we answer once.

They are questions we return to.

The professional self is still a self

There can be pressure in helping professions to become increasingly composed, certain, and unaffected.

But professionalism does not require us to stop having an inner experience.

It asks us to be responsible for how we relate to that experience.

That may mean recognizing when we need support.

It may mean noticing when our own history is becoming especially present.

It may mean making space before responding.

It may mean seeking consultation.

It may mean returning to practices that help us reconnect with ourselves.

This is where continued practice becomes important.

Not because we should be trying to eliminate our reactions.

Not because enough practice will eventually make us neutral.

But because continued practice can help us stay familiar with ourselves.

It gives us opportunities to notice patterns.

To recognize what pulls us away from connection.

To feel when urgency is beginning to take over.

To remember that choice belongs to the person in front of us.

To return to curiosity when certainty becomes tempting.

Continued practice keeps the relationship alive

Training can give us language, frameworks, and skills.

Continued practice gives us opportunities to keep encountering ourselves within them.

That matters because we change.

The work changes.

The people we meet change us.

Experiences that once felt manageable may land differently later. Something we thought we understood may become more complex. We may discover a response in ourselves that we had not noticed before.

Continued practice gives us a place to remain curious about that.

Not to perfect ourselves.

Not to become unaffected.

But to stay connected enough to recognize what we are bringing with us.

And perhaps that is part of what allows us to meet another person with greater clarity.

Healing in everyday life

The way we relate to ourselves outside the professional space does not remain entirely separate from the way we show up within it.

How we respond to our own uncertainty.

How we notice our own limits.

How we make room for choice.

How we reconnect after losing connection.

How willing we are to remain curious about ourselves.

These things travel with us.

Maybe that is one reason continued practice matters so much.

It reminds us that our professional development is not only about what we know.

It is also about the relationship we continue to have with ourselves.

Because when we enter the room, we bring more than our training.

We bring ourselves.

And knowing what we bring with us is part of how we continue to care for the work.

Wishing you wellness,

Keri Sawyer