Trauma-Sensitive Yoga (TSY) is becoming more widely recognized, but with that recognition comes a lot of misunderstanding. TSY isn’t simply a “gentler yoga class” or a set of special poses. It’s an approach rooted in agency, choice, and nervous system understanding — but many people still hold outdated assumptions.
Here are five common myths about trauma-sensitive yoga and what’s actually true.
Myth 1: Trauma-Sensitive Yoga needs to be relaxing.
Many people assume TSY is supposed to feel soothing or calming. But the goal isn’t relaxation — it’s empowerment. For someone with trauma, connecting to their body can bring up a range of sensations: neutral, comforting, or sometimes challenging. All of these responses are welcome.
What’s true: TSY creates a space where people can notice, choose, and stay in control of their experience — whether it feels relaxing or not.
Myth 2: It’s only for people with diagnosed trauma.
TSY can support people with PTSD or complex trauma, but it’s also helpful for:
People experiencing stress
Burnout
Dissociation
Grief
Anxiety
Anyone wanting a more choice-based yoga practice
What’s true: TSY is a human-centered approach. You don’t need a diagnosis to benefit from it.
Myth 3: Instructors must talk about trauma during class.
Talking about trauma experiences during practice can be overwhelming or even re-triggering.
What’s true: A trauma-sensitive class focuses on present-moment awareness, choice, and invitation-based cueing. No one needs to share their story. The safety comes from how the class is offered, not from discussing trauma.
Myth 4: Trauma-Sensitive Yoga is a specific set of poses.
There is no official “TSY sequence” that must be followed.
What’s true: TSY is about how you cue, not what you cue. You can teach almost any posture in a trauma-sensitive way if you prioritize:
Choice
Language that invites rather than directs
Predictability
Respect for autonomy
Awareness of power dynamics
It’s an approach, not a choreography.
Myth 5: Teachers need to fix or heal participants.
This belief often comes from a place of compassion, but it’s unsupported and unsafe.
What’s true: Teachers are not healers or fixers. TSY empowers individuals to reconnect with their bodies in their own time, on their own terms. The role of the instructor is to offer choices, create predictability, and support agency — not to diagnose, treat, or rescue.
Final Thoughts
Trauma-Sensitive Yoga is powerful not because it’s a specialized technique, but because it centers the autonomy and lived experience of the practitioner. When we release these myths, we can meet each student with respect, clarity, and genuine care.
Reclaiming movement as the language of feeling safe.
We often imagine safety as stillness. As a steady breath, a quiet mind, an unshakable calm. For many, “regulated” has come to mean silent, composed, or perfectly peaceful. But real safety is rarely that neat.
Safety, in the language of the nervous system, is not the absence of movement. It’s the presence of freedom. Freedom to sway, to reach, to stretch, to turn toward or away. Safety is what lets the body move without bracing for consequence. It’s fluidity — not stillness — that tells the body, you are okay.
The Myth of Calm
When we equate safety with a calm stillness, we create an impossible standard. Especially for those whose nervous systems have learned to survive by staying small or invisible, calm may actually feel unsafe. Stillness might be the place where danger used to find you.
In trauma recovery, stillness can sometimes awaken old alarms. The body remembers what it meant to freeze. So when you find yourself restless or fidgeting even in a “peaceful” moment, know this: your body might simply be moving to prove that it’s alive.
Safety grows not by demanding stillness, but by widening what’s possible. It’s the small moments when you can move and still feel connected — when you can shift, stretch, or look around without the body interpreting it as threat.
The Body’s Natural Rhythm
Think of a child who feels safe enough to explore: arms swinging, eyes bright, body in motion. That is what safety looks like in motion — curiosity without collapse.
As adults, our nervous systems still seek that rhythm. Movement keeps the pathways between body and brain alive. It tells the system, we’re here, we’re responsive, we can adapt.
If calm feels unreachable, start with rhythm. Walk. Rock. Reach. Let the body lead. It’s not about looking peaceful — it’s about being present. Movement restores the communication between brain and body that trauma interrupts.
When Stillness Feels Threatening
If you notice anxiety or discomfort in quiet moments, you’re not doing anything wrong. Your body may simply be trying to protect you from the sensation of stillness that once meant danger or powerlessness. This is not regression — it’s awareness.
You can meet that awareness with gentleness. Instead of forcing yourself into calm, invite subtle motion: tracing your fingertips along a surface, shifting your balance, or turning your gaze. These are ways of saying, I am here now, and I can move.
In time, as safety deepens, stillness may feel different — not demanded, but chosen. Stillness becomes a resting place rather than a trap.
A Practice: Moving Toward Safety
You’re invited to take a moment to notice one small movement that feels available right now — maybe rolling your shoulders, stretching your hands, or adjusting how you sit. Let the movement unfold.
Notice if movement allows something in you to shift — not into stillness, but into presence.
The Freedom to Move
Safety isn’t the absence of movement or noise or emotion. It’s the freedom to experience all of those things without fear.
When the body begins to trust that it can move, speak, or express without danger, healing deepens. You no longer need to freeze to stay safe; you can flow and still belong.
Safety, real safety, is the spaciousness to be fully alive — moving, feeling, and responding in rhythm with life.
I’ve been doing this 10-minute practice of mindful movement every day for a couple of weeks now. Fourteen days of setting a timer, meeting my body in simple movement, and starting the day with presence instead of just launching straight into doing.
It doesn’t sound like a big thing on paper. Ten minutes. But something has started to change in how I move through the rest of my day. I’m finding that I’m actually noticing my body at times I used to ignore it completely. Moments that would have just blended into the background are starting to feel a little more alive, a little more available to me.
One of those moments happened on the drive to the coast.
It’s about a five-and-a-half-hour drive. (I still count travel in hours—Wisconsin roots.) At some point into the drive, after I’d been on the road awhile, I started to pick up on how much I was shifting around in my seat. I’d lean a bit to one side, then the other. I would slowly slide forward, then push myself back again. None of this was dramatic, but once I saw it, it was clear that my body was trying to get my attention.
Then I noticed my hands.
One hand was clenching the steering wheel on and off. I’d grip, then loosen, then grip again. My fingers felt a little tight. My breath had changed too—more shallow, with little pauses where it felt like I was holding it without meaning to. All of this was happening while, on the surface, I was just driving like normal.
Before these 10-minute sessions, I don’t think I would have caught any of that. I would have kept going, maybe turned up the radio, told myself I’d stop “later,” and pushed through. My body would have been having an experience and I wouldn’t have really been in on it.
This time, I noticed.
I didn’t launch into fixing mode. I didn’t tell myself, “Relax your shoulders, slow your breath, sit up straight.” Instead, I did what I’ve been practicing every morning: I became aware of what was already happening.
I noticed my seat under me. I noticed the shape of my back against the chair. I noticed my hands on the wheel—how they wanted to clench—and just acknowledged that. I didn’t force them to soften; I just stayed with the fact that my hands were telling a story my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
Somewhere in that noticing, a simple thought arose: “Maybe it’s time for a break.”
That was the important moment. Not the break itself, but the part where I realized my body was speaking up and I actually heard it. I realized I had a choice. I didn’t have to prove anything to myself by driving straight through. I didn’t have to override what I was feeling.
A little further down the road, there was a turnoff with bathrooms and a place to stop. I pulled over, got out of the car, stretched my legs, moved a bit, and let my system reset before getting back on the road.
It was a small pause in the grand scheme of things. But it felt significant because I could also feel how easily I could have missed it. I almost talked myself out of it—almost told myself, “You’re fine, just keep going.” That old pattern is still there. The difference now is that practice is giving me enough presence to see the pattern while it’s happening, not just after the fact.
The shift wasn’t really about the rest stop or even about feeling the ground under my feet, although that helped. The deeper shift was this: I was more in my body in that moment. I could see what was happening inside me, and from that seeing, I could choose.
That’s what these 10 minutes of mindful movement each day are starting to do in my life. They’re helping me remember that I actually have a body, that it has information for me, and that when I notice that information, more options open up. Instead of going on autopilot, I can pause. I can decide. I can respond.
Presence, for me, is becoming less about doing something “right” and more about being able to say, even in the middle of a long drive: “I notice what’s happening in me right now. And I get to choose what I do next.”
Presence deepens not by doing, but by noticing what’s already here.
Wishing you wellness,
Keri Sawyer
PS – you’re welcome to join me in my journey if 90 days of presence, Facebook live every morning through Jan 30 at 5:30am PT:
For those of you following along with 90 Days of Presence, this is a moment from around Day 8 of my own practice.
I’ve been committing to about 10 minutes of mindful movement a day—nothing fancy, just showing up on the mat and noticing what’s there. Right now, that practice happens at 5:30am, so at the beginning it mostly felt like fatigue from the early start and adjusting to a new routine. (Day 2 even landed on daylight savings, so my body was definitely feeling the shift.)
As the days went on, something started to change. I began to notice my body more often off the mat too—small sensations and little shifts I might have missed before.
One morning, I was standing in line for coffee. Just an ordinary moment.
As I waited, I noticed my body was already working. My shoulders felt a bit tight. There was a steady tension in my arms and along my back. My breath was a little quicker, not quite settled. On the outside, I was just another person in line. On the inside, I was already carrying more than the situation asked for.
Because of this 90-day practice, instead of pushing past it, I noticed it.
I didn’t try to talk myself into relaxing or force anything to change. I simply brought my attention down to my feet—how they felt in my shoes, the contact with the floor, the support underneath me. I stayed with that for a few moments: connection, steadiness, something solid I could feel.
I wasn’t trying to fix myself. I was just present with what was there. And in that ordinary moment, just noticing began to change the way my body felt.
As I stayed with the feeling of my feet on the floor, something started to shift on its own. My shoulders eased a little. The tension along my back softened. My breath began to deepen without me having to make it happen. I didn’t perform calm; I stayed with what was true, and my body responded.
After about a week of these ten-minute sessions, this is what stands out the most: I’m catching these moments as they’re happening, not hours later when I’m already drained. Before this, I might not have noticed the stress in that coffee line at all. I would have just moved on with my day, a little more wound up without knowing why.
One coffee line. Ten minutes of daily practice. And a moment where presence found me, right where I was.
Have you ever had someone tell you to breathe differently or move better? Maybe they meant well, but it can feel unsettling—like your body has somehow been doing it wrong.
Yet your breath, your posture, your patterns of movement have all developed for a reason. They are expressions of your lived experience—your body’s quiet, ongoing conversation with life itself. Each movement and each stillness are simply part of how your body responds and relates to the world. And none of it is wrong.
When we start yoga or any mindful movement practice, it’s easy to think the goal is to improve—to find better alignment, more control, deeper breath. But what if the practice wasn’t about becoming better at all?
What if it was about becoming aware?
From Correction to Connection
When we let go of trying to fix, we create space for something far more profound: relationship. Instead of managing the body, we begin to meet it—moment by moment, breath by breath.
Notice your breath, not as something to change, but as something to witness. Notice how movement naturally follows that rhythm—how your body subtly shifts and adjusts without needing instruction.
In that noticing, the body begins to soften—not because it’s told to, but because it’s being heard.
Movement becomes a dialogue, not a demand. Breath becomes communication, not performance.
When we shift from correction to connection, movement becomes medicine.
The Wisdom of Presence
The mind loves to live in the past and future—rehashing, planning, trying to solve. But the body only ever lives here, in the now. It breathes now. It moves now. It feels now.
When we return attention to the felt sense of this moment—the contact of your body with the surface beneath you, the texture of your breath, the aliveness within—you return to life as it’s actually happening.
This is presence. Not an effort to transcend the moment, but a willingness to inhabit it.
Presence doesn’t ask you to fix anything. It doesn’t require a perfect pose, a steady breath, or still thoughts. It simply invites you to be here—to notice, to listen, to be in relationship with yourself as you are.
Listening From the Inside
In every practice, the most meaningful guidance comes from within. No one outside your body can truly know the sensations you feel, the pace that feels right, or the movements that feel nourishing.
When you turn attention inward, you begin to sense the body from the inside out—its quiet language of warmth, movement, and subtle shifts. Over time, you start to recognize that the body holds its own rhythm, its own wisdom.
This awareness doesn’t need to be forced or analyzed. It simply asks to be met. As you notice more, the body begins to show you what it needs—and what it no longer does.
The practice isn’t about control or perfection. It’s about relationship. It’s about learning to listen deeply enough to trust what you hear.
An Invitation to Listen
So the next time someone suggests a “better” way to move or breathe, pause. Notice how your body feels in that moment—the breath, the pulse, the aliveness.
Honor the incredible intelligence that already lives in you. The body you inhabit has carried you through everything—it continues to adapt, to learn, to hold you.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong at all. Maybe listening is enough.
Wishing you wellness,
Keri Sawyer
PS: A Practice in Presence
I’ve started a 90 Days of Presence practice—ten minutes each day of moving with awareness. If you’re curious about how this unfolds, I’ll be sharing reflections along the way.
You’re warmly invited to join me. We’ll meet each morning at 5:30 AM PST on Facebook Live, through January 30, 2026.
Let’s explore what it means to simply be here, together.
Part 3 of our “Embodied Pathways” series — arriving at trust: the knowing that the body is a place we can return to, again and again.
There comes a point in the healing process when we no longer look for the next new tool or answer — when the search quiets, and what’s left is the simple rhythm of being in our bodies, as they are, right now. That is the beginning of trust.
The Shape of Trust
Trust is the embodied sense that I can be with myself and be safe here. It’s knowing that sensations, thoughts, and emotions can move through without overwhelming us. It’s not the absence of difficulty — it’s the presence of steadiness within it.
We relearn that our bodies are not the enemy, that the signals they send are meaningful rather than dangerous. When we sense tightening or a wave of sadness, we can meet it with curiosity instead of fear. That’s trust taking shape — not as perfection or control, but as companionship with our own experience.
How Trust Lives in the Nervous System
The nervous system learns trust through repeated evidence of safety. When we approach our bodies with respect and consistency, our physiology begins to expect care instead of threat. Muscles release more easily. Attention widens. Movements flow with less effort.
Trust doesn’t mean we never get tense again. It means we believe, deep down, that we can find our way back.
Trust as Integration
Embodied trust is integration — the place where hope and faith become lived experience. Hope whispered, Change is possible. Faith said, Stay with the process. Trust now says, This is home.
It’s the confidence that the body you inhabit is resilient enough to hold joy and sorrow, motion and rest, uncertainty and peace.
A Practice: Returning to Steadiness
Notice a movement that feels natural right now — a tilt of the head, a small shift of balance. Let it unfold at its own pace. You might sense the steadiness underneath — the part of you that remains constant even as everything moves.
This steady awareness is your anchor. Trust grows every time you return to it.
Coming Home to the Body
Hope begins as a spark — a whisper that something might shift. Faith sustains us through the uncertainty of becoming. Trust emerges when we realize we are already home in our bodies.
This path — from hope to faith to trust — is not linear. It’s a living rhythm that cycles through us again and again. The body remembers, releases, rebuilds, and restores.
In the end, embodied healing isn’t about transcending what hurts; it’s about learning to move with it. Through presence, curiosity, and movement, we reclaim not just our sense of self — but our sense of belonging to life itself.
Author Note This series is part of the Developmental Trauma Training Institute’s exploration of embodied, trauma-informed approaches to healing. To learn more about upcoming trainings and resources, visit developmentaltraumatraininginstitute.com.
Part 2 of our “Embodied Pathways” series — following Hope into the practice of staying when change is unfolding but not yet visible.
Hope often arrives as a spark — the first flicker that something inside us can shift. But what happens after that? When the initial lift fades and the real work begins — the day-to-day of staying with what’s uncomfortable, uncertain, or incomplete? That is where faith lives.
Hope ignites the possibility of change; faith is the tending that keeps the flame alive when the light flickers.
Faith in the Body
In the body, faith can look less like conviction and more like continuity. It’s the ability to keep sensing, to keep moving, to keep returning. When we continue to show up — even when things feel messy or unresolved — we teach our nervous systems something profound: that we can survive the unknown.
Faith grows quietly. It doesn’t demand proof or certainty. It simply asks, Can I remain in connection with myself, even now?
Sometimes that means noticing how your body braces against not knowing — the jaw tightening, the stomach clenching, the impulse to freeze or rush. Other times, it’s the softening that comes when you realize you don’t have to force anything at all.
Faith isn’t found in the absence of struggle. It emerges from learning to stay present within it.
The Middle Space
Healing is rarely linear. There’s often a middle space — the place between what was and what’s not yet. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes disorienting. In this space, hope is no longer new and bright, but trust hasn’t yet formed. In this in-between, faith becomes the anchor, not because it fixes anything, but because it keeps us in motion, in connection.
Embodied faith isn’t about suppressing discomfort. It’s about allowing your body to learn — slowly and safely — that presence is possible even in uncertainty. The repetition of conscious movement or grounded noticing teaches your body that it’s safe to stay.
This is where embodied faith matters most. Over time, small acts of continuity tell the body, I can be with what’s here. I don’t have to escape it. This steady rhythm — of returning, of staying, of feeling — becomes a bridge between chaos and steadiness, between fear and belonging.
The Nervous System Learns Through Repetition
Our systems learn safety through consistency. Each time you meet your body with curiosity you strengthen pathways of connection.
This is how healing takes root — not in sudden breakthroughs, but in the steady rhythm of returning. Each gentle noticing tells your nervous system: It’s safe to be here. Over time, the body begins to recognize attention as safety — to settle, to release, to remember that it can stay. Moments that once triggered collapse or withdrawal start to soften under the weight of presence.
Consistency becomes its own language of safety — a conversation between body and being. Through repetition, the system learns that balance isn’t something you force; it’s something you practice. And each time you choose curiosity over control, you are re-teaching yourself how to belong inside your own skin.
Staying With What’s Here
If you’d like, you might take a moment to notice where you are. You’re welcome to shift side to side or forward to back. Possibly Sensing the contact your body makes with the surface beneath you. You might feel some subtle sensations — perhaps some pressure where your body is contacting the surface, a shift of balance maybe though noticing a sensation in the sides of your body or your core, or perhaps you notice a hum of aliveness within you. You’re invited to stay with that sensation as long as you’d like. You don’t have to name it or interpret it. Perhaps simply noticing.
This is faith: remaining connected to what’s real, even when it’s small or uncertain.
Sometimes faith doesn’t feel meaningful at all. It doesn’t arrive as comfort or clarity, it arrives as neutral aliveness. A faint tingling under the skin. Noticing the air moving in and out of your nose or your mouth. The simple awareness of being here, breathing.Without story or explanation, it might feel almost ordinary —not uplifting, not certain, just present. This is faith.
When we stop reaching for meaning, faith becomes sensation — the pulse that continues, the breath that keeps returning, the steady persistence of the body saying, I’m still here.
It’s less “I believe” and more “I sense.” Less about knowing why, and more about feeling that we are.
Even when nothing makes sense, the body continues to breathe, to move, to live. It doesn’t wait for clarity — it just keeps returning. Even without understanding,
Faith lives in this rhythm of staying, in the simple act of being here.
A three-part exploration in somatic healing and presence
There are seasons when healing doesn’t come from thinking differently, but from feeling differently — from allowing the body to guide us back toward safety, steadiness, and connection.
This three-part series explores how movement, awareness, and presence can transform the way we experience ourselves from the inside out. Each piece builds upon the last, tracing a gentle arc through Hope, Faith, and Trust — not as abstract ideas, but as embodied experiences that live in muscle, memory, and motion.
Part 1:Embodied Hope – Finding Possibility in the Body
Part 2:Embodied Faith – Staying in the Middle Space
Part 3:Embodied Trust – Living From Inner Steadiness
Together, they form a movement-based journey through resilience — one that honors the body’s wisdom as a teacher, not a problem to solve.
Part 1: Embodied Hope – Finding Possibility in the Body
Part 1 of our “Embodied Pathways” series — exploring how Hope, Faith, and Trust unfold through conscious movement and presence.
When life feels like too much, hope can seem like a word for other people — too far away, too bright, too ideal. Our minds grasp for reasons, for meaning, for something to fix the ache. But the body knows another way. It knows movement, texture, rhythm. It knows that even when we can’t think our way toward hope, we can sometimes feel our way there.
The Body’s Way of Remembering
Hope doesn’t have to mean happiness or certainty. It can begin as the smallest spark — the possibility that how we feel, both emotionally and physically, might shift. That possibility lives in the body.
A hand that unclenches. A spine that lengthens after hours of collapse. A single moment when you realize you can move differently than before.
These small shifts tell your nervous system, something is changing. And that message alone begins to open a door. It’s not about fixing the chaos — it’s about remembering you have some power within it.
The Science of Hope in Motion
When we move, the body and brain communicate constantly. Movement activates neural pathways that restore integration — connecting feeling, thinking, and sensing parts of the brain. This re-connection is how agency returns. The body learns: I can do something. I can affect how I feel.
Trauma and prolonged stress often take that sense of agency away. Movement, especially gentle and conscious movement, rebuilds it. Hope, then, becomes less an emotion and more a physiological state — the embodied memory that change is possible.
When Hope Feels Out of Reach
For many, the word hope can carry pressure. When life has been defined by endurance or loss, hope might sound unrealistic or even unsafe. That’s understandable. Embodied hope asks for nothing more than a willingness to notice — to sense one small difference between how you felt a moment ago and how you feel now.
That difference — however subtle — is the doorway. It doesn’t erase pain, but it adds movement to it. It says, there is still a way forward, and it begins here.
A Practice: Finding Hope Through Subtle Movement
Take a quiet moment. Notice any part of your body that wants to move — even slightly. Maybe your fingers shift, or your shoulders tilt, or your gaze softens. Let that impulse unfold naturally, without judging or forcing it.
As you move, notice what changes. Does your sense of balance, warmth, or awareness shift — even a little? That small difference is the beginning of hope: the lived experience that things can change, however modestly.
Exploring the inner patterns that shape how we show up in healing work
A Question Worth Returning To
“Why am I doing this work?” For those of us who serve in trauma-informed fields, this is not a question to ask once and forget. It is one to return to again and again. Our answers shift as we grow, as our lives change, and as we deepen in our own self-awareness.
Regular reflection helps us notice what drives us, what sustains us, and where we may need to pause. Without it, we risk slipping into old patterns—sometimes ones that can unintentionally cause harm.
Underlying Patterns That Draw Us In
Many practitioners are called to this work from a place of deep compassion, empathy, or lived experience. But there are also unconscious beliefs that can draw us here:
I must prove my worth through helping. If our value feels tied to how much we give, we may overextend ourselves or blur boundaries.
I need to fix what was broken in me. Sometimes we seek to heal others as a way to touch our own unhealed wounds, without realizing it.
I am only lovable when I am useful. This belief can drive us to overidentify with the caretaker role, leaving little room for our own needs.
I can protect others from what I experienced. While protective instincts are natural, they can lead us to step outside our professional role or unintentionally take away another person’s sense of agency.
These patterns do not make us bad practitioners—they make us human. But without reflection, they can shape how we show up in ways that may not always serve those we care for.
How These Patterns Affect Our Work
When our presence is driven by unmet needs, it changes the dynamic in the room. We may:
Take on too much responsibility for a client’s healing.
Struggle with boundaries, saying yes when we need to say no.
Feel rejected or inadequate if progress is slow.
Seek affirmation from clients rather than holding space for them.
If you’ve ever left a session wondering whether you did enough, or caught yourself replaying a conversation or situation long after it ended, you’re not alone. These moments are part of the quiet weight many of us carry in this work. Naming them openly is the first step toward shifting how they influence us.
When We Wonder If We’ve Done Enough
The question “Did I do enough?” is one that echoes in many practitioners’ minds. At first glance, it seems like a simple reflection on how a session went. But often, it carries deeper layers—tied not to the client’s needs, but to our own self-worth.
Many of us carry shame-based narratives such as:
“I am only good if I have the perfect response.”
“I am only valuable when I am useful.”
“I am only worthy if my clients make progress.”
These beliefs often have deep roots in our personal histories. They may stem from early messages that told us our value depended on performance, care for others, or constant achievement. When left unexamined, they can drive us to overperform, push too hard, or silently measure our worth against outcomes we cannot control.
How It Shapes Our Presence
Unexamined, these patterns might lead us to:
Push harder than is helpful, hoping to “prove” our value by how much progress is made.
Take responsibility for healing that belongs to the client, creating pressure for both them and us.
Seek subtle forms of affirmation—needing a client to express gratitude, approval, or visible progress to reassure us that we are doing a “good job.”
Over time, this can distort the practitioner-client relationship. Clients may sense our unspoken need for reassurance, and this can place them in the position of caretaker—something that undermines the safety and empowerment we intend to create.
The Risk of Wanting Clients to Meet Our Needs
It’s worth asking honestly: Are we hoping our clients will validate us, heal something in us, or meet a need we haven’t acknowledged? If so, we may unknowingly put them in the position of caretakers—the very dynamic we are trying to avoid. Trauma-informed work is about safety, choice, and empowerment. When our own needs are unspoken drivers, it can undermine that foundation.
A Gentle Shift
The invitation is not to rid ourselves of these thoughts completely—they are deeply human—but to notice them with honesty. The question “Did I do enough?” is rarely about the client’s growth. More often, it is about our own self-worth and fear of inadequacy. By recognizing this, we give ourselves permission to soften the grip of shame and to step into a more grounded presence.
Reflection, peer support, and compassionate self-awareness can help us loosen these old patterns. Supervision, trusted colleagues, or journaling can all be mirrors for us to see where our needs are creeping into the work. Slowly, we can reframe the question. Instead of asking, “Did I do enough?” we might begin asking, “Did I show up with presence, care, and integrity?”
That shift does not erase doubt completely, but it transforms it into something gentler—an opportunity to reflect without judgment. It reminds us that the essence of our work is not perfection, but presence.
Reflective Practices to Prevent Harm
The good news is that reflection can transform these patterns. By naming them, we create space to shift. Some ways to do this include:
Regular self-reflection. Journaling, supervision, or personal therapy can help us check in with our motivations.
Awareness of boundaries. Noticing where our needs begin and where our clients’ needs begin keeps the roles clear.
Grounding in humility. Remembering that healing belongs to the client helps us release pressure to “fix.”
Seeking collective support. Connecting with peers who can listen and reflect with us reduces isolation and keeps us accountable.
Compassion for ourselves. Recognizing that our own wounds deserve care reminds us that it is not our clients’ job to fill them.
A Reflection to Keep Close
What we know deep down is that our worth is not measured by perfection, productivity, or outcomes. Our worth is inherent. Clients do not need us to be flawless—they need us to be human, steady, and genuine.
When we can release the burden of “enoughness,” we create more space for authentic connection. We free our clients from carrying our unspoken expectations and allow them to focus on their own healing. And we free ourselves from the exhausting cycle of self-doubt.
Showing up authentically—with humility, care, and integrity—is enough. And perhaps the real work is remembering that again and again.
Invitations for Reflection
My “Why” Today
Why am I doing this work right now, in this season of my life?
How has my “why” shifted since I first began?
Unspoken Motivations
Do I ever feel like I need to prove my worth through helping?
Am I seeking healing for my own wounds through my clients’ progress?
Where do I notice thoughts like “I am only good if…” or “I am only valuable when…” showing up in my work?
Impact on How I Show Up
How might my own needs—spoken or unspoken—be shaping the way I interact with clients?
Do I ever feel disappointed, frustrated, or rejected if clients don’t respond as I hope?
Am I holding space for their needs, or am I hoping they will meet mine?
Boundaries & Sustainability
Where do I struggle to set or honor boundaries?
What are the signs that I’m giving from depletion rather than steadiness?
What practices help me return to clarity and balance?
Support & Compassion
Who are the people I can lean on for reflection and accountability?
What small, consistent acts of care remind me that I am worthy outside of my role?
How can I extend to myself the same compassion I encourage in others?
Finding our way back to balance through the body’s wisdom.
It began quietly — the kind of tiredness that doesn’t have a clear source. I was still doing the work I love — holding space, attuning to others, guiding attention to what is alive in the moment — but something inside me felt heavy, as if my body had begun to move through thicker air.
It wasn’t exhaustion exactly. It was more like a soft dulling at the edges of presence. I would finish a day feeling both full and strangely empty, as though my energy had gone somewhere I couldn’t quite retrieve it from.
That’s how compassion fatigue often arrives. Not as burnout or collapse, but as a slow drift away from the felt sense of connection that once felt vibrant in the body.
When the Body Begins to Speak
Before the mind can label what’s happening, the body begins to speak. It speaks through sensation, through the rhythm of breath and the weight of our own being.
For me, it showed up as a tightening across my chest, a kind of invisible holding that wouldn’t release. My breath stayed shallow even when everything around me was calm. I began to notice small flashes of irritation where I used to feel empathy, or moments of numbness — like my system had dimmed the lights to protect what little energy remained.
These weren’t signs of failure. They were signs of intelligence. The body was communicating that I had reached the edge of what I could hold.
Compassion fatigue is the body’s way of asking for recognition — not judgment, not analysis — just presence.
Listening to the Quiet Within
What keeps me rooted in this work is remembering that connection with my own body is a living relationship — not a technique or a task.
When I turn inward without trying to fix or manage what I find, my body always responds. Sometimes with stillness, sometimes with trembling, sometimes with relief.
And in those quiet moments, the body begins to whisper — not in words, but in feeling. A gentle reminder that I’m part of the space I hold, not outside of it.
This kind of attunement is what keeps compassion from hardening into exhaustion. It lets us witness the suffering of others — and our own — without becoming lost inside it.
The Softening That Comes With Noticing
Simply being with what was happening offered space around it. The ache in my chest became less like a wall and more like a doorway.
This is what the body teaches when we listen: fatigue and care are not opposites. They move along the same current. When we stay connected, we learn to move with that current instead of being pulled beneath it.
Returning to Ourselves Through the Body
Turning toward the body is not another thing to do; it’s a way of being.
Here are a few ways I return to being:
Sense the Shifts. Notice how your body feels before and after supporting others. The change often tells you what words cannot.
Name What You Feel. Acknowledge sensations — “My shoulders feel heavy.” “There’s warmth in my hands.” “My breath feels shallow.” Naming makes the invisible tangible.
Feel What’s Holding You. Let attention rest on the places where your body meets support — the floor beneath your feet, the chair, the ground itself.
Small Movements. Let your body unwind naturally. A stretch, a roll of the shoulders. Movement helps energy complete its cycle.
These gestures aren’t strategies to perform — they are moments of meeting yourself where you are.
The Strength Found in Sensitivity
Many of us in helping roles were taught that strength means endurance — to stay open, stay steady, keep giving. But the body knows a different kind of strength.
True strength is responsiveness — the willingness to sense what’s happening and meet it with care.
Compassion fatigue doesn’t mean we’ve given too much love; it means we’ve lost touch with the part of us that also needs receiving.
Reconnection brings that balance back. It reminds us that care is not one-directional — it must flow both outward and inward to remain whole.
Coming Home to Connection
The body doesn’t betray us — it calls us home. Every tension, every ache, every wave of weariness is a message in motion, an invitation to return to ourselves.
When we listen through the body, we rediscover the quiet rhythm beneath effort — the place where compassion, clarity, and vitality live together.
By reconnecting with our own felt experience, we deepen our capacity to hold space for others. The more we cultivate presence within, the more authentic, grounded, and sustaining our care becomes.
Returning to the body isn’t the end of our work — it’s the beginning of being truly alive in it.
Stepping into Wellness 