It’s been a while since we’ve blogged! But since we have recently started creating more content to reach and help people with our best trauma-informed + evidence-based knowledge on our social channels, we thought it would be nice to share some of them with you via e-mail as well.
Please feel free to share these emails, reply with any reflections, and of course let us know if you’d rather not receive them and we can take you off this list. Replies go to Mauricio, but if they’re directed towards Sarah I will make sure she sees them too.
In health,
Mauricio & Sarah
“Trauma is the body’s protective response to an event- or a series of events- that it perceives as potentially dangerous…Trauma is also a wordless story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat.”
-Resmaa Menakem
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Trauma is and has always been everywhere. It’s simply what happened. A hurricane, an earthquake, a pandemic. Unpredictable and largely unavoidable events for those affected, create vast scales of trauma. Some forms of trauma are closer to home, intergenerationally even, and unfortunately happen all too often. The Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACE studies also show that early childhood trauma in particular is predictive of poor academic performance, health outcomes, and certain diseases.
Trauma is a lasting emotional response to an event that is difficult to cope with or out of one’s control. It can be a single incident or an ongoing event that happens over a long period of time.
Trauma responses can come up in a gym setting in many ways. A few examples are:
-being around a lot of unfamiliar people with no clear exit
-loud banging sounds or yelling
-feeling vulnerable while laying down on a bench for a bench press
-being pushed at the end of a workout without consent
The key thing is that the emotional response lives in the body, and persists or reoccurs after the original event has happened, sometimes long after. You might call it unfinished business. It gets in the way of things you’re trying to do in life unexpectedly.
Resilience is the other side of trauma: your ability to adapt and recover from difficult experiences, and move forward. How do we get there? A trauma-informed approach to coaching gives us hope.
Trauma-informed care is a framework that acknowledges the role trauma can play in a person’s life and aims to promote healing and recovery. It’s based on the idea that each person uniquely and to varying degrees has a history of trauma, and that traditional ways of trying to help can instead re-traumatize people. There is a better way that doesn’t just pretend it doesn’t exist.
Some ways we practice trauma-informed are:
- creating a safe and welcoming environment. The points of egress in a gym space are clear and spacious, lots of plants and natural light. How we express our values verbally… and non-verbally. *points at shirt*
- Building trust by being sensitive and curious about a person’s experience, really assuming nothing and just asking questions to learn more about them
- Consent or choice throughout every step of the journey. Are you ok adding 5 lbs to this exercise. No? That’s fine, I love you working right here, thanks for being honest with me
- Collaboration: instead of, here’s the workout, no excuses, get after it! it’s: let’s work together on your plan based on how you’re feeling today
Trauma-informed basically means you’re the coach, and I’m the facilitator. I hold space for your feelings, invite you in to share your real life story, and ask questions to help you write the next chapter.
Mauricio
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