Joan of Arc Armor

Journal No. 12

Today, I internalized the stories of trauma I heard about at UpRising Yoga teacher training without emotional or psychological armor. Their raw and honest stories of incarceration and human trafficking flooded the forefront of my mind. I was speaking to my mom about the event and suddenly began crying. I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the waterworks and get to work without looking like a total wreck. She lovingly guided me towards personal detachment, despite my habit of constantly reflecting on what I had heard as I went about my shift at the restaurant.

Yesterday, I listened to the story of a 19-year old girl who said she was one of the youth instructed to do yoga while in jail. “Doing yoga,” she said, “was one of the only things I had done right in my life.” Both parents in jail. I don’t know the rest of her story. But being close to her age, I reflected on my own parents and my own childhood. Her story literally hit home.

I saw the redevelopment of an impoverished community in Wilmington, California. The people had torn out a vacant parking lot where trash was thrown into, and they built a garden of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Volunteers tend to the garden beds and keep the soil fresh. Every Saturday, a farmer’s market is held here. Whatever produce is leftover is donated back to the community. The value of this project kept Wilmington nourished and unified. I saw my own neighborhood in conjunction with Wilmington, remembering my neighbors who provide our family with fresh oranges from their backyard trees. Another story that reminded me of home, a place that shaped who I am.

Jill Ippolito, Founder of UpRising Yoga, and I standing in front of the community garden.

A beautiful bed of lettuce planted by the community members.

A yoga instructor opened the teacher training with a 15-minute meditation, and through this meditation, I visualized the image of a brown box with a travel tag. This is the “gift” she told us to see. It’s the gift that we possess as well as give back to people. As a journalist, I envision giving the gift of story-telling and news.

Back to this morning and my unanticipated meltdown, my mother helped remind me to build a shield around my heart. She said to me that as a journalist, I need to create some distance between myself and the stories I cover, especially since I’m emotionally invested in issues of gender. My mother made a point that journalists who take on serious projects like these can potentially end up with PTSD from their job. I’m seeking to build an emotional and subconscious armor, some protection against my repressed memories, my most secret thoughts, my dreams.

I don’t believe this guard can be manufactured in a day, in a month or in a year. Maybe I call it my Joan of Arc armor. Whenever I pick up a pen or sit at my laptop with emotional and mental investment, I put on this armor. And if I need to strip off the armor in order to go there — go to that place of truly connecting with another person through journalism, fighting my own demons — I choose to have that option.

It’s risky opening up myself completely and I might not be as functional for awhile afterwards. But I care. I’m human. I am a person who also has a story. Being a journalist doesn’t make me a hero or someone with more authority or power. It doesn’t make me better than anybody else. I am who I choose to be. I am what I give back. Above all, I choose to fight being a victim of my own mind.

Interviewing a Survivor

Journal No. 10

Yesterday was the first time I had ever interviewed a victim of human trafficking and prostitution. The recorded conversation entailed the memory of her abusive childhood, trauma and recovery. It was incredible hearing about her leadership and advocacy work. Not so easy hearing about her past, especially when her youngest daughter became a victim as well. But since I’m covering this issue in the magazine and I’m also currently in between classes and unable to construct a beautifully written post, I’ll be sure to catch you all up on the details from our talk very soon.

Until then, I hope you’ve had a chance to read the introduction to my first book, Openbook: The First Generation!

“Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.”

-Nina Simone

Yoga Therapy and Article Development

Journal No. 6

Connecting with people who are also researching human trafficking in the Inland Empire takes a lot of persistence. I can’t tell you how many e-mails or voicemails I have left in the past three weeks to all kinds of folks. I am waiting for the community service director of House of Ruth and the shelter manager of Option House to call me back about my inquiry of their previous and current services to women. I found that House of Ruth once offered yoga to clients, but now they don’t. My plan is to actually visit these safe houses if I don’t hear anything back by next week. I’m also connecting with other experts who have lead and published research on human trafficking both in the U.S as well as overseas in India.

Felicia and I will be meeting at the Santa Monica office on Monday to discuss my article. (I love these little road trips to L.A!) Our goal has been to have the article completely polished and published in the March issue. I’m crossing my fingers that this is still possible. However, if I need another month to carry-on my research, I’d rather take more time to produce quality work.

The piece itself is coming along nicely. My thoughts and ideas are buzzing around in my brain and it’s actually quite difficult to harness a focused, coherent article. But I think I have the format down. I know that I first want to introduce the general research and statistics on human trafficking in the Inland Empire to give a little context. Not all readers of the LA YOGA Magazine understand how prominent this issue is in our area. My research would lead into the negative, long-term psychological effects of a trafficked woman, such as PTSD, anxiety, and so forth. Then, I think I will prove the ways in which yoga can be therapeutic. Not only that, my goal is to show how yoga therapy can be a well-developed program implemented into a safe house. That is, any safe house for victims of human trafficking across the U.S.

The program wouldn’t just be about teaching women how to stretch their bodies and associate poses with Sanskrit. While practicing the physical yoga is certainly a crucial aspect of the program, there are many other beneficial facets of yoga to explore and teach. Ayurveda, for instance, is an ancient Indian tradition that “offers a body of wisdom designed to help people stay vital while realizing their full human potential. Providing guidelines on ideal daily and seasonal routines, diet, behavior and the proper use of our senses, Ayurveda reminds us that health is the balanced and dynamic integration between our environment, body, mind, and spirit” (www.chopra.com). Reteaching women how to care for their bodies through nutrition and awareness of their biological energy, aka “Dosha” (Earth / Kapha, Air / Vata, Fire / Pitta) orients a woman within her own skin.

Moving forward to this idea of legitimately offering yoga therapy brings forth the question of what yoga therapists would have to deal with on a daily basis and the challenges they face. She, alone, faces one of the biggest challenges: guiding the victim through the long haul of the healing process. This also brings in the issue of qualification and hiring the “right” kind of therapist and teacher who’s willing to give these women all that they possibly can. Finding and hiring the best person for the job maybe one of the biggest challenges for safe house coordinators, administrators and management.

From here, I would need to address specific aspects the program entails. I’m using my personal experience from yoga teacher training with Western Yoga College to come up with these activities. (Shout out to Scott Miller, my wonderful mentor!) Through writing in a daily journal, the victim can reflect on her yoga practice, document her development, and see what she’s struggling with. Creative yogic projects such as drawing, painting or designing a Yantra can be offered for self-expression and artistic stimulation, as well. When it comes to developing the program, these are the types of projects that could make psychological, emotional and social rehabilitation possible.

Finally, I want to conclude my article with ways in which a victim of human trafficking can become a leader in her own community, after her yogic endeavor. Yoga Therapy ultimately becomes a journey of self-discovery. Developing a sense of identity and purpose translates into strong leadership she would have and carry with her into the community. She could begin to build connections with people and take on more projects that help others. Yoga Therapy ultimately allows a client to gain back her power and give voice to those who have been silenced.

Thanks for reading!

Photo Credit:

http://localadlist.com/la-yoga-magazine/la-yoga-magazine

How Yoga Works to Alleviate Your BPD Symptoms

Yoga Therapy and Psychology

Journal No. 4

In December 2012, I was working as a barista at Starbucks in downtown Riverside, California, when we were robbed at gunpoint. Luckily, no one was severely hurt, minus the neck soreness I had after the gunman hit the back of my head with his weapon. The criminal was caught about a month later and sent to jail. Starbucks provided me with their idea of psychiatric treatment by bringing in a counseling expert and scheduling me to talk to her in the very store the robbery took place. What kind of treatment is THAT?! The manager clearly wanted me to get back to work as soon as possible.

Corporate provided me with private counseling outside of the business, but I felt speaking to another person who knew nothing about my personal history or life experiences beyond my files was contradictory to therapeutic; I felt more stressed by visiting the psychiatrist and psychologist. Dealing with rude administrative assistants who cared more about getting through their shift than helping the people they served also added to the anxiety. I don’t want to vent too much, but after feeling exhausted from the lack of true therapy, I wanted to move on from the incident and try to forget about it in order to function. Dance became my therapy. Room to Dance, owned by April MacLean and Julie Simon, became a place of sanctuary for me. A place to express my emotion in a healthy way to finish school, find another job and grow as an independent young woman.

But the psychological trauma impacted me more than I realized. Unexpected anxiety didn’t “bubble up” until 2014 when I was sitting in an English classroom discussing the ways trauma affects the subconscious mind in Toni Morrison’s Sula. (One of my favorite authors, by the way). Nobody else knew my story. Nobody else was aware that my palms started to sweat as the professor wrote on the board. Students continued delivering their thoughts on trauma while I fought the urge to cry. I looked at the clock, seeing that we still had twenty minutes left and it was all I could do to keep my butt planted. You can do this. Just get through this and you’ll be fine, I thought. I somehow managed to maintain composure until I got into my car, and allowed myself a few minutes to drain the tears I held back, before driving home.

My point for telling you this story is to show the unexpected responses of psychological trauma. No matter the cause or severity, a victim of assault may not even know the damage done to him or her until years later.

When researching victims of sexual abuse, I want to know how practicing yoga regularly affects the mind. One thing that most all victims have are cases of PTSD. A psychology PhD and dear yogi friend of mine, Dr. Arezou Ghane, provided me an interesting study: “Javnbakht and colleagues (2009) examined a group of Iranian women living with clinical anxiety and depression and found that, compared to a control group, women who participated in a yoga intervention reported fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.” I can say from experience after practicing yoga consistently since the robbery and having mild symptoms of PTSD, my levels of anxiety have lowered. Learning to steady and control my breathing helped to ease the post-traumatic stress, especially when I found myself returning to other Starbucks’ as a customer and realized how nervous I felt. I learned helpful breathing techniques from Dr. Amy Wheeler, and I think in the construction of a yoga therapy program, breath work is critical.

But how can yoga be therapeutic to victims with PTSD? Dr. Ghane found that “yoga practice can be a sort of listening device, teaching people how to tune into their physical and emotional reactions. Often, survivors of trauma find themselves reacting to present contexts from the perspective of past traumatic events (see Van Der Kolk, 2006). Yoga and other mindfulness-based interventions help to cultivate an ability to attend to the present moment.” What makes yoga a form of therapy is not only being able to calm your breathing rhythm, but calm your mind. For female victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence, being able to intentionally detach from the past for even a moment is healing. It’s a mini mental vacation. Practicing yoga more over time could extend that vacation into higher psychological function and development.

One of the coolest things I’ve learned from Dr. Ghane is that more research must be done to truly understand how female victims of sexual abuse go through a healing process with yoga therapy. Knowing how new this area of study is right now is exciting:

Perhaps the most relevant study on this subject is an unpublished study by Jennifer West (2011). West conducted a 10-week hatha yoga intervention, examining the benefits of this practice for women living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.  Among a list of benefits, participants who completed this intervention reported an increased sense of self-worth and acceptance, empowerment, and connection to others.

I will be discussing my current research with the editor of LA YOGA and outline my article for the March edition. I plan on discussing this issue with more scholars, dive into other reading, and connect with safe houses for female victims of human trafficking to see if they would consider hiring yoga therapists if they don’t already.

As always, thanks for reading!

I Had to Learn How to Breathe.

Journal No. 3

Since it’s the first week back to school, my schedule has been completely rearranged.  I was taking 7 units, but realized that I need to register full-time in order to receive full financial aid. Now I’m at 15 units meaning my social life and time to dance has dropped severely. Nevertheless, I cannot express how ecstatic I am to be apart of the editors of The Pacific Review, The Student Literary Journal. That was a class I happened to register in for more credit; lo and behold, it’s exactly the type of work I want to do to learn more about journalism and magazine publishing!

On top of the massive schedule change, I am a teaching assistant for Professor Ramirez’s English 111 World Literature course which holds 135 students. My job, yesterday, was to account for every student present in class and create a seating chart. Now that I’m done with the seating chart, I’m finally able to move forward and tell you about the research I’m catching up on for my LA YOGA Magazine internship.

I am still in the process of narrowing my research focus between domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual abuse. All three are different subjects, but they are similar in a way that women are treated as ‘less than’ or ‘unequal’ by a dominating, controlling male gender. And it seems like sexual abuse is the over-arching idea. So far, I have found useful articles covering all basis’:

1. “Hope to Heal: Yoga Helps Abused Women Reclaim Warrior Within” by Eva Smith, PhD

2. “Woman Who Escaped Her Sex Trafficking Captors Becomes Advocate for Victims,” by Robbie Couch

3. “Office of Ombuds Services & Gender Equity” at Cal State University, San Bernardino

After reading these articles, I want to know how yoga helps victims of sexual assault and trafficking. How is it therapeutic? I found an answer in the first article:

A Texas native, Tonini, then 26, discovered yoga as a means of recovery from a violent relationship. “I was in a terrible relationship where eventually he went to jail,” she says. “Through the process of all the court appearances, I discovered the practice of yoga and its healing power to make me whole again. I was so numb, I had completely checked out. I had to learn how to breathe. I had no concept how I was holding in every aspect of my life including breathing. Yoga was my lifeline.”

Breathing is a huge part of yoga. It’s not all about the poses and moving perfectly from Warrior I to Warrior II. What matters is your breath. It makes sense that this is empowering within itself for female trafficking victims, because the abuse caused these women to lose control over their bodies and breathing. Not many other services provide this unique way of healing (that I know of).

I also want to play devil’s advocate. Could yoga bring back that trauma and cause unwanted memories to resurface? In my yoga training, I’ve learned that hip-opening poses like Pigeon, for instance, bring about unexpected emotions. Or what if the victim goes through the whole class thinking, How the hell is this supposed to help me? This is pointless. Then what? These are questions I hope to answer and find out more through further research.

I will be getting in contact with an author through Dr. Wheeler as well as the director of the Cal State San Bernardino Title IX office unit, Cristina Martin. A dear yogi friend of mine who’s a PhD in psychology is also helping me with questions I have about the neurological functions that occur during a yoga practice.

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned.

Journal No. 2: Yoga Therapy and the Endocrine System

Sunday, January 11th, 2014

I was invited by Dr. Amy Wheeler, a previous professor and current mentor of mine, to attend a class on Yoga Therapy and the Endocrine System at Loyola Marymount University in Marina Del Rey. I left my house in Riverside early this morning to make sure I had enough time to find my way and get situated. I ended up arriving early (I’m seeing a trend, here…). Sitting on a bench in front of the room, I decided to work on my latest short story while I waited for other students to enter the classroom. When others started walking in, I entered and chose a seat close to the front of the room. The class started on time.

The room was completely full of yogis, yoga teachers, medical students, nurses, and scholars ranging from ages 20 to 60. I was impressed to even see a few students bring their yoga mats to class. Sitting there in my jeans and jacket, I forgot to ask Dr. Wheeler if we were actually going to do the Asanas (yoga postures). Good thing it was mostly a lecture class! The professor introduced me to the class, putting her palms together in front of her heart in a prayer gesture and bowing forward to me as a way of giving thanks for my presence. Thinking back on it now, I should have returned the gesture, but I simply smiled, nodded my head and said “Thank you.”

Looking at my notes from the class, I should have brought extra paper. I used one sheet to write down notes and thoughts to myself, filling up nearly every blank space. After hearing her lecture and other students’ comments, I realized how incredible it was to simply sit there and absorb information. Dr. Wheeler covered many Sanskrit terms that I really need to brush up on. She connected the Endocrine system to the Chakras, energy centers of the body, and how Western and Eastern traditions ultimately mean the same thing. If the Endocrine system and Chakras are in alignment and functioning in unison, the person can heal just about any disease in their body, mind and spirit. There is much more that this class covered, and I only stayed for half of it!

Looking forward to researching more this week! I just don’t quite know where to go from here, but at least I have a few questions about psychology in terms of yoga therapy.

“All I have learned, I have learned from books.” -Abraham Lincoln.

Identity Through Research: Journal No. 1

Friday, January 9th, 2015

I arrived early Friday morning in downtown Santa Monica to meet with the editor of LA YOGA Magazine, Felicia. Seeing that I had time to spare, I grabbed an espresso and meandered the boulevard directly in front of the Pacific Ocean. I gazed out at Santa Monica Pier which was peaking through the thin morning fog. I walked down Promenade, listening to street musicians, smelling open-air cafes, and peering into modern clothing and gadget shops.

Felicia and her small, adorable dog, Lulu, met up with me shortly after. We drove to Encino and had lunch at a deli with three other people who were extremely intellectual, educated and funny. Felicia sat next to one lady she knew very well who is both a celebrated filmmaker and author. Across from them, I sat beside a woman and a man who appeared to be filmmakers as well as college professors. We enjoyed a delicious lunch and I listened to them discuss independent films that entail yogic-like, meditative themes and journeys.

Although none of this has to do with human trafficking and victims of sexual abuse, the focus of my internship, I learned more about the reputation and controversies lingering behind films that bring forth elements of spirituality and finding one’s Truth. “Kung Fu Panda,” one of my favorite animated films, was brought up and said to be the author’s favorite movie in modern cinema that delivers a character who undergoes a spiritual mission.

Listening to the filmmaker’s articulate, entertaining dialogue was such a rewarding and unanticipated endeavor. It’s exciting to be completely open-minded to adventures that lie ahead in this internship that could help me dig deeper into my research as well as connect with professionals of their trade.

After lunch, I got into my little 2008 Toyota Yaris and drove back to Riverside, facing hellish L.A traffic and nearly getting lost along the way. (Of course. It’s me).

Internship meeting with Editor-in-Chief of LA YOGA, Felicia Tomasko.