AT OASIS CHURCH, Bath, we are attempting to adopt an “asset-based” approach: in determining where to place our resources, time, and energy, we would like to empower and equip local people to construct on their strengths and skills to enhance things of their lives and in the realm. Our congregation features a teacher of trauma-informed yoga, Anna Caldwell (www.activestillness.org), who desires to make trauma-informed yoga more accessible to those that might profit from it.
She is keen to overturn any preconceived idea of what yoga is, and whom it’s for, knowing that the abilities learned in yoga may be really helpful for traumatised people: “Trauma often causes individuals to disassociate from their internal experience. This could possibly be a option to find safety as someone doesn’t feel protected of their body, or it could possibly be a option to move away from the pain of the current. Trauma can distort our relationship to our bodies. It also leaves us stuck within the protection mode of ‘fight or flight’. Trauma Informed Yoga helps people rebuild a way of safety and connection inside themselves by working gently with the nervous system. It’s less about perfect poses and more about alternative, empowerment, and regulating the ‘fight or flight’ response.”
AT THE time of the event of the project, we had existing partnerships with two charities focused on mental health: Focus Counselling, which offers reasonably priced counselling to people in Bath; and Bath Mind, which delivers a variety of services in our community, all geared toward improving people’s mental health.
We worked with Focus to discover the parameters of the project: whom it will goal, when it will run, and who would deliver it. We decided to run a course of ten hour-long classes on Friday mornings, and to recruit ten participants who could be referred by Focus or Bath Mind. For each session, Focus provided a practitioner who could sit with anyone in distress, in addition to signpost the option to other types of support.
A yr later, we received further funding to run the identical course. This time, Bath Mind provided a staff member. Working in partnership is significant to us anyway, but we knew that with this project we wanted to attract on the expertise of others to supply a really protected space, and to permit Anna to give attention to teaching.
At the top of every course, we collected feedback from the participants. We have been utterly astonished by the impact that it has had. One participant who had had some medical trauma previously was very nervous about having a blood test at their GP surgery. Through the techniques learned at Trauma Informed Yoga, they were in a position to stay calm, regulate their nervous system, and have the blood test. Others describe the course as “life-changing”, “very empowering”, and “a sacred hour I looked forward to every week”.
WHILE the course has been an exquisite success, I, as a church leader, think that it is crucial that we don’t just deliver trauma-informed programmes, but are a trauma-informed church. This has involved not big interventions or huge changes, but small additions and amendments here and there, which frequently go a protracted option to help someone who has experienced trauma to feel protected and in a position to participate.
Some small examples of this is able to be providing content warnings prematurely if we’re discussing a difficult topic which may be triggering for people, and never at all times using the identical names, metaphors, or pronouns for God, recognising that some could have difficulty with considering of God as “Father”, and even in male language. We also provide a written service plan in the back of the church for anyone who would value knowing exactly what is going on within the service, giving people a way of control and the flexibility to plan for anything that we’re doing that they may find hard, resembling a discussion with people around them.
Finally, we attempt to model and discuss our belief that trauma just isn’t the top: due to our belief in a resurrected Jesus, we imagine that post-traumatic growth is feasible. While we may not give you the option to be who we were before our trauma, we will remake or reimagine ourselves into something or someone latest, and even heal from our trauma, as we discover people and places of safety where we may be fully ourselves.
Jo Dolby is Hub Leader at Oasis Church, Bath (www.oasisbath.org).
WORD OF THE MONTH
Andrew Davison
Transcendence/Immanence: the standard, particularly in relation to God, of existence beyond the created order, and presence inside it; from the Latin transcendere (surpassing or rising above) and immanere (to dwell inside).
