YOGA for POST TRAUMATIC STRESS

We were delighted to welcome Raquel Chinchetru on her first visit to Newry in March and to get some insight into her works at the Maudsley Hospital in London, where she works as part of a team within the National Health Service.

As a trained yoga practioner Raquel has specialised in working with people  who have been severly traumatised in places such as Rwanda and Somalia as well as sodiers returning from war zones.

Raquel's work has particular relevance for helping people in Northern ireland to deal with trauma and we are hopeful that she will return in the near future to expand on the works that hse has already commenced here. 

The Role of Yoga in the Management of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

People with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can experience difficulties in relaxing their bodies. Their bodies continue to live in an internal environment of the trauma that they have experienced. We are all biologically and neurologically programmed to deal with emergencies, but time stops in people who suffer from PTSD. That makes it hard to take pleasure in the present because the body keeps replaying the past. 

If you practice Yoga you can develop a body that is strong and feels comfortable, this can contribute substantially to help you to come into the here and now rather than staying stuck in the past. Yoga can be a way to enable people to safely feel their physical sensations by increasing the capacity for interoception or “sitting with yourself”, noticing what’s happening inside― the basic principle of meditation. 

Western psychotherapy has paid little attention to the experience and interpretation of disturbed physical sensations and action patterns. 

Yoga is one of the traditions that can clearly help to reintegrate the body and mind as well as the spirit. 

For someone to heal from PTSD, they must learn how to control bodily reflexes. PTSD causes memory to be stored at a sensory level and Yoga offers a way to reprogram automatic physical responses. 

Yoga teaches us that there are things we can do to change our brainstem arousal system, our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and to quiet the brain. 

RAQUEL CHINCHETRU

Raquel is a qualified yoga teacher and a yoga therapist. 

She completed a two-year Yoga Therapy Diploma course with the Yoga Biomedical Trust, in the UK. Raquel also completed  additional therapeutic yoga training with Mukanda Stiles in Yoga and Ayureda, Well-Woman Yoga with Franciose Freedman, Pregnancy and Postnatal and Baby yoga with Uma Dinsmore - Tuli, Yoga for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the world renowned Boston Trauma Center and mind-body therapy training with Yoga for the Mind.

Raquel holds a degree in Psychology, a Master‘s degree in Human Resources and a MSc in Health Psychology at the University of Westminster. 

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