Yoga for Adoptive Families: Working with Early Trauma and Loss

Yoga is amazing! A growing body of research over the past decade has demonstrated how this practice--which includes asanas (physical poses or "forms"), breathing, and mindfulness--can help individuals heal from trauma, including complex trauma and PTSD. Even though the bulk of trauma-sensitive yoga research and teaching approaches focuses on adults, some approaches address teens and more recently, younger children. To be sure, the field of trauma-sensitive yoga, especially at it pertains to children, is relatively new. More research on it needs to be conducted, and more yoga teachers, educators, and health prossionals need to explore its relevance to a range of trauma-affected populations, including children. I view my work to develop a yoga and mindfulness curriculum for adoptive families as part of this growing trauma-sensitive yoga field. Below, I discuss some basic strategies for integrating trauma-informed principles into your adoptive family yoga practice and the reasons for doing so. Many adopted children, especially those who were adopted internationally and/or who spent time in the U.S. foster care system, come to their new families with a history of early trauma and loss. When practiced in a trauma-sensitive manner, your family yoga sessions may be a source of physical and emotional healing for your child.

Use your family yoga practice to encourage connection with your child: In my previous two-part post (here

and here), I outline five types of interactive poses and activities--yoga play, helping poses, teamwork poses (see photo), mirroring/matching poses, and "taking turns" activities--that can help to foster connection between you and your child. Given that disrupted and dysfunctional attachment development often go hand-in-hand with early trauma, developing a consistent family yoga routine can serve as one of many attachment-building tools in your adoption parenting "toolbox." Moreover, encouraging healthy familial connections through yoga, particularly given the practice's ability to promote calm and relaxation, may help to build your child's sense of safety and trust (and vice versa). A "felt" sense of safety and trust are also vital components of healing from trauma.

Keep your family yoga practice fun and playful: One of the best ways to promote the sense of connection, safety, and trust that your child needs to work through her early trauma and loss is play. Indeed, play is an important component to many therapeutic interventions (e.g., Theraplay) and parenting approaches (e.g., Trust-Based Relational Intervention) geared toward adoptive children and their families. In addition to the five types of interactive posts that I discuss above, here are some other strategies for keeping your family yoga sessions playful and fun:

• Create stories with your child to structure your yoga practice. For example, you could co-create a trip to the zoo, with each of you taking turns stating what animals you saw next and then doing the yoga pose that best relates to that animal. For more yoga storytelling inspiration, see the Storytime Yoga website (Sydney Solis).

• Read a yoga storybook together and do the poses described on its pages. If you are unsure about which books to buy, check out the website, Kids Yoga Stories, for ideas. Also, one of my kids' favorite yoga storybook at the moment is Goodnight Yoga: A Pose-by-Pose Betime Story by Mariam Gates. In addition to yoga storybooks, you can also read any type of kids book and make up your own poses to go along with the story. My kids and I, for example, have integrated yoga poses into Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown.

• Play a yoga board game (e.g. The Yoga Garden Game) or incorporate yoga poses and activities into existing games. As I have described in previous post, my kids and I love to play Yoga Jenga.

• Incorporate singing and music into your yoga practice. Not only are singing and listening to music fun activities to do together, but research has demonstrated their calming effects on the brain. There are many children's yoga music CDs (e.g., Kira Willey's Dance for the Sun: Yoga Songs for Kids) that provide you with yoga storylines, lead you through yoga sequeneces and flows, and set the mood for your family practice. Or you can get extra creative and do yoga to whatever music appeals that you and your child!

• Incorporate props into your practice. There are so many creative ways to use them! For example, yoga blocks could be mountain tops on which you do tree pose; scarves are great to wave around during creative movement to music; multi-colored feathers and Hoberman spheres can assist with breathing activities; and hula hoops can serve as rings in which to practice different poses.

• Approach mindfulness and meditation practices in child-friendly ways. For example, you and your child could sit still like a frog while practicing a short mindfulness activity. Or you can guide your her through a embodied meditation in which she fills her body up with a calming color, grows flowers in her hearts, rests under a peaceful tree, or watches the bright stars in the sky. Carolyn Clarke's Imaginations: Fun Relaxation Stories and Meditations for Kids and Imaginations 2: Relaxation Stories and Guided Meditations for Kids include numerous guided meditations that help children not only to cultivate positive feelings such as calm, love, and peace within their bodies but also to "transport" themselves and their bodies to places that invoke these other positive feelings. From the standpoint of trauma-sensitive yoga, both types of guided meditations have the potential to create the sense of "felt safety" that is essential to healing.

Integrate parent-led and child-led approaches into your family yoga practice: When practicing yoga with your child, it is important to take a parent-led approach. This approach allows you to develop a structured, consistent, and safe practice routine for you and your child. It provides your child with an opportunity to learn particular yoga poses, breathing exercises, and mindfulness activities that you feel will benefit him. Taking this approach also shows that you care about connecting with them and want to take a role in their healing process. At the same time, you may also want to allow your child to lead aspects of your family yoga practice. Examples of child-led approaches include giving him a chance to ring the mindfulness bell, initiate a breathing exercise, choose some of the poses, help to create that day's yoga story, and assist you with your poses (e.g., holding your hand to help you balance in airplane pose). Giving your child a chance to lead within the context of a safe and structured practice allows him to determine the nature of his embodied experience, set his own physical and emotional boundaries, and increase his sense of self-efficacy and empowerment--all of which are important experiences in the context of healing from early trauma and establishing a healthy connection with you.

Respect your child's limits and boundaries: An important dimension of trauma-sensitive yoga is respecting your child's limits and boundaries. Doing so not only keeps the practice fun and relaxing (for both of you) but also shows your child that his needs and feelings matter to you and that you respect where he is in his post-adoption healing and attachment process. To some extent, respecting his limits and boundaries may inform the logistics of your practice. If your child starts to get stressed by certain poses and activities, focus on ones that he enjoys. If he gets antsy after practicing for a particular length of time, don't push him to do more. Keep your practice short and sweet. If the length of your sessions grows over time and/or he gets more comfortable with a greater range of poses and activities, that's great! If not, that's okay too. Respecting your child's limits and boundaries also relates to his comfort in connecting with you. Although yoga can be used for attachment-building activities such as physical touch and eye contact, it is important not to force these activities, either. If your child wants to do snake with you but doesn't want to look into your eyes while doing it, for instance, respect that. Also respect his need to not hold your hands and/or face you while doing tree pose. Or maybe he wants to skip certain poses, such as lizard on a rock, altogether.

Ultimately, allow your child to set the pace in terms of how much intimacy and sustained focus he can handle during your yoga time together. When you first start practicing yoga with your child, especially if he is newly home, you could play it safe by starting off with some simple yoga poses or breathing activities and see how he responds. If he seems to enjoy it, you could lengthen your practice with him over time. Alternatively, you could do a few poses or activities on your own and invite your child to join you. If he says no, you both may still benefit. First, your child will develop a sense of agency and trust that you respect his boundaries and still love him when he says no. Second, you are "planting the seeds" of yoga by modeling the practice for him. Maybe he won't join you today or tomorrow, but he might next week. Finally, by giving yourself the time to restore your own physical and emotional wellbeing, you can better respond to and connect with your child.

Focus on your child's embodied experience: When practicing yoga with your child, focus more on the quality of her embodied experience (e.g., is she having fun; is she engaged; is she comfortable and at ease) and less on the "correctness" of her pose. Doing so will keep the focus of your family yoga on building trust and connection with your child, as it sends the message to her that you accept her as she is. Just as importantly, sensory issues, developmental delays, and other medical needs may make it difficult for her to do the pose or activity "perfectly" or for as long as you think she should be able to hold the pose. A child who can't hold tree pose for more than a second or two, for example, may have vestibular difficulties or weak core strength.

Another reason to focus on the embodied experience of the pose rather than its "look" relates to your child's early trauma and loss. Childhood trauma can happen to the body (e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse, invasive medical procedures), and it can also be stored in the body in the form of implicit memories. Consequently, children affected by trauma may feel unsafe in their bodies, disconnected from them, and/or perceive a lack of control over their bodies, Praciticing yoga sensitive to early trauma means letting children experience their body and its movements in ways that feel safe to them, that build trust in themselves and their bodies, and that allow them to decide the nature of their body positions and movements. In age appropriate ways, you can also ask your child how certain poses feel (e.g., "What muscles move when you twist in that way?"; "How does it feel when you bend forward like that?"). Such questions encourage what David Emerson calls "interoception," a form a body awareness that may help children reconnect with their bodies and bodily experiences in a non-judgmental and compassionate way.

Integrate "vulnerable" poses and activities slowly into your family practice: Given that early trauma can

be stored in the body and that some adopted children may have experience trauma to their bodies in the form of sexual or physical abuse, it is important to be mindful of practicing poses that they may experience as vulnerable or unsafe. Such poses may include chest openers (such as lizard on a rock), as some children may hold grief, anger, sadness, and other difficult emotions in their heart area. Certainly, chest openers may help to release these emotions, but you may need to do them carefully at your child's pace. Jennifer Harper Cohen of Little Flower Yoga also recommends being mindful of poses that expose the genital area, such as happy baby (see image). Once you get to know your child, you can practice a wider range of poses, as long as she is comfortable with them. In the beginning, though, you may want to focus on "safer" poses and gradually experiment with others.

Check-in with your child's health care team: Many adopted child see one or more health professionals for their post-adoption health needs. Such professionals may include medical doctors, occupational and physical therapists, and mental health pratitioners. You may want to check-in with your child's health care team about ways to use your family yoga practice, including which poses to emphasize and avoid, to support your child's physical and emotional healing.

Cultivate non-judgment and compassion in yourself and your child: Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated with yourself and/or your child if the practice isn't going as you planned. Your child may also get frustrated with herself, or even you, if she is having a difficult time doing certain poses or activities. In these situations--and in adoption parenting more generally--it's important not only to practice non-judgment and compassion toward yourself and your child but also to help your child develop compassion toward herself and others. Both sets of practices can reduce stress and anxiety, calm difficult feelings, build resilience, and allow you both to work for positive healing. You can't change the trauma that your child has experienced, but you can change how you and she relate to it, both physically and emotionally. Moreover, non-judgment and compassion are core principles of yoga and mindfulness, and learning how to relate to others, ourselves, and our bodies in these ways is in itself a form of yoga practice.

Keep reminding yourself (and perhaps your child) that practicing yoga is like "planting seeds;" with consistent practice and careful attention over time, the benefits of your child's yoga practice will hopefully take root and blossom. From this perspective, it's important not to dwell on the nature and outcome of any given yoga session, no matter how "bad" it may have gone. Healing from early trauma can be a long-term process, and it's important to let it unfold in its own time. Yoga, with its emphasis on body awareness, emotional regulation, and acceptance of the present moment with non-judgment and compassion, can help one to let go of unrealistic expectations that you both may share and allow the healing process to unfold in its own way.

Next up: Working with breathing in family yoga.

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