Green Mountain Yoga

Fawning can be easy to miss.

From the outside, it may look like being kind, calm, helpful, or easy-going.

But underneath, there may be stress, fear, or a feeling of leaving yourself behind to keep the peace.

The fawn response is a survival response. It can happen when your nervous system learned to reduce threat by keeping others calm, avoiding conflict, or staying connected at all costs.

If you recognise yourself in this, nothing is wrong with you.
You may have learned to adapt in a way that once helped you stay safe.

In trauma-sensitive yoga, we gently practice choice.

You are invited to pause, rest, change your mind and listen for what feels right for your body.

You do not have to override yourself to belong here.

💚 AJ

Sometimes these words are meant kindly, but they can also leave people feeling unseen, rushed, or alone with what they are feeling.

Anger, grief, sadness, fear, disappointment and pain do not always need to be fixed or turned into a lesson straight away. Sometimes they need room to be felt, named and met with compassion.

When there is little space for the harder emotions, people may learn to push them down or move through the world as if they are okay. Over time, this can feel exhausting. It may pop up as tension, numbness, anxiety, disconnection or a deep tiredness that is hard to explain.

Support does not always have to make something better.
Sometimes it can simply sound like:

“I believe you.”
“That sounds really hard.”
“You do not have to make this okay right now.”

All of your emotions are welcome here. 💚

Living with PTSD can mean moving through a world that your body may not fully experience as safe yet.

You might feel on edge when nothing obvious is wrong, exhausted after ordinary things, or pulled to avoid places, conversations, and memories because your system is trying to protect you from becoming overwhelmed again.

These responses can feel confusing, but they make sense in the context of what you have been through.

They are signs that something in you learned how to survive.

Healing can begin gently, through small moments of choice, noticing what feels okay, and slowly reconnecting with your body in ways that feel safe.

You do not have to push past yourself to belong.

Trauma-sensitive yoga offers a space where you can move at your own rhythm, pause when you need to, rest when that feels right, and stay connected to choice throughout the practice.

You are welcome in this space! Join an online trauma-sensitive yoga session via the link in bio. 💚

Trauma can be deeply tiring, not only because of the memories or emotions, but because of the amount of protective work the body may still be doing.

Symptoms such as hyperarousal, hypervigilance, sleep disruption, nightmares, flashbacks, concentration difficulties, and feeling on guard. These can all ask something from the body and nervous system.

So when someone feels exhausted, foggy, sensitive, or easily overwhelmed after trauma, it is not a character flaw.

It may be the cost of a system that has spent a long time scanning, bracing, remembering, avoiding, and trying to stay safe.

In trauma-sensitive yoga, we do not try to override that.

We practice choice, pacing, and small moments of connection with the body.

You are welcome to move slowly here. 💚

Trauma is often spoken of as if it only counts when something appears extreme from the outside, or as if it belongs neatly in the past.

Yet trauma can be far more layered than that.

It is not only what happened to you. It is also how an experience was held in your body, how safe or unsafe it felt, and what your nervous system needed to do to keep going.

If any part of this resonated with you, I hope it offered a little more understanding for what your body may have been holding.

You deserve support that feels safe enough for you.

If you are looking for a gentler, more choice-led way of being with your body, you are warmly welcome in my online yoga sessions.

You can read more through the link in bio

💚 AJ

I know joining a yoga class or session can feel vulnerable sometimes.

That is part of why we share the space the way we do: gently, with room for choice and and safety, and with space to come exactly as you are.

If you are carrying trauma, sadness, fatigue, burnout, anxiety, tiredness or uncertainty, you are welcome here too.

I also want this space to stay accessible, so the new semester will be $10 for the whole semester.

It begins 18 May.

If joining feels a little scary, you can always send me a heart in DM and we can chat first.

You’re very welcome here.

Link in bio. 💚

Some experiences of trauma are easy for people to name, while others may stay hidden for a long time beneath patterns that are often misunderstood or judged.

That feels important to me because so many people move through life having responses that may have developed in moments of overwhelm, pain or survival. Instead of being met with understanding, they are often met with shame.

Things like people-pleasing, emotional flashbacks, perfectionism, shutting down, or feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotions may not always be recognized for what they are. But that does not make them any less real, and it does not mean something is wrong with you.

Sometimes these patterns were ways of adapting. Ways of staying connected, staying safe, staying loved or simply getting through.

I hope this post offers a little more gentleness toward the parts of you that learned to survive in the ways they could.

You deserve spaces where your experience can be met with care, compassion and understanding. 💚 AJ

Healing from complex trauma can be lonely in ways that are hard to explain.

So much of it happens on the inside. The overthinking, the tiredness, the way your body reacts before your mind has caught up, the effort it can take to move through an ordinary day.

And because people cannot always see it, it can be easy to wonder if you are making it up, being too sensitive, or taking too long.

I want to remind you that your experience is real.

Your body has been trying to protect you in the ways it learned to. Trust can feel complicated. Some days may still feel hard. Healing can take much longer than you wish it would.

Little by little, I hope you find spaces where you do not have to explain everything.

Where you can breathe, move, rest, or simply be met with gentleness.

💚
AJ