SOMATIC YOGA TEACHER TRAINING Student Testimonials
Read our student’s reflections. Each voice reflects a lived experience of embodied learning, inquiry, and trauma-informed practice.
Student Testimonial: Jessa | A.K. Training
Her Experience in Our Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training in Mexico
I completed my 200 Hour YTT in Chacala, Nayarit, Mexico, a few hours away from Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific Coast at Mar de Jade Wellness Resort. My YTT was cotaught by Jeanine Talento and Brooke Alexander. Gigi Bisong was also an assistant teacher on the training.
I want to first commend and uplift the staff and community at Mar De Jade who made the training so incredibly easeful and provided such care from the fulfilling, healthy 3 meals each day to amenities that made the time restful and restorative in the midst of an intense schedule.
I also want to lift up my love for the work that Mar De Jade does and has done in the surrounding community. I was so excited that this work by Mar De Jade reflected the practices in which our group was engaged: in using yoga and wellness practices to build community, heal and engage the capacities for trauma recovery. I returned home from my training feeling so nurtured by the time.
What has your journey been like leading up to this moment?
I am a playwright, theatremaker, storyteller and artist and I am passionate about imagining and curating spaces for Black creatives to dream freedom. I am currently in graduate school pursuing a MFA in Playwriting. As I have struggled with anxiety, depression and PTSD in my own journey, I have been seeking ways to bring wellness work into my creative practice and to heal from intergenerational and familial trauma often resulting from systems of oppression with roots far back in history.
Why did you choose SYI?
I was interested in SYI’s Trauma-Informed yoga teacher training because I wanted to learn how to teach yoga in a way that is radical at its core. Angela Davis said “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root’” and I believe that yoga taught from a trauma-informed approach is intimately about how we can pay attention to our bodies, invite curiosity and get to the root of those wounds that have haunted our inner children. In doing so, we can also perhaps invite space for getting to the root of deep seated systems of oppression.
Jeanine and Brooke’s leadership intentionally invited a trauma-informed approach in a way that I did not see in any other training. While other trainings spent a small fraction of time on trauma-informed yoga, SYI’s trauma-informed training engaged this concept from beginning to end and truly sought to imagine yoga spaces that accommodate a range of bodies and experiences. Jeanine and Brooke also worked to invite inter and cross-disciplinary engagements with yoga in asking how might we practice on and off the mat and in relationship with our communities.
Why did you choose SYI?
From my training, I will take away information on the histories of yoga, tools for sequencing and building classes that are trauma-sensitive and informed, and a newfound commitment to my journey and my questions as a leader and teacher. I am leaving with a sense of trust in my body even as I meet it where it lives. I am also leaving with a plethora of knowledge around how “The Body Keeps the Score” (a required book for our training) and the myriad ways humans can learn regulation and attunement. I am moving with more kindness for my own inner child even as I prepare to hold space for others.
What will you do with this 200-hour certification?
I have dreams of continuing to build a Black theatre collective/ensemble that focuses on how theatre/performing artists can create while moving towards wellness and intentional community. I hope to teach yoga before and after rehearsals for plays and performances as means to provide space for actors to ground, center and/or return to their own bodies after the toll that acting can sometimes take. I hope to teach yoga in a way that centers the yamas, the niyamas and the eight limbs (rather than solely asana) to artists in my community; in this way, I hope to ground my teaching in a deep awareness of holistic health—mind, body and spirit.
What do you aspire for in life?
I aspire to create rooms in which others are invited to be their fullest, most expansive, most well, whole and free selves. I hope to particularly center Black and Brown folks given the historical implications of colonialism and enslavement and the particular ways in which my family and those I love have been marginalized. I aspire to write stories that might serve as blueprints and models for how we might create such rooms. I hope to perpetually move towards healing, breathing, and being for my own self so that I can embrace others with love, which is perhaps the most radical thing of all.
How did your YTT with SYI influence/inspire you to do what you are doing now?
My YTT inspired me with a plethora of tools to explore the body and its wisdom. I see my creative work in a more holistic sense now—moving in tandem with the mind, bodyand spirit. I also have been encouraged to trust my body more and its own particular experiences. I am so grateful to Jeanine and Brooke for the supportive container they created.
If you feel called to share a specific experience or memory from your YTT, we would love to hear about it!
My favorite memories were the evening satsangs where we gathered together for new experiences and community. Two of my favorites were the angel walk, an experience we had near the end of our time where we walked down a line and affirmed something in each of our fellow students and teachers. It was a deeply moving experience where I felt so seen and witnessed. Another was a night where we did ecstatic dance; I felt free and liberated, dancing without concern for how I looked in community with others. I also loved learning from our visit with the Prison Yoga Project, an initiative that teaches yoga to folks who are incarcerated.
While my time was absolutely transformative, I do wish there were more intentional conversations on fatphobia from the beginning of the training. Sometimes it was difficult sharing meals together in person, as a person who has struggled with body image and does not have a body that is traditionally seen in yoga spaces.