If “the moving finger writes, and having written, moves on,” as poet Omar Khayyam wrote, then I wonder if the moving body also writes in its own way. I think it must, for I see that trauma-informed yoga does exactly this. When we are not curious about the sensations in the body, we don’t know what we could know about the stories told there. Writing gives us what’s in our minds—very useful, but not everything. And sometimes a distraction, a refusal of part of our story.

Movement journalling is an experience of a relationship inside the body. I roll my shoulder and say, “This is my ‘Rice Krispies Pose’—Snap! Crackle! Pop!” I make light of this new language that I lack words for, although it has a name: interoception.

I consider Khayyam again. “Poets lie. This is important.” I feel something reliable in these words, but I don’t know what. Trauma-Informed Yoga (TIY) instructor Mindy Levine reacted.

“I wanted to stretch up, open arms, reading this,” she said.

Body-Brain Conversations: inside and outside your nervous system

“It sounds like your body’s response to my brain’s output,” I said.

“Yes…’Poets lie. This is important. I think when folks believe something as ‘truth,’ it’s without room to change perspective; it’s so limiting. I don’t think poetry or movement has a responsibility to truth. Neither reason nor logic are hinged on truth.”

This shocks me in several ways, and musical memory intercedes. “But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths—are mine the same as yours?” sang Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar. Andrew Lloyd Weber’s lyrics challenge the notion of One Truth.

I don’t like the idea that truth isn’t absolute reality, and for the same reason, I don’t like the notion of “moral relativism.” It sounds like anything can be justified if it serves personal convenience. I long for a standard. Mindy’s next remark helps.

“Am I Doing This Right?”

“Often, ‘truth’ gets connected with, ‘am I doing this right,’” she said. “It’s so…limiting.”

Biomechanics, one of her interests, would appear to be limiting, too, I think.

“My practice with yoga evolved into a fascination with biomechanics.” I look puzzled. “It’s laying the groundwork for personalizing yoga to the person, not the pose.”

Oh. Trauma-informed yoga rejects the perfect pose and, with it, the power to declare whether a given body is “wrong.” That judgment is about someone else’s body, from a brain that doesn’t inhabit it…and from an entitlement that doesn’t exist unless we, the students, give it away. The movement is the perfect expression of truth for the person making it.

Trauma-informed yoga finds power in the body that moves, not in the mind that judges nor the critic that watches. Authority belongs to the body and the ongoing conversation it has with its own brain. In a typical Western yoga class, authority rests outside the body-brain system you have and awards it to the critic who can’t feel the difference between pain and growth in your body. And who will tell you that “pain is your friend”—as my Aikido instructor remarked—and that the perfect pose is The Truth? Being the author of a good throw changes a reality, but it’s not “true.” It changes what is true.

Maybe truth must be relevant if it is to matter. That’s subjective, but “relevance” describes when that particular truth matters. Something could be true but inapplicable to your body.

What Does Your Body Want Now?

“What does your body want now?” Mindy remarked. “Stillness? If stillness isn’t comfortable, then movement. Movement’s purpose is to open more possibilities for movement. But it isn’t a reason for movement. It just is.”

“A body in motion wants to stay in motion,” I said. “A body at rest wants to stay at rest.” I chuckle. “Unless it’s like yours. You like motion.”

Mindy laughs. “It’s conversational. If a situation has left me doubtful or unsure, I explore balancing. If a situation has left me panicky, I lift weights.” She pauses. “That’s not advice.” Even in this conversation, the subject-matter expert declines the authority to declare what I should do. I appreciate this. The approach applies to much more than yoga—it attacks the whole idea of entitlement, of authority delegated to someone else, or taken by someone else, over me or you. The root of trauma. The thing that brings us here.

An Invitation to the Dance: Biles, Ballet, and Basketball

“Dancers may be more interoceptively aware.” Mindy looks up a study. “Dancers are often expected to work while injured. It’s an ideal and a culture.” I frown. Lipizzaner horses dance, but if anyone ever tried to force these Spanish School horses perform (Lipizzaner Stallions | Videos | Viking Cruises (vikingrivercruises.com) injured, the persons responsible would be shunned, shamed, and prosecuted for animal cruelty.

“Gymnastics, too.” I think of Simone Biles, of her experience of “the twisties.” A gymnast who doesn’t know where she is in space, moving at the speed of Olympians, could kill herself landing badly. And yet the rage directed at Biles for daring to self-care, to assert her own authority over her own body, was astonishing, infuriating. People who don’t get off the couch felt entitled to attack her for failing to entertain them. Football players get carried off the field and fallen basketball players get huddled even by members of the other team. Horses get cared for. But not gymnasts?

The gymnastics audience doesn’t own, train, or even know Simone Biles. And that yoga instructor tapping your elbow into “position” may have injured you to get a perfect pose that will get broken in a moment’s move, and pain you for days.

I wince. I want to get happier. “Did you see that Chicago news story about the black cat who fell five stories and was video-recorded landing on its feet and walking away?”

“That’s interoception.”

“And the feline spine’s extra vertebrae.”

What Yoga is for: Ethical Living

“Yoga is about you,” Mindy said. “Yoga is not ‘to feel better.’ It’s not outcome-based. It’s about being in your own life, it’s about being in charge of yourself, it’s about being autonomous. It doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen to you. It means they don’t have to define how you think about your choices in the Now.” I consider this. The event may have removed a choice for me, but I don’t have to think of myself exclusively in the context of that event. Now it is history, and while it may change my choices, it doesn’t take away my ability to make choices. It’s not as if I have died. It’s acknowledging that I have changed, and the change is reflected in my current choices. How I look at my history—my judgment—my interpretation—it can change how I choose to apply the events and what I learned from those events.

“Trauma is what happens when autonomy is taken away,” I say, slowly.

Mindy nods. “Yoga is ethical living: not investing authority outside of your body, over your body.” Despite what happens.