In 90 minutes, understand why stillness is one of the hardest things you can ask of a nervous system and learn to teach it safely, skilfully, and in a way that actually works for the people in front of you.
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness · 90 Minute Workshop
$147 $27
For yoga & meditation teachers
Not everyone. Not always. But someone. A held breath. A tight body. A student who can't sit through savasana without shifting, or worse, without leaving the room entirely.
This energy affects the entire room including you.
You've probably put it down to a busy mind, or a fidgety body, or "just needing more practice."
But stillness isn't hard because someone hasn't tried hard enough. Stillness is hard because, for a huge number of the people in front of you, a still body and a quiet mind is exactly the environment their nervous system was trained to distrust.
So when you show up to teach, you feel stuck or confused because no matter what you say or how you set up the room, these students aren't receptive.
The calming music and your soothing voice seem to irritate these students even more. You finish teaching a class doubting yourself and whether the class was any good at all just because a handful of students couldn't fully settle into longer-held poses, meditation or savasana.
You also feel drawn to teach outside of the yoga studio and gym space but you don't feel like you are ready.
You don't know how to work with a whole room let alone a 1:1 situation with people who are overwhelmed, shut down or activated. You're worried that you could retraumatise them or do more harm than good.
You probably already use the words nervous system and dysregulation in your classes. Maybe you've read The Body Keeps the Score and you've heard about the window of tolerance, but even you know that knowing the words isn't the same as understanding what's actually happening in a nervous system that has learned that stillness isn't safe and does not feel feasible.
The truth is that a quiet room feels unbearable to some people.
As a yoga teacher or meditation teacher, this discomfort is something your own nervous system needs to be able to hold with steady neutrality, but you currently feel thrown by that and therefore so do your students.
Something as simple as slowing the breath down can work so quickly for you when you're feeling jittery and nervous, but it's a completely different story for some of your students.
That 6 count inhale and exhale can bring them directly to the edge of panic.
And this can show up as:
...while the rest of the room floats away to a motionless state of blissful peace.
And so many of your students are coming to yoga and meditation because they've been told it's the antidote to addiction, busyness, scrolling, over-work and constant doing, but when they find the stillness so agonising, they don't come back and they think
"Yoga is not for me."
Once you understand what's actually happening in the brain and body, you stop guessing. You start teaching from real understanding, the kind that changes how you sequence a class, how you cue stillness, how you teach mindfulness and how you hold a room.
The Workshop
When you understand that the nervous system is constantly adjusting whether we are aware of it or not, you won't take it personally when a student keeps doing core work in savasana.
And you can recognise that the student who is always checking their messages on their smart watch is just a dysregulated nervous system avoiding stillness and you have the confidence to know whether to invite them to turn their notifications off or just let them be.
You're better equipped to guide someone with more complex situations like PTSD or recovery from substance addiction because you're no longer worried about which mindfulness practice you're teaching and you know how to choose and adjust the practices that are most likely to help.
When you see the connection of the role of the inner critic and how it keeps your students stuck in unhealthy patterns, you're more skilful in using compassion to help them rewire their nervous system.
Because you're now aware of how your teaching may have unintentionally harmed some students in the past, you can evolve what you say and what you do so that you can offer more healing classes to an even broader and more diverse set of students and start working beyond the studio and gym.
Is This You?
You're a yoga teacher, meditation teacher, or practitioner who already holds space for others, and you want to understand why stillness is so hard for so many nervous systems, and what that means for how you teach.
You don't need any prior trauma training.
You do need to be interested in your own relationship with stillness, as much as your students'.
Stillness isn't hard because someone hasn't tried hard enough. It's hard because their nervous system was trained to distrust it.
Bryony LancasterWhat We'll Cover
I'll walk you through how the nervous system moves between states, and why that matters more than the pose, cue, or sequence you'll teach.
I'll explain why stillness, the very thing meditation asks of us, can feel like danger to a nervous system shaped by trauma, addiction, or chronic stress, over-work, burnout and life!
I'll show you what's actually happening in the brain when someone practices mindfulness, and why the same practice can heal or harm depending entirely on how it's taught.
I'll unpack why yoga has proven so powerful in trauma recovery, backed by real research, not just intuition.
I will discuss the Two Wings of Mindfulness, and why compassion is crucial, both philosophically and scientifically, and the role of the inner critic and how it can keep us stuck.
Finally, I'll give you a clear starting framework for bringing trauma-sensitive mindfulness into the way you teach.
Included
A 90 minute video workshop that you can return to at any time.
The Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Workbook.
Helps you quickly recognise which nervous system state you or your students are in and how to come back to regulation.
Simple language swaps that you can take with you to your very next class and implement more invitational language straightaway.
Your Teacher
Bryony has been teaching for almost 3 decades, and has spent the last four years as lead teacher and trauma-sensitive mindfulness teacher at a residential recovery centre, working with hundreds of residents healing from addiction, grief, CPTSD and PTSD.
She is an E-RYT 500 Teacher Trainer and Insight Yoga Institute Endorsed teacher, and has trained extensively with Sarah Powers, integrating yoga, meditation, Buddhism and psychology into her work. She trained in Trauma-Sensitive Yoga with both Sarah Ball and Judith & Lizzie Lasater, and brings her own lived experience into how she teaches.
She is the author of Egg of the Universe and a regular contributor to Wellbeing Yoga, Being Yoga and Meditation Magazine, and Yoga Journal.
Understand why stillness is so hard for so many nervous systems, and what that means for the way you teach, starting with your very next class.
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