Wellness 102 aphrochic
AC: You’ve mentioned in your bio that you were nervous as a child and grew into an “anxious, over-pleasing adult.” What do you feel was the source of your anxieties? How did you learn to move past over pleasing behavior? KY: Trauma, for sure. Trauma in my childhood had me very anxious inside. On the outside, you would have seen a high-functioning, high-performing, over-achieving people-pleaser who was sunny and bright. Inside I was worried about everything and everyone. I now understand this to be hyper-vigilance. Because life felt unpredictable, I carried with me the desire to ensure everything was okay everywhere I went. This started at seven years old. By the time I hit my 30s, I was severely burnt out. Folks think that trauma has to be massive. That is the biggest wake-up call of all. There is "big T trauma" and "little t trauma, " which all matter. It affects our developing nervous system. Trauma isn’t necessarily what happened to you but how it gets integrated into your life afterward. When I learned that, it really hit me hard. That was the catalyst for a change. When my “self-care” wasn’t self-caring, I knew I needed help. I am all for a bubble bath and a good book, but performative self-care did nothing for my nervous system. I found a great therapist and somatic teacher to help me move past pleasing people (it took time), reparent myself in many ways, connect with that inner child who had to grow up before her time and set real boundaries that gave me my power back. AC: 2020 was a turning point for the world in a number of ways. For you, it was the beginning of your journey into breathwork. What prompted your transition from conventional therapy into breathwork and how did it lead to your transition into a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator? KY: I had a long career in education. But 2020 changed the field so much. I was home with my children, a military spouse in a new duty station, and a Black woman in a community that was hostile toward me. 2020 felt unsafe in so many ways. But the straw was watching George Floyd take his last breath. It hit me hard that the Black breath is short. By December of that year, I realized I was struggling with my mental health. I Googled how to breathe and discovered breathwork. Within 10 minutes, something in me had broken in the most beautiful way. The simple act of slowing my body down, inviting rest, and breathing felt like the most radical act I’d ever taken. My breathwork journey started there, and I knew that breathing was the key to unlocking something that needed to be freed inside of me. It allowed me to take the next step in my mental health journey. I am a big believer in therapy. I worked with a therapist who used somatics (a body-centered approach that emphasizes internal physical perception. It teaches you to pay attention to sensation and helps you release stored emotions that weigh you down). I continued breathwork and was so transformed by this work that I decided to start my somatic training to teach others this work. Somatic work has made such an impact, and I wanted to make this work accessible for everyone to learn from. AC: What are breathwork, somatics and embodiment? How do they work individually and collectively and to what respective ends? Are there other methods that you advocate? KY: Breathwork is a conscious manipulation of the breath to achieve a specific outcome (i.e. energy, relaxation, elimination of mind chatter, and pain). When people ask me where to start, I advise them to begin with breath awareness. Awareness of how you are breathing right now or at any given point gives you insight into how you breathe. Studies show that most of the population is not breathing correctly, but you must start paying attention to how you breathe and notice how it feels. Do you take short, shallow breaths? Do you breathe through your nose or mouth? Is there tension anywhere in your body? Breath awareness is an ongoing practice that will allow you to move on to trying different forms of breathing. Soma is the Greek word for the living body. Our soma is our first-person experience and intelligence of our body. It's what we experience from within, from sensations to emotions. Your soma holds your thoughts, emotions, and expression. Somatics is the study and practice of soma through a growing internal awareness. It is a mind-body practice encompassing bodywork, movement, and mindful strategies that call you into experiencing what it's like to be in your body. Somatics is used in dance, movement, body rehabilitation, therapy, and more. Somatics is also awareness. One crucial key to somatics is awareness of the internal body (interoception) and awareness of how the body moves in space (proprioception) Embodiment allows our bodies to take the shape of the traits we want to show up with. We all know what an angry person looks like. They embody the trait of anger. What would it look like to embody traits of rest, healing, peace, sweetness, or softness? The work I do teaches people how to use their minds and body to create this new shape they would like to take on. That is embodiment. AC: Modern breathwork seems to have strong roots in Pranayama, one of the eight limbs of traditional yoga. How would you compare/contrast the practices? KY: There are many different lineages in both somatics and breathwork (one somatic tool). Breathwork comes out of Southeast Asia and has roots in Africa as well as other parts of the world. Many of my teachers are working tirelessly to trace the roots of modern breathwork. People may be familiar with Pranayama, an ancient and beautiful lineage known as one of the eight limbs of yoga. Psychiatrist Stanislov Grof developed Holotropic breathwork in the issue thirteen 103