S3 E4: Why Yoga & Movement Help You Feel Better

Discover the amazing Exhale to Inhale, a nonprofit that teaches trauma-informed yoga for free to survivors of domestic violence and sexual violence, now available online for free to everyone experiencing stress and trauma! Our guest is Julie Fernandez, lead trainer at Exhale to Inhale, and the primary trauma therapist with the Hope Integrative Psychiatry team. (You can also experience Julie's beautiful 15-minute chair yoga as #HealMeToo Podcast S3 Xtra 4!)In this Season 3 Episode 4, you’ll hear about:Julie’s personal story of regaining comfort with her body and breath through yoga and embodied practices (after hating yoga to start with!) The anxiety and insomnia Julie is observing in clients right now, whether that’s due to the menace of COVID or the long-suppressed racial trauma that is now surfacing in order to heal through the Movement for Black Lives and a deeper reckoning with White Supremacist culture.How body-based work can gradually help us feel more comfortable within discomfort, something so many people need in this time of disruption, danger and stressWhy Exhale to Inhale is different from other yoga practices, from its welcoming affirmation of Black and Brown participants and every body shape, to its emphasis on the experience of choice for survivors that pervades every exercise How yoga and other embodied work may help survivors to sit with and gradually lessen the discomfort and heal the disconnections between our body, emotions, heart and mind that can stem from traumaThe research and theories that explain why embodied practices like Exhale to Inhale can help survivors reclaim their feelings of agency and power Short movement and meditation practices led by Julie How all of Julie’s work is intended to help clients feel safe in their bodies, comfortable in the world, and embodied, integrated and whole. Learn more about our guests and find links to Safe Horizon support resource links on our episode page.Join us throughout the summer for new #HealMeToo #AtHome episodes on all the usual podcast platforms as well as our new YouTube channel as we continue Season 3: #HealMeToo At-Home—focused on the needs of now.  Between episodes, you'll find us on all social media @healmetoofest and at healmetoopodcast.com.The #HealMeToo Podcast is hosted and edited by Hope Singsen—the artist, creativity researcher and survivor-activist who founded the #HealMeToo Festival and Podcast in NYC in the Spring of 2019. Music Credits:Lead vocal: Jovan Martinez sampling "It's a Love Thing" by The Whispers. Choral Improvisation recorded live at a #HealMeToo Festival & Podcast event, led by: Katie Down, Bonita Oliver, Jessica Lurie & Vanessa Marie.Support the show