Why You Don't Need To Do Tree Pose To Be Mindful

Laura Khoudari is a trauma practitioner and personal trainer who helps her clients find healing through strength training. She says when it comes to improving our mental health through exercise, it's about being present in our bodies and finding ways to make the movement and environment work for us.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO THIS LINE OF WORK?

Laura Khoudari: \"Growing up, I hated exercise: I was the kid who was picked last in gym class. However, at the age of 20 my back went out and I learned I had a herniated disc in my lumbar spine. I was recommended to do physical therapy and strength training, rather than surgery, to correct it. I did the physical therapy and it helped manage the pain – but I was still in pain. I always moved really gingerly, even though I was only in my early twenties. After college, I moved home to New York City and my mother said, 'I’m tired of seeing you walk around like you’re 70. I want you to meet my [personal] trainer.' I said OK, but I was really hesitant.

Big Ed, my mom’s trainer, turned out to be one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. He made me feel safe in the gym, even though I really didn’t want to be there. I didn't want to be in my body. I didn't want people to see me in my body. I was very self-conscious. I was sort of average in appearance, but I felt really bad about myself and how I appeared from the neck down. I would say things like, 'I'm too fat to go to the gym. I'm not in good enough shape to go to the gym'. And of course, fitness professionals will say, well that's why you go. But it's a really big hurdle to jump. Big Ed made it feel OK to show up. We worked together for many years and my back pain went away. It was wonderful.

In my mid-30s I fell in love with Olympic weightlifting. This was before the boom of CrossFit and so at the time it felt quite subversive for a woman in her 30s to be into Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting. I loved how strong it made me feel; it was very empowering. Unfortunately, it was around that time in my life that I also experienced an acute trauma outside of the gym and developed post-traumatic stress disorder.

The gym had been the place where I felt safe, awesome and strong. And now, all of a sudden, I felt none of these things. I thought that the gym was the only place I could feel strong again and so I started training harder than ever. I was treating my body like it was a machine, and when I started to feel aches and pains, I thought I could train them away.

I started to have pain, but I just ignored. It got worse and eventually my back went out very badly. I was stuck in bed for weeks, months. I had very severe sciatica and I couldn't use my left lower leg very well. For a while, I couldn't walk. I needed to figure out, how can I get back this amazing relationship with myself in the gym, and how can I start training again in a way that feels safe? Because now, not only did I psychologically not feel safe because of trauma, but I also had this physical trauma where it didn't feel safe to put weight on my back again.

I tried trauma-informed yoga, but I found it incredibly triggering. I realized that while the gym was also triggering, I recovered faster from those triggers. I found a coach and I got back to things very slowly. As I started to heal, I realized that I wanted to share my tools with others, and that’s how I came to become a trauma-informed personal trainer.\"

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING TRAUMA-SENSITIVE AND TRAUMA-INFORMED?

\"I think that a trauma-sensitive trainer is someone who understands that if their client’s nervous system is overtaxed, they’re more prone to injury and unlikely to progress as well. As trainers we tend to tell people to push through those moments they want to stop, but that’s not always going to help them reach their fitness goals – you’re not honoring the fact that there’s a limitation there. A trauma-sensitive trainer can recognize what trauma looks like in the body. They can offer their clients a safe space so they know that if something comes up for them during the training, they won’t be pushed or shamed in the way you might see in more traditional styles of coaching.

A trauma-informed trainer is somebody who has a deeper understanding of the work required to heal from trauma. When I work with a client, we talk about goals but those goals tend to be along the lines of: wanting to feel grounded, wanting to be able to recover better. If someone is having an intensive amount of therapy, I can help them to recover from that therapy by prioritizing the nervous system and helping them to feel empowered through movement. (These are just my definitions by the way. There’s no regulating authority that gives us these credentials – this is what I’ve seen in my work.)

The first part of trauma recovery is being able to feel safe in your body so you can begin to feel safe in your environment. Without that safety, you can't do all the other healing work like talk therapy or confiding in family members. I see a trauma-informed trainer as working in this more therapeutic fashion. It tends to be adjunctive to work in therapy and building skills that support the client in therapy while also holding the other stuff in mind when designing programs for people.

There's a lot of wonderful trauma-informed expressive movement type classes, and that's great. However, my focus is strength training, the sort of you want to see some progression in – whether that’s to help with chronic pain, postural issues, general discomfort or wanting certain things that will enhance your quality of life. A big one for my clients is being able to carry your groceries, because here in New York we don't usually have cars. Maybe you want to go to the grocery store in the next neighborhood and take the subway with your groceries. A great movement for this would be working on an offset carry, which would help strengthen our shoulders to carry those heavy groceries.\"