Join lead YBB trainers Sam Brown (she/her) and Damithia Nieves (she/her)
for this two-day virtual training to expand your trauma-informed teaching skills, deepen your own practice, and learn more about the incredible
connection between Yoga Nidra and trauma healing.

Yoga nidra means “yogic sleep.” It is a somatic experience in which individuals are guided inward through a practice of relaxation, breath, imagery, and inquiry that can feel similar to dreaming. This dream-like state offers an opportunity for embodiment, awareness, self-solving, and nervous system ease. Yoga nidra may appear simple and straightforward. However, there is a lot going on beneath the surface. Yoga nidra is subtle and invites students to be vulnerable. Teaching yoga nidra requires considerable time, attention, and care. It is important that instructors be trauma informed, privilege aware, and mindful of word choices so as to lead in a way that is gentle, inclusive, and respectful of diverse experiences and realities.

Three key features of trauma-informed yoga nidra, compared to other kinds of yoga nidra, are:

1. The approach is free of scripts and expectations of how participants should feel. Imagery and word choices are earth-based and flexible. Mention of body parts is approached differently, as a general body scan rather than bringing attention to specific body parts.
2. Inner and outer worlds are not compartmentalized, in that there is no inner world to be escaped into and a “real world” to escape from. There is no spiritual bypassing. Rather, participants are invited to embody life as they are experiencing it, notice how they may shift into a more relaxed state, and benefit from yoga nidra in any way meaningful to them.
3. Teachers are invited into an exploration of their own ancestral knowledge so as not to appropriate imagery or language from ancestral practices that are not their own.

Trauma-Informed Yoga Nidra Training is grounded in all that is taught during Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training. It is an extension of trauma-informed yoga teaching part 3 (breath, meditation, imagery, and themes). It adds on the koshas, inclusive vs. appropriated language, ancestral imagery, and instruction on how specifically to teach and structure a yoga nidra class.

Schedule:
✓ Friday, September 25th – Saturday, September 26th.
9am – 5pm (12-2pm break each day) [Canceled] 
✓ Saturday, November 14th – Sunday, November 15th
9am – 5pm (12-2pm break each day)

Location: On Zoom – you will get more meeting details when you register.

Prerequisites + Cost
All who have completed Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher Training are invited to participate. No previous experience teaching meditative or somatic practices is needed. In an effort to increase access, we provide a sliding scale:

$335 Access Rate
$435 Standard Rate
$535 Sustaining Rate

We offer scholarships for people of color and formerly incarcerated folks; email maggie@yogabehindbars.org for more questions about scholarships, payment plan options, or financial assistance.

About the instructors: Sam Brown & Damithia Nieves

Samantha (Sam) Brown (she/her) fell in love with yoga in 1996 while practicing along with a VHS tape in her living room. The movements focused on restoration, range of motion, and ease and allowed her to feel a sense of embodiment and self-trust that felt refreshing, reassuring, and secure. Those early experiences remain a pillar of Sam’s approach to yoga today, which is that it is a practice for students to tune into their bodies and breath and move in ways that feel nourishing, loving, and safe. Within that container of care yoga can then bring insights to support individuals in relating differently with themselves, with others, and with life. Sam teaches with Yoga Behind Bars due to its alignment with her commitment to social justice, anti-racism, equity, and prison reform. She also connects personally with YBB’s focus on trauma-informed yoga. Sam broke her back in 2009 and, after a period of bedrest and rehabilitation, needed to relearn how to move. When the time came to try yoga again she discovered she was no longer able to practice in ways she had before. Trauma-informed yoga became her sole way of practicing and teaching. She relates with chronic pain, with not knowing if and how she will be able to move tomorrow, and with drawing on yoga as a pathway to moving through life exactly as she is. Her style is rooted in hatha and restorative with somatics, strength, and humor woven throughout. In other facets of her life Sam works in Human Resources/Organizational Development at a community college and loves taking naps.

Damithia Nieves hails from the East Coast, Chicago and Hawaii and has lived in Washington (for the second time) since 2005. She is a 200hr Registered Yoga Teacher, Certified Children’s Yoga teacher and Trauma-Informed Restorative Practice Facilitator. She is the founder of Thrive Yoga, offering trauma informed ,culturally responsive movement and mindfulness practices to youth in schools K-12. She is passionate about facilitating the deep healing work around race and social justice especially as it intersects with yoga and wellness. Outside of her teaching and training she finds joy in time with family, in nature and long periods of un-interrupted silence and furious dancing.