The thing is, I don't think a lot of yoga and meditation instructors understand that they are capable of severe harm against people??
Like. I'm chronically ill, have DID, have PTSD, and I have chronic pain. Reiki healers and yoga instructors LOVE to grift me. They love advertising their services or recommending books and treatments or just lecturing me about how I should look into unlocking traumatic childhood memories because trauma gets locked in the body and causes psychosomatic pain. But a lot of these people don't realize that what they're doing is gaslighting. Yoga and meditation CAN have positive impacts on the body and mind, but when you have chronic physical and mental illnesses, advocating for wellness practices as a cure becomes exploitative.
But not all yoga and meditation instructors are grifters. Let's look at people who just do it as their job or part of a program and DON'T project the onus of magically healing chronic illness upon their clients. That's harmless, right? No. When I was in PTSD support forums online, a LOT of people struggled with "wellness practice"-oriented coping skills because being instructed, perceived by an authority figure, or subject to an activity is insanely triggering. This was really common in war vets and medicalized individuals.
A lot of the talk involved in meditation and yoga can ALSO be extremely distressing to people who have experienced trauma. (I remember at one yoga class I went to, the instructor placed heavy black and white attributes on emotions and feelings. Happy = good, sad = bad shit. That's Not Great!! People are allowed to be sad. Sadness can be cathartic. People who are traumatized are allowed to feel sad. By treating sadness as a negative outcome, you're giving someone an obligation to either manifest happiness or treat "a sad day" like a day where that goal wasn't reached. Being happy is not an obligation OR a sustainable goal, and sadness is not bad. Oh my god, preschoolers literally learned this by watching Inside Out.)
I'm sure everything involved in yoga and meditation feels chill and empowering for a lot of people, but sensitive people can be gaslit, disempowered, triggered, retraumatized, or even traumatized anew by a practice that IS NEVER portrayed to be problematic or risky in any way. Since yoga and meditation are perceived as "fluffy," "feminine" practices, a lot of people believe it CAN'T cause harm. In reality, yoga IS a demand, and it DOES contribute to harm against unwell people the same way the medical industry and the psychiatric industry does.
The PROBLEM is that a lot of wellness instructors ARE NOT aware of this. They tell you it's for your health, peace, clarity, to "restore balance." Yoga and mediation advertises itself as a cure to a problem so abstract that it borders on gaslighting if you, like me, are unable to participate.
A lot of yoga and meditation instructors aren't grifters. A lot of them are genuinely well-meaning people. But even well-meaning people CAN negatively affect their clients. And if you're not even AWARE of the harm you can do just by instructing a yoga class, then how am I supposed to trust you to be mindful to AVOID those outcomes?
If you learned something from this post, great. But DO NOT respond and ask me what wellness instructors should do to make their practices safer or more trauma-informed. I'm not a trauma advocate; I'm just a traumatized person on the internet who wants NOTHING to do with the wellness industry.
TL'DR: Yoga and meditation classes can be traumatizing to physically and mentally ill individuals, and I wish more instructors acknowledged that.
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