Yoga as a Pathway Out of Survival Mode

For those who have spent years feeling “other,” survival mode can become the default state. Yoga—when taught with inclusion, consent, and trauma-aware cues—offers a path back to safety in the body.

Yoga provides:

• Choice: the antidote to past disempowerment.

• Breath: a tool to interrupt survival responses.

• Stillness or movement: depending on what the body needs.

• Philosophy: teachings that affirm your inherent worth and wholeness.

But this only works when the practice is adapted to your lived realities. Yoga becomes regulation only when the space itself is regulating.

I have spent over 15 years now experiencing and living yoga. Over time, my identity has changed, my skills have changed, and my body has changed. I have incorporated other lessons and teachings into my understanding of the body, but every thing that I have accomplished in the past 15 years can be traced back to creating a sense of safety and home in my body. Yoga is one way that I keep coming back to. It’s an ever evolving dance that reflects me to myself even as I shift. A tool that has helped me move from survival to “thrival.”