Green Country Nonprofit Helps Women Work Through Trauma With Yoga

A Green Country nonprofit is helping women work through years of trauma with yoga. The classes are taking women back to the basics, giving them tools to rise above their pasts.

"You think you peel off the layers there is going to be healing and you are going to be fine, but I have learned that is not how it works. It is every day, being mindful," says Anita Barnett.

Trauma has a way of turning your world on its top and of picking up your life and shaking it until your pockets are empty. Every woman in this room knows trauma intimately. Some have lost children, others have gone through years of sexual abuse.

"That is why the tears come because it is freeing. It flows out and once it is out it is not troubling anymore," said Linda Splayt, “there is no sense in pushing it down and holding it down. Just let it flow because that is what we are here for. That is what I am here for," said Splayt.

This room is where life starts to take order again. Where simple things like breathing become a little easier.

“My stature, my head my posture and that wasn't because of exercise that was because of reassurance of who and what I am. I was becoming stronger, me, rather than weak because of my circumstances," said Splayt.

The nonprofit Light of Hope does all kinds of work for the community. Recently, employee Julie Duncan started teaching yoga classes to give people living with trauma tools they need to cope.

"To be able to stop and breathe to be able to ground themselves and root down so they can rise up," said Duncan.

Every week for 60 minutes, Julie takes this group back to the basics- breathing in the present together, despite the past that brought them here.

"If you have had a great deal of trauma, which I did. you have scars...we have to learn to be thankful for those scars," said Barnett.

The chair-based class is every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. There is also a mat yoga class on Monday nights.

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