Hart Yoga

Partnering with Hart Yoga

When we ran our first Yoga Teacher Training in 2017 Sophie Namy (the founder of HART Yoga) joined us to host an introduction to trauma sensitivity and yoga.

She has now become a permanent feature who is a much appreciated and admired member of the Karuna family.

Whenever her schedule allows she leads trauma informed and inclusive workshops on our 200 hrYTT and offers support to both teachers and students during their training. In 2020 she will be co leading part 3 of KYJ 300hr YTT.

HART YOGA – Healing and Resilience Through Yoga (Hart Yoga) for Survivors of Human Trafficking in Uganda.

Overview

Human trafficking is a pervasive global challenge that violates fundamental human rights and causes long-term physical and psychological harm. Human trafficking has its roots in larger systems of power and oppression, including sexual and physical violence against women and girls as a manifestation of patriarchy and gender inequality. As such, it is a complex issue that often involves multiple networks and actors, complicating prevention and response efforts.

While the field has gained important insights in recent years, critical gaps remain. For instance, research has demonstrated that survivors of human trafficking are frequently exposed to multiple traumatic events before, during, and after being trafficked, and are subsequently at risk for devastating psychological consequences, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and substance abuse. Despite this acknowledgement, no evidenced-based treatment protocols have been identified to help survivors heal from these overlapping traumas. This gap is particularly acute in low resource settings that frequently have the highest burden of trafficked individuals and, at the same time, lack specialized mental health services.

We have an ethical and a public health imperative to address this shortcoming. Towards this end, we propose to rigorously evaluate a yoga based psycho-social intervention for women and girls1 who have experienced human trafficking in Uganda. Positive findings would be a game- changer for the field, identifying an innovative and cost-effective strategy to promote resilience and psychological wellbeing for survivors, as well as lowering their risk of future re-victimization.

Innovations

Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years, however, only recently has it come into focus as a promising treatment to improve mental health among individuals affected by trauma. Research demonstrates that aspects of yoga (and other somatic interventions) can release stress-reducing neurotransmitters and help down regulate the sympathetic nervous system—the body’s “fight, flight, or freeze” response which, when over-activated, can trigger extreme (and sustained) mental distress. While this evidence is encouraging, most studies have taken place in high income contexts and none have specifically focused on survivors of human trafficking.

Healing and Resilience Through Yoga (Hart Yoga) brings trauma-theory specifically to human trafficking—a fundamentally exploitative and violent practice that strips individuals of their agency and self-determination. For women and girls, human trafficking may also intensify their experience of institutionalized trauma based on systemic bias and discrimination against their gender (and intersecting) identities. These overlapping traumatic experiences can lead to profound ruptures in survivors’ sense of dignity and selfhood, ability to trust others, and connection to their physical bodies.

Hart Yoga directly addresses these fissures by promoting self-directed, intentional movement in an environment explicitly designed to promote safety, trust, and interpersonal connections. As such, it has the potential to make unique contributions to existing psycho-social services for women and girls who have experienced human trafficking.

Hart Yoga is designed around four core innovations:

Survivor-centered. Hart Yoga is rooted in feminist and trauma-informed principles emphasizing safe space, individual power, and a balance between self and collective care. This creates the conditions for women and girls to be center of their own healing—a critical component for quality programming that is often lacking in top-down approaches. Once learned, participants can carry yoga forward as a self-practice for life, without requiring a trained facilitator or external resources.
Low-tech. The program is facilitated by non-clinical staff, making it viable for settings with limited mental health practitioners. This enhancement presents exciting opportunities for scalability and reach, an important consideration given the high prevalence of trafficked women and girls worldwide.
Learning approach. Hart Yoga integrates a robust learning and evaluation component to ensure experiences and outcomes are rigorously captured, and that participant feedback informs program refinements in real-time. This sets the groundwork for developing an evidenced-based approach to trauma-healing specifically designed for survivors of human trafficking in low-resource contexts.
Resilience focused. Ultimately Hart Yoga seeks to create a foundation for holistic healing and life-long resilience (including physical, psychological, and social aspects), rather than pathologizing trauma and narrowly focusing on mental health symptoms.

Details

Hart Yoga was first developed in Uganda in 2016 in partnership with Willow International (http://willowintl.org/about/) and has been piloted with residents of Willow’s safe houses—all of whom are survivors of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and/or labor.

Aim

To create a nurturing environment where women and girls that have survived human trafficking can reconnect with their inner resilience, build a supportive community, and overcome the psychological effects of trauma.

Structure

Hart Yoga is group-based and involves 12 one-hour sessions with additional take- home activities, organized around three primary themes: Grounding (connection, trust), Understanding (root causes, acceptance), and Integration (balanced effort, collective strengths). It is facilitated by a yoga teacher trained in trauma-sensitive practice.

Content

The curriculum integrates physical yoga poses alongside breathwork, positive affirmations, visualizations, and short discussions designed to promote comprehensive healing and disrupt future patterns of re-victimization. Specific mechanisms hypothesized to facilitate these shifts include cultivating embodiment and awareness of physical sensations, relieving muscular tension, emphasizing individual choice and agency, and creating new sources of social support, among others.

Pilot Results

In 2017 we conducted a pilot evaluation of Hart Yoga with a cohort of eleven adolescent girls (aged 15-20). Findings suggested that the program is culturally resonant in Uganda and feasible to implement within a safe house setting. In addition, pre-post data showed improvement across ten self-reported indicators for depression, as well as self-rated perceptions of self- esteem and body image. Average attendance among the cohort was high (72%). These initial results are promising and merit further exploration through a more rigorous assessment.

Collaborations

Hart Yoga is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort that includes Willow International and expert consultants, clinicians and academics specializing in human trafficking, mental health, violence against women and girls, program evaluation, and trauma-sensitive yoga practice.

While men and boys are also affected by human trafficking, Hart Yoga explicitly focuses on women and girls due to the intersections they commonly experience between trafficking, sexual and physical violence, and gender-based disadvantages in other domains.

~ If you are interested in learning more about the work Sophie does with Hart Yoga please email Sophie Namy at sophienamy@gmail.com ~