Holystica Yoga School

The words we choose shape how students inhabit their bodies. A soft, earthy cue can turn a stretch into a release. Let’s try weaving one of these in during your next class, especially in longer holds or transitions where students need permission to soften.

1. ”Let your feet root down, like the earth is holding you up.”
Use in grounding poses (mountain, warrior, standing balances). Shifts weight from something students do to something they receive.

2. ”Soften your grip, let your muscles hold you, not squeeze you.”
Use when students are overworking a pose. Helps them find ease and length without losing stability.

3. ”Let each breath move slow, like a wave that isn’t rushing to shore.”
Use to slow down breath, especially in pranayama or savasana. Guides them out of shallow, hurried breathing.

4. ”Let your spine bend like a branch, not stiffen like a wall.”
Use in twists or backbends. Encourages flexibility and ease over strain, movement that flows instead of forces.

5. ”As you exhale, let go of what you don’t need to carry.”
Use at the end of a pose or class. Turns the exhale into an active release, not just an out-breath.

Save this for your next class prep 💜

If you want more tips on how to use somatics in your classes comment SOMATICS and we will send you our free e-book on the topic ✨

Who knows it?

🎁 A Gift for you🎁
Welcome at Holystica! ✨

As a little thank you, we’d love to share our FREE Nervous System Workbook with you:

https://www.holysticaschool.com/assessmentmail

💛
It’s a self-inquiry assessment + practical guidance for yourself AND to help you create trauma-informed classes & spaces.

Inside the workbook you’ll explore:

• your own patterns of activation
• what truly supports you and your students/clients (and what doesn’t)
• how to build a compassionate relationship with your nervous system — and others’

Let's start this health revolution together🚀💫🌟

With love,
Vera & the Holystica Team

👉🏽PS: you find the original captions of every reel with more explanation on our Instagram:
📷.school

Why trauma-informed yoga matters💥

Yoga has the potential to be deeply healing.
But without understanding the nervous system, it can also unintentionally reinforce survival patterns.

⚡⚡Some examples:

• Holding difficult poses for a long time can teach perseverance—but for someone whose body doesn't feel safe, it may reinforce overriding pain and bodily signals.

• "Go deeper" mentality and group dynamics can encourage people to disconnect from their body's boundaries instead of listening to them.

• Fast-paced Vinyasa: for someone already living in chronic stress, constantly trying to keep up may reinforce the same urgency and hyperarousal they experience in daily life.

• Long periods of stillness in Yin Yoga can be —especially those already in a freeze response— feel threatening or overwhelming without appropriate support and cues.

• "Just breathe through it." Sometimes breathing helps. But sometimes difficult emotions or traumatic memories need to be acknowledged, titrated, and safely processed—not simply breathed through or suppressed.

• Rigid ideas about the "correct" pose can activate perfectionism, fear of failure, shame, or memories of criticism in people who grew up with conditional acceptance or harsh authority figures.

• Trying to perform poses perfectly can shift attention away from interoception—the ability to feel and trust your own body—which is one of the foundations of healing.

• Spiritual language, chanting, or surrender practices can also be activating for some people, particularly those with histories of religious trauma or coercive environments.

-------------------

👉🏽What trauma-informed yoga looks like

A trauma-informed teacher understands that there is no one-size-fits-all practice.

Instead of asking,

"How can I get students deeper into the pose?"

they ask,

"What does this nervous system need to feel safe?"

Sometimes that's movement.

Sometimes it's stillness.

Sometimes it's simply having a choice.

🎁 A Gift for you🎁
Welcome at Holystica! ✨

As a little thank you, we’d love to share our FREE Nervous System Workbook with you:

https://www.holysticaschool.com/assessmentmail

💛
It’s a self-inquiry assessment + practical guidance for yourself AND to help you create trauma-informed classes & spaces.

Inside the workbook you’ll explore:

• your own patterns of activation
• what truly supports you and your students/clients (and what doesn’t)
• how to build a compassionate relationship with your nervous system — and others’

Let's start this health revolution together🚀💫🌟

With love,
Vera & the Holystica Team

👉🏽PS: you find the original captions of every reel with more explanation on our Instagram:
📷.school

There’s a moment in every pose.
The body offers two doors.

One says push. Grip deeper. Prove something to yourself.
The other says soften, let the reach be smaller than your idea of yourself.

We almost always choose the first door.

Because softness looks like giving up.
Because somewhere we learned that yielding is the same as losing.
Nobody claps for the version of you that stopped pushing.

But the body knows what the mind forgets:
the softer shape is usually the truer one.
Not lesser, but more honest.

Off the mat, it’s the same door, dressed differently though.
The boundary spoken gently instead of proven through exhaustion.
Resting before you’ve earned it.
Saying “I don’t know” instead of armoring up with an answer.

Why is it so hard?
Because softness asks us to trust that we’re still worthy without the striving.

Hard is a habit.
Soft is a practice.

So today - in the pose, in the conversation, in the quiet decision no one will witness - try the door that doesn’t ask you to prove anything.

Not because it’s weaker.
Because it’s the one that finally lets you exhale 💜