Evaluation of Effectiveness of a Group Yoga Intervention as Trauma Therapy for Adolescent Girls

Neuroscience evidence indicates that trauma is stored in the body, that trauma impairs the language centers found in the brain, and that emotion centers in the brain tend to override cognitive centers in the brain following trauma. Most evidence-based models to date to treat trauma using cognitive therapy, which does not fully resolve symptoms, particularly in the case of complex trauma. This evidence has led to researchers to call for alternative, body-oriented treatments that target trauma from the lowest levels of regulation up to higher levels of regulation in the brain. Yoga has been proposed as one such intervention. Recent research has investigated the benefits of yoga to treatment adult females who have experienced PTSD, but only anecdotal, descriptive, and qualitative data is available for studies of yoga with adolescents. This mixed methods study seeks to generate quantitative data demonstrating whether or not the 6-week group yoga intervention leads to decreases in general mental health and trauma-specific symptoms and qualitative data regarding the components of the intervention the participants found both helpful and unhelpful.