Hi friends, it's Eve here. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday. I was in a training

session a few weeks ago on teaching meditation and mindfulness in the context of folks who

have or may have experienced trauma. As human beings, unfortunately most of us will experience

trauma to some degree in our lives, but the spectrum of trauma is fast. Now I am not a

trauma specialist, so this episode is not about treating trauma. I will give some suggestions

at the end of the episode and in the show notes. Instead, I wanted to talk about the fact

that we don't know everyone's story and when it comes to teaching meditation and mindfulness,

this is really important to keep in mind and that is essentially what the training was about. As

teachers, we need to be able to recognize potential symptoms of trauma and respond accordingly and

making assumptions about somebody can actually be pretty harmful. So in the class, the trainer told

us a story about a man named Alex. Now this is not his real name, but the story really stuck with me.

Alex was in the same class as the trainer when they were both undergoing training as trauma

specialist. The trainer explained that during the class and in periods of meditation practice,

Alex was constantly moving and making noises and generally was disturbing the other participants.

The trainer noticed how much he was judging and getting annoyed with Alex. A few days into their

training, they were all asked to do an exercise called step in and step out, which is run by a trained

trauma specialist. So it's done in a safe environment as a way to help folks understand that everyone

has different backgrounds and will possibly have experienced trauma in their lives. And this is

especially the case for folks who come from historically marginalized communities. So everyone

stands in a circle and the instructor says things like, if you've ever experienced violence,

those that feel comfortable stepping forward, do so and then step back. And then other statements

like that are read out. The trainer stood in absolute silence as he witnessed Alex step forward

...