Yoga North West Coast Tasmania

Hi I’m Sarah, Welcome to the Ujjayi Yoga community. I love sharing embodiment practices, holding space, learning, evolving, and laughing. I established Ujjayi Yoga Tasmania in 2018 in response to a lack of services in Tasmania offering body-based therapies for people healing from the grief and hurt of trauma. Combining 20+ years of yoga experience and somatic bodywork training, with a background of working with people impacted by trauma in the community sector, I’ve authentically built Ujjayi Yoga into a centre for healing, growth, joy and empowerment, offering programs and a skill set unique to Tasmania.

My work in understanding and healing trauma is informed by clinical best practice in Western therapeutic treatments, and the ancient wisdom and knowledge of the body yoga has passed down through the ages. I’m inspired to help people connect to their bodies and to themselves; this isn’t always an easy, perfect or pretty process, there is a lot of nuance in the holding of space for healing trauma, and I feel humbled and awed to be trusted in this space. I aim to bring the best of what I’ve learnt to Ujjayi and share my knowledge of what really works to help people feel safe, develop authentic connections and restore.

Developed by Dr. Peter Lavine, Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a pioneering body-orientated therapeutic modality for healing trauma. Based in the knowledge that trauma is fundamentally an experience of the body (specifically the nervous system), the stuckness of the system in a shock or survival mode, SE helps people cultivate their own unique and innate ability to recognise, feel and release the trapped trauma.

In a safe environment, with the guidance of a skilled practitioner, SE can help you safely connect to your body and self, get to know your patterns of experience, develop resources for regulation and create new experiences. When ready, SE supports the release of trapped survival energy without overwhelm and intolerance for the sensation to restore the goodness of the nervous system and self.

SE can be a very gentle form of therapy, guided by the individual and does not require talking directly about the traumatic events. It may help restore a sense of aliveness, relaxation and wholeness in the aftermath of trauma or after periods of chronic stress.

Every Somatic Experiencing session is unique to the individual and is guided by the wisdom and innate experiences of your own body and self, as well as the skills of the SE Practitioner to help you reach a new experience and trauma resolution.

As I’ve come to understand it, yoga is a practice that can help prepare us for life and repair when there is rupture. At Ujjayi I offer trauma informed yoga to support us to prepare and repair. 

With its roots firmly in India, Yoga has a long and rich history dating back thousands of years that teaches the practitioner the skills needed to live a present and healthy life.

Whilst practices have evolved over the years, some core features of a yoga practice remain; breathwork, movement and form of the body, meditations and upholding ethical values – all of which become valuable in the healing trauma journey.

Through modern science and research, we know now that the nervous system and human experience can be greatly soothed and regulated by breathwork, mindfulness, and gentle movements or exercises. As Yoga incorporates such practices, it has become a powerful tool for recovery and healing.

At Ujjayi Yoga we share therapeutic yoga to help you:

• Re/connect to your body, felt sensations and experiences
• Create effective and meaningful resources for regulation
• Promote balancing the nervous system and help us to move our experiences inside our windrow of tolerance.

These practices, whether shared in a group or private therapeutic sessions, follow the principles of sharing trauma-informed yoga which supports the practitioner to safely connect with themselves to know that they have a body; and to create choice and offer guidance to help explore how the practitioner can create regulating and restorative experiences for themselves.

You can expect to be gently guided towards the practices of movement, breathwork and body awareness with clear and simple descriptions and visual cues. Everything in the trauma-informed yoga room is a choice and invitation, it’s not about flexibility or fitness, but about the experience of being in your body. We won’t (very unlikely anyhow) be standing on our heads and contorting ourselves into knots, the practice is more about finding comfort and regulation and that is usually found in the simple and the gentle.

At Ujjayi we have lots of ideas and tips on how you can get the most out of your yoga practice; whilst also creating space for all our different experiences and allowing those experiences to be explored at our own pace in our own way.