Reflections on PTSD, Yoga, Ayurveda, Recovery and the New Promise of Psychedelics
Recently I came across a trauma training course.
Seven sessions.
Almost $3,000.
A certificate of attendance.
It promised an exploration of trauma-informed therapies including breathwork, somatic practices, NLP, visualisation and energy healing.
Like many people living with trauma, I immediately wondered,
“Could this be another piece of the puzzle?”
For more than forty years I have been searching.
Yoga.
Meditation.
Ayurveda.
Counselling.
Psychology.
Energy healing.
Breathwork.
Twelve Step recovery.
Spirituality.
More recently I have been participating in a government-funded PTSD clinical trial and following with interest the emerging work being done with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy.
These days I no longer ask,
“Which therapy is right?”
Instead I ask,
“What has each path taught me?”
Living in My Head
Looking back over my life, another pattern becomes obvious.
My professional career was in computers.
Long before computers became commonplace, my mother worked with what were then called accounting machines. She loved systems, solving problems and money. Without realising it, she introduced me to a world that eventually became my career.
I naturally followed.
Computers suited me.
Logic suited me.
Analysis suited me.
Problem solving suited me.
It was an independent career.
But it also kept me living almost entirely in my head.
Only much later did I begin to wonder whether this way of living had begun long before computers.
When I was about five months old, my older brother was hit by a truck and suffered a traumatic brain injury. His life changed forever.
Naturally, he became the centre of everyone’s attention.
My mother carried enormous guilt and responsibility for what had happened. Looking back now, I often wonder how much emotional space remained for a five-month-old baby who also needed nurturing and connection.
I don’t write this to blame my mother.
She loved us.
She did the very best she could.
She was carrying wounds of her own.
Children often inherit more than eye colour and personalities.
We inherit ways of surviving.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether I inherited a tendency to solve rather than feel.
To analyse rather than grieve.
To understand rather than simply be.
Whether yoga calls this karma, psychology calls it attachment, or neuroscience calls it learned behaviour almost doesn’t matter.
What matters is that awareness gives us the possibility of choosing something different.
The Four Survival Responses
The greatest understanding I have gained has come from recognising the four survival responses.
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Fawn.
These responses develop because they keep children safe.
The tragedy is that they often continue protecting us long after we need protecting.
The very strategy that helped us survive childhood can quietly sabotage our adult relationships.
Someone disappoints us.
We feel abandoned.
Misunderstood.
Rejected.
Taken for granted.
The present moment suddenly carries the emotional weight of the past.
The event itself might only deserve a five out of ten reaction.
Yet my body experiences it as a twelve.
Not because of today.
Because today awakens every similar memory stored beneath it.
Yoga Brought Me Back to My Body
People often assume that because I have taught yoga for decades I must have healed my trauma.
I haven’t.
Yoga has given me something far more valuable.
It has taught me to listen.
I wish I could say that noticing and directing my breathing always allows me to pause with what is happening before one of my survival strategies takes over.
It doesn’t.
Usually the survival strategy arrives first.
The critical parent is always waiting.
She doesn’t politely knock at the door.
She barges in.
She tells frightening stories.
She predicts disaster.
She convinces me I have done something terribly wrong.
Often I don’t even hear her.
Sometimes I only realise I have been triggered when I lie awake at two o’clock in the morning unable to sleep.
Sometimes I wake from disturbing dreams.
Sometimes my jaw is clenched so tightly it aches.
Sometimes my heart is racing.
Sometimes I cannot eat.
Sometimes I isolate myself without even realising I am doing it.
My body notices long before my mind does.
This is where yoga has quietly changed my life.
Not because it stops the trauma response.
But because it has taught me the language of my own body.
My breath changes.
My posture changes.
My shoulders tighten.
My stomach contracts.
My chest hardens.
Those small signals tell me something deeper is happening.
Sometimes I notice within minutes.
Sometimes hours later.
Sometimes not until days later.
But gradually my awareness has grown.
Not perfect awareness.
Simply more awareness.
Ayurveda Became Another Psychology
Yoga naturally led me into Ayurveda.
At first I thought Ayurveda was simply the sister to Yoga a nutritional system.
Instead I discovered an ancient psychology.
Rather than asking,
“What is wrong with me?”
Ayurveda asks,
“What is my nature?”
Vata.
Pitta.
Kapha.
Each of us carries a unique combination of qualities.
Some are naturally fiery.
Some are light and anxious.
Some are calm and grounded.
Understanding those qualities changed the way I viewed myself.
It also changed the way I ate.
Today I rarely ask,
“What do I feel like eating?”
Instead I ask,
“How do I want to feel after I have eaten?”
Food became another way of caring for myself.
Not another rule.
Another act of love.
Recovery Taught Me I Was Never Alone
Perhaps the greatest gift came through the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families program.
Not because it cured me.
Because it removed my isolation.
For more than forty years I spoke with therapists.
Many were kind.
Many offered useful tools.
Affirmations.
Mindfulness.
Visualisations.
Tapping.
Breathing.
These are all valuable practices.
But there were times when I simply could not use them.
By the time I realised I had been triggered, my nervous system had already transported me back to the age at which my original survival strategy developed.
People would say,
“Just breathe.”
“Use your tapping.”
“Say your affirmations.”
I understood what they meant.
But my thinking brain had already gone offline.
The frightened child had taken over.
In those moments there was no calm adult available to make sensible decisions.
This is something none of my therapists ever truly recognised.
What changed everything was walking into a room full of people who quietly said,
“I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
Not because our stories were identical.
They weren’t.
But because the feelings were.
Fear.
Shame.
Abandonment.
Confusion.
People pleasing.
Hypervigilance.
Grief.
For the first time I realised there wasn’t something uniquely wrong with me.
We exchanged phone numbers.
If I woke overwhelmed at three in the morning, someone in America might be awake.
They didn’t try to fix me.
They didn’t tell me what to do.
They simply asked,
“Would you like me just to listen, or would you like to hear my experience, strength and hope?”
Sometimes they simply sat with me while I cried.
That may be the greatest gift another human being can offer.
Not advice.
Presence.
Over time I realised something else.
Sometimes our spiritual family becomes our chosen family.
Not because we stop loving our biological family.
But because people walking the same path understand parts of us that even those closest to us cannot.
Psychedelics
So where do psychedelics fit into all this?
I honestly don’t know.
After forty years of searching, I remain curious.
Modern medicine is exploring altered states of consciousness through chemistry.
Ancient yogis explored altered states through breath.
Pranayama has influenced consciousness for thousands of years.
Meditation has quietened restless minds for thousands of years.
Chanting has interrupted repetitive thinking for thousands of years.
Are these entirely different paths?
Or are they different doorways leading towards the same place?
Perhaps psychedelics can temporarily quieten the critical parent.
Perhaps they allow buried memories to surface.
Perhaps they simply open another window through which healing becomes possible.
I don’t know.
But I do know this.
No medicine can live my life for me tomorrow morning.
No profound experience can replace the daily practice of awareness.
Healing still seems to happen one breath…
one relationship…
one conversation…
one act of kindness…
one conscious meal…
one meeting…
one yoga practice…
one surrender…
at a time.
Coming Home
After forty years I no longer believe healing is about finding the perfect therapy.
Every path has given me another piece of the puzzle.
Yoga taught me awareness.
Pranayama taught me to breathe.
Meditation taught me to witness my thoughts.
Ayurveda taught me my nature.
Recovery taught me I was never alone.
Spirituality taught me surrender.
Perhaps psychedelics will teach us something too.
I remain open.
Curious.
Hopeful.
But perhaps healing was never about becoming someone different.
Perhaps it has always been about coming home.
There is an old story about a traveller who spent a lifetime searching the world for home.
Eventually he returned to the little house where his journey had begun.
He knocked on the front door.
When the door opened…
he found himself standing inside.
Perhaps that is the real journey.
Not becoming someone new.
Simply finding our way back to the person we have always been.
