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Purusha and the power of parallel agency in TCTSY or Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga

Writer's picture: Kendra BooneKendra Boone


The wise one is not deluded about this.

Physical sensations, truly, Arjuna,

Causing cold, heat, pleasure, or pain,

Come and go and are impermanent.

So, manage to endure them, Arjuna

This, the embodied Self, is eternally indestructible

In the body of all, Arjuna.

Therefore, you should not mourn

For any being.

The Bhagavad Gita, 2.11-2.30


As a TCTSY or Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive yoga facilitator, there are 5 core principles of the TCTSY methodology to adhere by. TCTSY is an evidence-based intervention (EBI) for complex trauma and PTSD.

In this paper, I will explore the principle of a shared authentic experience. TCTSY facilitators enter into the experience of the yoga practice jointly with particicpants in the hope that this will enable power sharing and the building of a safe relationship.


What is the science and spirituality inside the ‘healing’ within the shared authentic experience of the TCTSY relationship? This blog paper endeavours to widen this lens of understanding through the lens of the koshas or pancha maya model from the Taittiriya Upanishads.



Let's explore the kosha’s as described from its source in the Upanishads, the 5 inseparable but woven layers of self, and dive into what exactly is this ‘healing force that we share, that exists as we step into this moment together in hope for embodiment.





The Kosha’s and subversion

As the ancients noticed, human experience expresses itself on a vast, complex, multidimensional field characterized by change. These woven layers of self that overlap and interpenetrate the others, reflect an individual’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual beingness and hold the imprints (samskara) of life's experiences. Upanishadic and Western models of the human system recognise that each pranic layer (Frawley 1999) carries the potential to affect and be affected by each of the other layers and come to experience the innermost essence of who we are—purusha, that which connects us all as pure unchanging awareness. Is this what we feel and share in TCTSY as we orient ourselves through body shapes to the body’s felt experience?


In healing developmental trauma, we are feeling into boundaries broken and frozen in time and matter. We are feeling into the embodiment of self-preservation. Boundaries of my senses, my skin, my breath, my thoughts and heart. Survival boundaries in lock down. From the gross, annamaya sensations born out of earth, lies the seat of all experiences of interoception, through to the pranamaya, where the winds of life force are carried by breath to the mind's subtle nadi’s. Sensations arise and fall away in awareness. Prana, like fire igniting manomaya. Lightness and heaviness of the guna’s manifest. Chakras come alive, igniting psychological thresholds.

According to yoga’s subtle library, every cell, tissue, organ and system are made to function independently and in coordination with the whole constitution, in relation, and according to the environment around. And so vijnanomaya wakes up, and as the witness blinks an eye, choice is regained and feels down into the earth of sensations and memories, grounding into a safe, regulated nervous system. Anandamaya awaits in the curtain call as joy and connection flourish in love.


And when two people in a room have a body, what binds them in relation?


ANNAMAYA KOSHA

The first connection of kinesthetic empathy and embodied simulation.

From the time a TCTSY session begins we are relating and forming relationships. We experience the ‘other’ through the lens of our own experience. Survivors of trauma are hypersensitive to feelings, often showing some reaction to initial contact. Is it our nervous systems surviving or synchronizing? The exploration of the intersubjective field is open, whilst any narrative is rested into present centred interoception. Can we sense what kosha the participant is in, and their attachment boundary? Holding space for the felt sense of these questions, begins the practice of present centred awareness and acceptance.

The sharing of power. Does the participant feel us doing this or just feel something of me inside them? Or nothing and everything? Holding space for the ‘intelligent not knowing’ and the inner space for the other to feel felt by us.


The prevalence of body countertransference may not be well known

(although therapists in one study reported experiencing psychological countertransference in 80 percent of sessions), however, mechanisms of nonverbal communication suggest that even yoga therapists and TCTSY facilitators who focus strictly on physical practice—without discussing the participant’s story—may notice strong internal responses because they are resonating with their clients' somatic experience.

The blurry, fragile felt sense of boundaries can appear to differentiate the ‘us’ from the ‘we’, and with practice and relationship this body transference where I feel you in me and you feel me in you has a shared felt sense.


As we explore movement in our bodies together, Yoga invites us to feel what’s under our stories into the sensate experience of Now, making contact with samskara, life’s frozen imprints. A shared authentic experience that’s intimate and whole, safe and authentic. Untouchable but shared in human suffering. We follow our own prana that’s one and the same. We feel there's so much more than our personalities alone and connect with arising sensations that guide our body shapes. Unearthing the tightness, emptiness, pain and fear. Pulling the distance of our lives together into the present. This moment. We can move.


Judith Herman believes there is no such thing as neutral interaction with a trauma survivor, every interaction with survivors is either harmful or healing. So, if there’s no feeling of safety in a therapeutic relationship, there’s only a feeling of hurt.

Is there magic in being PRESENT together at the same time?

Being practised in mindfulness as facilitators, being able to put our own stuff aside and step into being authentic. But what is this? Exploring this space of intrapersonal and interpersonal attunement. Being the witnesser and space holder creates profound healing.


Interoception and the dance of mirror neurons alight. As David Emerson says


“Interoception is the experience of our sentient self. It is being aware of what is going on within the boundary of our own skin, the visceral experience of feeling something within the body, maybe a muscle contracting or stomach growling or the effect of our mood and emotions. It is awareness and a sense of being “me”.


Neurons appear, demanding a nonverbal response, by which our body resonance and countertransference become alive. The abandoned body begins to feel again, denying and welcoming the experience in tango.

As the expression of prana comes into our bodies, we begin to trust the pull of prana coming from the foundation of sensory softening and landing, and the natural turning towards what nourishment feels like. Again, also holding space for the felt sense of ‘intelligent not knowing’, allows for clear resonance and body sensing.


The challenge of staying embodied together, and normalizing experiences whilst more challenging experiences may arise, depends on the strength of the therapeutic relationship and ability to build our capacity for presencing. A reflection of the importance of having a daily breath centred personal yoga practice arises. Thomas Hubel speaks of this as attunement, a skill requiring practice. To practice “consciously resting in inner space”. Space being a conscious experience that is lost in trauma. If our nervous systems are still digesting our past, we are unable to feel this fertile attunement, and we may project our interior condition onto the participant. And in tuning to the collective energy of a group, and perhaps the ghost of the collective trauma, it’s wise to have in place an interior hygiene practice to care for the relational space itself.



PRANAMAYA KOSHA – Harnessing the pranic therapeutic presence.

Our ability to be present as facilitators has significance for us on many levels ; self-care, client care and the therapeutic relationship, and the role of breath awareness can be a wonderful tool to anchor and ally, once foundations are in place. When a facilitator can anchor and rest into the breath, we can counter the pull of the distracted mind. It can become a neutral interoceptive landscape where the koshas are felt unifying - even though they are already one.

Therapeutic presence is understood to be the bringing of our whole self into the encounter with a participant. It means being grounded yet open. In this field of openness neurobiologist Daniel J. Siegel describes it as


the ways we take in the internal worlds of others and allow them to shape who are in the moment.


He suggests that these processes take place in the brain and are not necessarily intentional:


At times we may automatically soak in the internal states of others as we pick up their signals and have internal shifts in our own state.


This suggests that as our breathing rhythm changes so may our participants, and we may also be attuning to our participants. He states that attunement activates “resonance circuits,” which stem from mirror neuron activity. “This is how we come to resonate physiologically with others—how our respiration, blood pressure, and heart rate can rise and fall in sync with another's internal state.”

It is interesting to reflect on how we might sense these breathing patterns and move from these feelings. Because mindful breathing can dramatically affect our ability to be fully present, it can help us get back on board if we find our attention wandering off. By increasing our awareness of breathing during facilitation, we enhance our capacity for insight and balanced choice making.


Researchers have concluded that body countertransference can be reliably measured, and the results appear to support Rothschild's (2006) resolve that


therapists need to remain in their own chairs and that if therapists are to be of any help, they need, 'to maintain a sense of calm detachment”.


Sensing the others nervous system; an incomplete or interrupted self-protective response may present itself in some way in survivors physiology. This can show up as anxiety, fatigue, poor memory, uncontrolled emotions, pain patterns, autoimmune disorders and addictions. Even though the participant is guiding their own practicing making choices, the facilitator is in the dance of shared interoception experience. Switching back and forth or being with their own experience and at the same time sensing the participants' experience. The balance between ‘my’ experience, ‘theirs’ and ‘ours’. Holding the internal and external together? Kathy Kain speaks to this parallel agency as a sensing of the participants incomplete survival responses; disordered breathing and a body that can be in hyper or hypo arousal or collapse.


We humans require community and connection for survival, and Stephen Porges Polyvagal theory shows that when we feel safe, we can connect with others more easily as well as the outer world. So, establishing a mindful coherence, knowing what this may feel or look like is crucial in a therapeutic relationship. In the book A General Theory of Love, Richard Lannon, Fari Amini and Thomas B. Lewis explores how our brain chemistry and nervous systems are affected by our close relationships


our nervous systems are not self-contained, but rather demonstrably attuned to those around us “.


They call this state: limbic resonance. This capacity for constant, nonverbal, resonant connection with one another is an evolutionary gift from our ancestors. This suggests how natural it is for us to have embodied coherence in order to sense a pace and intuitive offering to titrate our work in TCTSY. Facilitators who recognise their own resonance to threat may be aligned to join their participants expression of threat. Recognising and welcoming this pranic flow in their body and not joining their participants, comes with personal yoga practice, and helps restore the focus to the participant.



MANOMAYA – Are you in the story?

If our goal is the fruit of the action, then we are in the story and in the suffering itself. We spend way too much time entangled in this kosha! If we can stay present in our bodies together, we’ll notice thinking naturally quietens. Can we think and feel at the same time? Manas, or mind, implies mind and body are never separate. Attaching out mental attention together with the tides of our own sensations means the body holds the goal post. But feelings and emotions are felt in the body. Discussing and sharing a participants useful interoceptive words can widen the window of presence and personalize the practice, creating opportunities for new vasanas or actions. If emotions arise, we hold the space to feel them in the body, move from them or breath with them.


Mindfulness promotes a natural healing where the change comes spontaneously by acceptance and awareness of internal experience. (Zvelc). Such an outcome is a natural by-product of accepting awareness of both pleasant and unpleasant inner experience (body sensations, affects and/or thoughts). When ‘mindful processing’ occurs with both the facilitator and participant, disturbing experiences can be processed and integrated. The therapist's embodiment of a mindful stance is crucial.


Changes that may happen during TCTSY can be called moments of encounter (Stern) which captures the participants subjective experience of a sudden ‘here and now’ change in the relational knowledge field. Kohut (1984) describes the frustrated needs of the fragmented self in the transference, as unconsciously searching for a chance to restore the Self, and a type of transference on a psycho-corporeal level, recover the experiences that were frozen in the body.

How easy it is to want results, and to recognize the sensation of our own internal struggle to feel into what is beyond the experience of manas, to feel the wider witnessing space that welcomes emotions. A gentle refocusing of the pull of the senses reopen the window of experience through choice making and taking effective action. With a disorganised inner world, a shared felt sense can give time for the body to share its experience with us,

Traumatic experiences can bypass cognitive processes in the brain and are laid down directly into the emotional centers without necessarily generating a story explaining the event. Emotions, like actions, are immediately shared; the perception of pain or grief, or of disgust experienced by others, act like the same areas of the cerebral cortex that are involved when we experience these emotions ourselves. It seems that we can understand each other's emotional experience without words, purely by observing each other's actions. If, as suggested, the communication of mirror neurons extends beyond physical actions and into the emotional realm.



VIJNANOMAYA KOSHA an awakening of shared insight

What does getting a glimpse of who you are feel like in a body? How does the truth show up in the unconscious and conscious shared stage of TCTSY? When are we really guided to move from a shared resonance? If so, when we surrender to the direction of the bell curve of feelings, the source of this resonance starts to flow. Whilst the self within the self finds the self, the shame, blame and fury can be ushered to the heart. An offering of touch to the chest, a pause of neutral compassing and maybe a breath. And somehow, intelligent life expresses itself and affirms we are not alone. But what can this feel like in TCTSY?


What ahimsa can feel like;

I feel safe because I feel warm. I can just try and that’s enough.

And what can it look like?

Slowing down.


What satya can feel like;

It’s hard to make choices but I feel lighter in my body after. When we practice together, I feel my unbroken part as a shape sometimes.

And what can it look like?

Doing my own movements.


What tapas can feel like;

Making choices gives my mind something to do and it feels open.

And what can it look like?

Getting to TCTSY each week.


What savadhaya feels like;

When I’m moving my body, it can feel as if I am getting to know myself and this feels solid.

And what can it look like?

Trying something different.



ANANDAMAYA – Purusha nourishes and integrates

As we move and breathe together in the shared authentic experience, our personal stories dissolve into unconscious right action and the air of karma shifts. The stories of how we need to respond to participants also dissolves into purusha, pure consciousness. Is this the layer that heals us?


Self-regulation and co regulation begin in this vast source of presencing, with the tune of the unknown playing. Staying connected to purusha we stay free of the pull of the participants survival based relational patterns in the relational space. Emerging as more connected to source or creator, the feeling of freedom breaks through. Feeling body as true sattvic nature, the gunas collect the swing of life’s intensity to be in the feeling of wholeness. There is really no separation.

Joseph Campbell describes it beautifully in; Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?


“It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be”.


Coming into direct relationship to purusha helps dissolve the ‘story’ related to fear of change. We help our participants and ourselves feel our true nature.


The Bhagavad Gita 2.12 describes this wholeness and embodied self;


“Truly there was never a time when I was not, nor you, nor these lords of men. And neither will there be a time when we shall cease to be. From this time onward” - Purusha has always been there/what is real are the senses not the experience.


Learning to live from the inside out and in relationship with others, the task of becoming Self arises from that healing place of human relationship. To become our uninhibited expression of our essential nature, trusting prana as a compass. A practice of learning to be with, move with, breathe with, and be reminded we are not separate, that we are not alone in our suffering. We are two people in a room having a body.

Join certifed TCTSY facilitator, Kendra Boone, to embody the experience of a shared authentic one by joining a TCTSY 8 week course that is offered several times throughout the year.


TCTSY (Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga) is an evidence-based intervention (EBI) for complex trauma and PTSD.

Offered privately or in a small closed groups in Kingston Canberra or online.

Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) is a program of the Center for Trauma and Embodiment (CFTE)


As a Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga Facilitator, I am bound by the TCTSY Guidelines for Ethical Practice. These guidelines include a committment to faclitate TCTSY in a way that stands true to the 5 core principles of the TCTSY methodology. These include;


5 core elements of TCTSY methodology

  • Invitational language

  • Choice-making

  • Present moment experience (interoception)

  • Shared authentic experience

  • Non-coercion




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Ardito, R.B. Rabellino, D. (2011). Therapeutic Alliance and Outcome of Psychotherapy: Historical Excursus, Measurements, and Prospects for Research. Frontiers in Psychology.


Bodine, E. A. (2006). The Lived Experience of Teaching Trauma Sensitive Yoga. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the graduate school of the Texas Women’s University Department of Psychology and Philosophy College of Arts and aSciences.


Chandrasekaran, Dr, N. (KYM), (2012). Principles and Practice of Yoga Therapy. A Complete Guide for Learning and Practicing Yoga Therapy. Book 1.


Dederich, D. (2012) Take Good Care of Yourself.


Duncan, A. Kain, K. (2019). The Tao of Trauma. A Practitioners Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Treatment.


Egan, J. & Carr, A. (2008). Body-centred countertransference in female trauma therapists. http://irserver.ucd.ie/bit-stream/handle/10197/5502/Countertransfer-

ence_2008x.pdf?sequence=1.

Fay, D. (2017). Attachment-Based Yoga and Meditation for Trauma Recovery. Simple safe and effective practices for therapy.


Fischman, D. (2009) The Art and Science of Dance/Movement Therapy: Life Is Dance. Chap 3 Therapeutic Relationships and Kinesthetic Empathy


Frawley, D. (1999). Yoga and Ayurveda: Self‐Healing Self‐Realization. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press.


Gerson-Miller, T. (2008) Cultivating a therapeutic presence: Inspiration from the Gita.

Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery. The aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.

Hubel, T. (2020) Healing Collective Trauma. A process for integrating our intergenerational and cultural wounds. Sounds True.

Rizzolatti, G. & Sinigaglia C. (2008). Mirrors in the brain: How our minds share actions and emotions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc

Siegel, D. (2010). The mindful therapist: A clinician's guide to mindsight and neural integration. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co.


Stone M. (2006) The analyst's body as tuning fork: embodied resonance in countertransference. The Journal of Analytic Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-5922.2006.575_1.x


Sullivan, M. B. Sullivan, Erb, M. , Schmalzl, L. Moonaz, S. Noggle Taylor, J. and Porges, S. (2018), Yoga Therapy and Polyvagal Theory: The Convergence of Traditional Wisdom and Contemporary Neuroscience for Self‐Regulation and Resilience, Front. Hum. Neurosci., https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00067


Totton, N. (2015). Embodied relating: The ground of psychotherapy. London, UK: Karnac Books.


Van Dernoot Lipsky L. Burk, C. (2018),

by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky (Author), Connie Burk (Author). Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

Zvelc G. (2012). Mindful Processing in Psychotherapy – Facilitating Natural Healing Process within Attuned Therapeutic Relationship, International Journal of Integrative Psychotherapy

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