Peaceful Warriors: An Introduction to Using Yoga Practices for Healing Pain and Trauma within the Military and First Responder Communities

Whether you are a counselor, social worker, or therapist who works with private clients; a yoga teacher or educator who works with individuals or in groups; or a member of the military or first responder community who is looking for simple practices to help you feel better physically and mentally, this training will provide you with “snack-size” trauma-informed mindfulness and movement tools that can be immediately implemented in your practice or workplace.

Participants will:

• Gain an understanding of how individuals in these communities operate differently than the general population

• Understand how common traumas experienced by these communities may present in class or in session, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), military sexual trauma (MST), and moral injury

• Practice trauma-informed languaging

• Learn “snack-sized” trauma-informed grounding mindfulness practices, breathing techniques, movements for common physical pain and injury experienced in these communities, and meditation that can be implemented in 10-minutes or less

• Work in pairs or small groups to practice teaching the practices mentioned above

Your instructor, Alli Houseworth, is an E-RYT 500 yoga instructor, iRest Level Two teacher, Warriors at Ease certified teacher, and an educator and facilitator with over 15 years of teaching and public speaking experience. She is passionate about bringing the transformative practices of yoga, mindfulness, and meditation to the military community as a way to mitigate the effects of chronic stress and trauma.

Alli is the sister of a medically retired firefighter, daughter of an Army veteran, granddaughter of career Air Force and Army veterans, and great-granddaughter of a WWI veteran. She married her husband, an active duty Coast Guardsman, in 2014. After multiple PCS moves in rapid succession that made continuing her previous career nearly impossible, Alli found her way to yoga as a means to reduce stress and anxiety triggered by life in the military.

Alli has taught iRest meditation and adaptive yoga to soldiers in the Army Soldier Recovery Care Units (an extensive reconditioning program for soldiers suffering from visible and invisible injuries) at Schofield Barracks, Walter Reed, and Ft. Belvoir; yoga, iRest, and psycho-ed workshops on resilience and post-traumatic growth at an in-patient treatment center for substance use disorder; trauma-informed mindfulness programs to incarcerated veterans in the state of Maryland; and more.

Alli is the former executive director of Warriors at Ease and currently works as a Yoga and iRest Specialist for O2X Human Performance, a company founded by two Navy SEALS that provides customized wellness programs for public safety departments, the military, and federal agencies, and runs her own business teaching yoga, iRest meditation, and resilience workshops to the military and first responder communities who have been affected by trauma.

While the work she does can be quite heavy, Alli prides herself in her highly educational yet light and fun-loving approach.