New Book Alert: On June 7, 2025, we spoke to Sheikh Hasina over the phone. Almost a year had passed since she fled Bangladesh and came to India and we wanted to know what she felt about Bangladesh without her in power. Hasina told us what she thought about the July Revolution and

Congratulations, Ghosh babu! All the best. Looking forward to it

End of 🧵

#19 A word of caution: What works for you may not work for other people. For them, some other techniques may. Also, yoga teachers must become aware of the implications of what they say and do, and the speed and intensity of their methods and the effect it might have on people.

#18 Trauma is a fact of life, as Peter Levine says, but it doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Seek safety, connect with others, and feel your feelings. Yoga can be one of the ways to do so.

#17 He says, “Yoga is our first access into the felt sense of the body, and staying with strong sensation, which is key to healing by releasing old trauma imprints."

#16 Peter Levine, who pioneered the concept of somatic experiencing, also says that yoga has been shown extensively to be very effective with trauma because it helps move emotions out of the body.

#15 Doing yoga in groups may activate the mirror neuron system of the brain, which is a system damaged by trauma. So, practising yoga and meditation in groups might give people a deeper sense of belonging.

#14 Studies show that after regular yoga, the areas of the brain involving self-awareness get activated, and those are the areas that get locked out by trauma and that are needed in order to heal it. Mainstream medicine and psychiatry aren’t aware of the full potential of yoga.

# 13 Yoga goes directly to sensing, befriending the body. "You become comfortable in your own skin. Yoga opens you up to feeling every aspect of your body’s sensations. It’s a gentle, safe way for people to befriend their bodies, where the trauma of the past is stored," he says.

# 12 Bessel van der Kolk says triggers make us uptight and frightened about what we’re feeling inside. "When you slow down your breathing with yoga, you can increase your heart rate variability, decreasing stress."

# 11 It is in this context that a mind-body approach can help us heal from trauma more effectively. And yoga is one of the better tools that can do the trick.

# 10 Talking and knowing what happened and being able to articulate it (psychotherapy and other such remedies) is an essential part of treatment, but the more important aspect is getting us back in our bodies.

# 9 We actually respond to unfinished business. That’s what perceived threats do to us. Sustained exposure to trauma makes us hypervigilant, ultra-sensitive and difficult to connect with.

# 8 If we were traumatised by gunshots being fired around us, or family violence that involved throwing down utensils, our bodies, which also include our brains, respond disproportionately to similar sounds with defences available to us.

# 7 Trauma is also a somatic issue. It means we may need a naturalistic, neurobiological approach to healing. When we’re triggered, it manifests in our physiological changes: heartbeats, breathing, muscle tightening-depending on whether we fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

#6 Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote the best-selling book The Body Keeps the Score, says, "Trauma is actually the residue from the past as it settles into your body. It’s located inside your own skin."

# 5 For the longest time, we thought of only our minds when we thought of trauma. But emerging research shows that even when our minds forget—forgetting difficult memories is part of its primary job of protecting ourselves—our body does not.

# 4 Instead of stopping to isolate more or taking feedback constructively, you don’t apply for a promotion or a salary raise because you already believe you won’t get either. You miss out on much-deserved career and personal growth.

# 3 Let's understand this phenomenon with everyday examples. If you felt rejected or abandoned many years ago, an office group going out to party without you can trigger you into defensiveness. Or even a mild criticism from your boss can do the same.