Dr. Gail Parker joins me on the podcast this week! Gail is a psychologist, yoga educator, and author of two companion books that center restorative yoga as a potent healing modality for ethnic and race-based trauma. These books are incredible and have taught me so much, which is why I wanted to share them with you. Here are a few things I learned from the books and this conversation with Gail:
- An understanding of what race-based trauma is, both from an historical perspective and from lived experience.
- How people who have experienced race-based trauma often feel like it’s their fault (and how this is so often reinforced by society).
- The ways that restorative yoga works for race-based trauma: You are working with the nervous system not the traumatic event, which teaches you how to relax, immobilize without fear, and feel safe in stillness without hypervigilance.
- The benefits of understanding your nervous system and discerning the difference between triggers and actual threats.
About Gail Parker
Gail Parker, Ph.D., C-IAYT, E-RYT 500, is an author, psychologist, and a yoga therapist educator.
She is the author of Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma and Transforming Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress with Yoga. She is the president of the Black Yoga Teachers Alliance (BYTA) Board of Directors and a faculty member in the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy.
Dr. Parker is a lifelong practitioner of yoga and is well known for her pioneering efforts to blend psychology, yoga, and meditation as effective self-care strategies that can enhance emotional balance, and contribute to the overall health and wellbeing of practitioners. She teaches yoga therapists, yoga teachers, and behavioral health professionals how to utilize Restorative Yoga to support stress reduction and recovery from ethnic and race-based traumatic stress.
Dr. Parker has appeared as a psychologist expert on local and nationally syndicated talk shows, including numerous appearances on the Oprah Show.
