When Safety Is A Privilege, Not a Choice: Yoga Therapy With Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence by Deborah King

This article was written for and published in an industry publication called Yoga Therapy Today issued by The International Association of Yoga Therapists.

The year I left my marriage, I discovered Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory, which changed my relationship to my survival and gave me a way to connect my experiences and responses. My body’s deep wisdom enabled me to survive the abuse I have endured, from child sexual abuse to IPV in various forms throughout my life. My wholeness was not something I was now returning to; it was always mine. This new approach gave me access to depths of practice even amid active trauma.

I had been trained in my many years of practicing and teaching yoga to “cultivate the opposite.” I have found since that we cannot effectively explore new possibilities until we honor the present moment’s circumstances and the nervous system responses getting us through them. I had been trained to “go against,” but learning to go toward led to my own ability to navigate leaving and continuing to heal in the aftermath.

Polyvagal theory acknowledges three main components in our instinctive survival defenses: regulation and social connection (ventral vagus nerve), activation of the sympathetic nervous system (connected to fight-or-flight response), and immobilization (the freeze/collapse response) via the dorsal vagus nerve.3 The affirmation of dorsal vagal responses as part of our survival gives those experiencing abuse a context outside of the social shame of “weakness” or “Why didn’t she leave?” or “Why didn’t they fight back?”

The misunderstanding of our dorsal vagal responses as weakness interweaves with the view that all a survivor needs to do is make an empowered choice to leave. Regardless of being physically inside or outside an abusive relationship, survivors are in an active state of survival in relation to a power differential.