Yoga can be a significant part of a sexual assault victim's recovery process one college student realized recently.
NBC News reported this week on the case of Zabie Yamasaki, a woman sexually assaulted in her senior year in college. Yamasaki used yoga as a supplement to her professional treatment but go so much more from it that she initially thought she would get.
She soon discovered that yoga was not introducing some great mind-body health benefits, she was also started to heal faster from her ordeal. Most sexually-assaulted victims become detached from their bodies but with yoga, Yamasaki started to to reconnect with her physical self. She is now recommending the exercise to other sexual assault victims.
Speaking with NBC News, Yamasaki claimed that yoga helps victims understand themselves better to heal more effectively. Instead of just giving them all standard treatments and recovery procedures, all victims should have a deeper sense of themselves, which they can get through yoga, so that they can help themselves heal as well.
"Not every survivor will heal in the same way, and we have to deeply know and understand that in order to create these multiple pathways ... for survivors to heal," she said in the NBC interview.
Yamasaki is now a certified yoga instructor, determined to help other victims as she once was. When I came up with the program, I thought maybe it will help survivors manage their anxiety and overcome depression, maybe it will be an opportunity for self-care. I really didn't know what the impact would be but I knew I had to share it," she said.
Those who have tried Yamasaki's program can attest to the benefits yoga gave them, as evidenced by the testimonials on Yamasaki's website. One survivor wrote on the instructor's website that she can finally breathe. Another said that they started to become more comfortable in her skin with yoga.
