090: Healing Trauma With Anissa Hudak

Content Warning: Detailed sexual assault memories and related trauma discussion

Our bodies absorb every experience we have. These experiences can manifest in our bodies mentally, emotionally, and physically. So when we suffer a traumatic event, how does that resonate in our bodies? And how can we heal from those resonating responses? I’m joined today by Yoga Therapist and Founder of the Trauma Healing Yoga Therapy Program, Anissa Hudak. Anissa and I talk about PTSD from trauma and how those memories live in us and return unbidden. Most importantly, Anissa shares how to process that trauma and how to walk a healing journey.

Anissa and I each share personal stories of sexual assault and triggered traumatic memories as ways to really dig into Anissa’s processes surrounding healing. She explains where trauma lives in the body and brain, how it might look physically, and how PTSD draws on those memories. She details the differences between yoga and yoga therapy and links the physicality of yoga to the ability to heal the body’s trauma. It’s a tough but rewarding conversation today that sheds necessary light on a topic all too familiar to us but not talked about enough.

About Anissa Hudak

Anissa’s life has been intertwined with PTSD/Trauma and the military. Not only is she the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran, she was also married to an active duty member (and Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran) for over 20 years. For 3 years, she volunteered at the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Riley, Kansas providing yoga therapy, meditation, and other holistic treatments to the soldiers, family members, and staff. After seeing others struggle, and having her own personal struggles with trauma/PTSD, she was inspired to create the Trauma Healing Yoga Therapy Program.

As a Yoga Therapist and founder of the Trauma Healing Yoga Therapy Program, she guides others in the use of effective, science based yoga therapy and other holistic techniques for the management/healing of symptoms relating to PTSD and trauma for people who want to control their PTSD - not allow it to control them.

Recently, she has focused her efforts to working with women who have been sexually traumatized to help them heal their PTSD (and other trauma related issues) with yoga therapy. As a 2x rape survivor, she intimately understand the needs these women face, and helps them navigate their healing journeys.

Anissa earned her 200 RYT, 500 RYT and was awarded her Certification in Yoga Therapy from the International Association of Yoga Therapy. Additionally, she has completed a 120 Hour YogaFit Warriors training and the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) online course through the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Currently a student with the Phoenix Rising School of Yoga Therapy, Anissa is learning another approach to utilizing yoga to help release trauma from the body. She works with people with all types of physical conditions, but specializes in working with those suffering from PTSD, TBI’s and all trauma-related issues and has been for over the past 5 years.

Contact Anissa Hudak, C-IA YT; 500 RYT

Founder of the Trauma Healing Yoga Therapy Program

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Email | LinkedIn

Resources discussed in this episode: