Teaching Yoga to Vietnam Veterans Anne-Marie Schultz

AN INTERVIEW WITH DEVON DEDERICH ABOUT TEACHING YOGA TO VIETNAM VETERANS

BY ANNE-MARIE SCHULTZ

Devon Dederich (Intermediate Junior II) teaches an ongoing class for Vietnam veterans in Austin, Texas. Anne

Marie Schultz recently talked with her about her experience, how the Yoga Sutras inform her teaching of veterans, and how these classes differ from other Iyengar Yoga classes.

Anne-Marie Schultz: Good morning Devon. Thanks for taking the time to talk. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Devon Dederich: I began practicing Iyengar Yoga in 1977 and have been teaching since 1980. Clear Spring Studio opened in Austin in 1990, and I’ve been a full-time Iyengar Yoga teacher since then.

AMS: How did you first get involved with teaching the vets?

DD: With my personal history nowhere near military service, it might seem an odd choice of jobs. But that is exactly why I chose it. After that enormous Gujarat earthquake in 2001, I became interested in the topic of trauma. Mr. Iyengar offered what we came to call “The Earthquake Sequence” to help survivors. Our own national catastrophe struck here on Sept. 11 in the same year, and I learned that the New York yogis were using the same or an adapted sequence in their regular public and special classes for survivors.

Like a lot of us, I tried the sequence out, and I understood it after a fashion. I did not start using it right away, though. It was the first time I had seen any Iyengar Yoga teacher put Savasana at the beginning of a sequence. It seemed like a big departure from the norm, and it took until Geeta’s presentation at the 2010 convention in Portland for me to fully grasp what that sequence represents.

After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began and then continued, many journalists started interviewing returned soldiers, telling their stories and raising in the public consciousness the matter of traumatic brain injuries, war trauma in general, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the difficulties of readjustment to noncombat life. War trauma in all its forms was, and remains, large in the news. I thought Iyengar Yoga could be of use on many levels from the physical to the psychological to the spiritual. This idea percolated for years before I became convinced I should try to begin a class for soldiers with PTSD in Austin. two psychologists, about trauma and PTSD— what happens to the mind and body, and what treatment methods they found useful. I asked if they thought the yoga they were experiencing in class might be useful. I experimented with my practice some more, and I talked to other Iyengar Yoga teachers who had experience teaching trauma survivors of various sorts. I talked to several long-time students who are survivors of physical or psychological trauma, and I experimented with my practice some more. I also read the writings of yoga and meditation teachers from different (non-Iyengar) traditions who work entirely with trauma survivors. Despite all of this reading and discussion and background work, I’m still not an expert on the topic. But it was a beginning.

AMS: Are there any written sources you recommend?

DD: Yes! With respect to war and battle trauma, I’d read War and the Soul by Edward Tick and Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay. Regarding healing trauma in general, I think the most famous source is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Achilles in Vietnam is so well-written, it should be on everyone’s reading list anyway.

Regarding Iyengar Yoga for trauma, I recommend looking over the series of DVDs from the Portland therapeutics convention. Everything presented there was meant to raise in our minds the importance of observation and of working with all the layers of an individual— from body to mind to the subtlest self. Here was the second place I learned about using Savasana as the starting pose in a therapeutic sequence. Geeta presented it as a means to observe the student physically and psychologically; to provide a customized, supportive “cocoon” to create physical and psychological stability where there isn’t enough of it on hand, to settle anxiety, and to bring in new energy to a depleted body before beginning the practice of asana.

There are also DVDs of the Estes Park Light on Life Convention, where in several places Mr. Iyengar outlined ways of working with anxiety and depression— a large part of the PTSD picture. There has also been much written about yoga and pranayama for anxiety and depression in past issues of Yoga Rahasya and Astadala Yogamala.

And then, there is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I am very fond of Patanjali; his understanding and exposition of yoga awes me. The following sutras are the ones that most directly inform the way I think about working with these vets [using B.K.S. Iyengar’s translations]:

1.2: Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the consciousness.

1.3: then, the seer dwells in his own true splendor.

This is the basic premise of yoga. You must get the mind quiet in order to do anything else with it.

1.5: The movements of mind are fivefold. They may be cognizable or noncognizable, painful or nonpainful.

For the veterans, we can say that the painful— Prashant Iyengar says “kleshotic”— movements are strong enough that they are getting in the way of pretty much everything.

1.13: Practice is the steadfast effort to still these fluctuations.

1.15: Renunciation is the practice of detachment from desires.

Patanjali is giving us the overall strategy here. To achieve that stillness of the movements of consciousness, we have to try to become steady and quiet and to give up anything that makes us unsteady and unquiet.

Then we go from overall strategy to particular methods— tactics, since I’m working with military people. These are practices aimed directly at attaining quietness and steadiness.

1.24: …the citta may be restrained by profound meditation upon God [Purusa] and total surrender to Him.

1.32: Adherence to single-minded effort prevents the impediments to practice.

1.33: Through cultivation of friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference to pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, respectively, the consciousness becomes favorably disposed, serene, and benevolent.

1.34: Or, by maintaining the pensive state felt at the time of soft and steady exhalation and during passive retention after exhalation. A few notes from B.K.S. Iyengar:

The emotional strength in these students needs to be built up and that is what we need to work at.

No standing poses. No backbends.

All poses should be done with eyes open (including Savasana). Students can focus their eyes at any point in front or on the ceiling.

Ask the students to imagine that their eyes are located at the temples and ask them to “open” these eyes.

Do not insist on a perfect pose in the current situation.

While breathing in any asana (especially supine), ask them to breathe in such a manner that the breath touches the lateral side of the chest during inhalation.

SEQUENCE OF POSES:

Savasana Supta Baddhakonasana Supta Virasana Prasaritta Padottanasana (with head support) Uttanasana (with head support and legs spread apart). Adho Mukha Svanasana (with head support) Viparita Dandasana with the support of a chair (with head support) Sirsasana –Viparita karani Setubandha Sarvangasana Sarvangasana –Viparita karani Pranayama –Antara kumbhaka with a very short kumbaka on the inhalation

1.35: Or, by contemplating an object that helps to maintain steadiness of mind and consciousness.

1.36: Or, inner stability is gained by contemplating a luminous, sorrowless, effulgent light.

1.37: Or, by recollecting and contemplating the experiences of dream-filled or dreamless sleep during a watchful, waking state.

1.39: Or, by meditating on any desired object conducive to steadiness of consciousness.

“ After that enormous Gujarat earthquake in 2001, I became interested in the topic of trauma.”

I use the instruction given here according to my understanding of the Iyengar Yoga method. For example, to quiet the mind, Patanjali calls for a soft, pensive exhalation followed by bahya kumbhaka, a pause with the lung empty, whereas Mr. Iyengar has called for what looks like the opposite work, asking for a laterally expanding inhalation, followed by antara kumbhaka, a pause with the lungs full. How to account for this discrepancy and translate it into useful practice and teaching? First, Patanjali does not mention sequencing at all here (not until the third pada), whereas Mr. Iyengar’s Antara Kumbhaka was placed as the final element of the sequence, meaning it is not a “standalone” suggestion, as with Patanjali.

Second, Patanjali is by all accounts addressing knowledgeable practitioners, whereas Mr. Iyengar is addressing children and adults who are neither knowledgeable nor practiced. Third, Patanjali is addressing students who might be healthy and well adjusted, whereas Mr. Iyengar’s sequence addresses children and adults who have been physically bruised and psychologically shaken.

And fourth, because of those literally crushing events like the Gujarat earthquake or 9/11, I’m imagining that Mr. Iyengar’s choice of pranayama was an effort to have people leave the practice buoyed, brightened, and opened again, to give energy to continue in the face of devastating obstacles. First comes stability, then comes activity.

I made a decision not to explain much about Yama and Niyama, the ethical and moral components of Astanga Yoga. Specifically, I do not try to explain to soldiers how, when one perfects nonharming, all violence ceases in one’s presence. Not even Krishna tried to tell Arjuna that. I want to keep the work and the goals simple and not begin a politically or morally challenging discussion. I just remind people regularly, “Don’t harm yourself.” I tell them to tell themselves the truth. Pay attention, work to understand and learn, don’t be greedy, do be happy.

Let me say that no one in that room has perfect firmness or steadiness of anything. There is no aim for perfection; instead, there is the aim to be stable and comfortable. We are entirely disturbed by dualities, and there is no perfection of asana. But when we can get comfortable, the breath begins to flow naturally: full, wide, and deep.

AMS: Did you set out to work with just Vietnam vets or those from Afghanistan and Iraq as well?

to the Austin area Veterans Administration. They would decide how best to make use of my services. The local phone number I found on the vast national VA website led me by chance to a small clinic, among the smallest of several in the Austin area, which deals exclusively with trauma counseling for surviving soldiers from all wars, including the Korean War. It’s a small center, small setting. My kind of place.

The first to appear in class were Iraq and Afghanistan vets. Generally speaking, these vets are young (25 to 35 years old) and often look and act like off-duty soldiers: They are fit, even with the universal standard military complement of low back, shoulder, and knee troubles. Many continue to work out with martial arts, lifting weights, and running. These vets could do Mr. Iyengar’s “Earthquake Sequence,” but with modifications for low backs, knees, shoulders, and more than average stiffness.

Vietnam vets began showing up a few months later, after I took time to meet with several therapy groups to make presentations about the benefits of yoga and how it might help. Vietnam vets are different in that they are not just dealing with war trauma, but they have lived with it for almost 50 years. Thus, Vietnam vets have problems related to aging as well as war, and it is usually impossible to properly judge the primary source. I don’t know if anyone knows if there even is a primary source. These men have had (or still have) cancers, obesity, blood pressure issues, fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, joint problems, arthritis, and neuropathies— any of which could be related to ordinary life or to wartime events, including being around lots of Agent Orange. They all— really, all— walk in with knee pain, pelvis or lumbar pain, and shoulder pain. These students look like ordinary American men in their sixties, but with more walking canes and limps per capita, and one or two service dogs.

It seems that the basic age and health differences between Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan vets is large enough that they sorted themselves out in class. I wound up with the ones who needed the most physical help.

Another reason for the sorting may be that the vets from each war generation (Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq and Afghanistan) form their own separate close-knit groups. These soldiers know the geography and culture where their cohort served. They know where and when their service overlapped. They make the time to listen and relate to each other’s stories of the places and things they have seen. They wear hats and jackets bearing insignia of their battalions, divisions, service type, and years of active duty. They keep in touch with each other in and outside of the center and participate in local and national veterans

“ Vietnam vets are different in that they are not just dealing with war trauma, but they have lived with it for almost 50 years.”

associations. The enormous work of integrating experience and memory, of understanding and healing, is going on all the time in this community, including a little bit in yoga class.

AMS: What do you teach them?

DD: I am formally not allowed to ask questions or inquire into much of anything besides the usual do-you-have-injuries-ormedical-conditions questions we yoga teachers always ask. HIPPA regulations forbid the center’s staff from telling me the health histories of these people. Perhaps soldiers in particular have learned not to dwell on difficulty, and for some, this means not to speak of it, either— not aches and pains. What I can see is what I get to work with. All yoga teachers have experienced this before, but it seems particularly prevalent in this context. It is clear that many injuries are multilayered, and I have to teach knowing there are more than the usual compliment of things that I am not seeing.

During the Portland convention, Geeta spoke eloquently and forcefully on the way of working with injury and illness. The teacher needs first and foremost the ability to observe, and then the skill to respond properly to what is seen. Before specific treatment is undertaken, the first step is to provide a particular asana for the person to begin stabilizing mind and body, and reduce anxiety and discomfort. This is the stable ground that permits the student to relax the mind and body and reduce the duhkha, daurmanasya, angameijayatva, svasaprasvasa (suffering, unhappiness, unsteady limbs, and irregular breathing) discussed in Sutra I.31. Prana must be allowed to circulate and help bring nourishment and energy throughout, so that clear, focused, and full movement will be possible.

We begin with a customized Savasana to provide low-back relief, knee support, or shoulder girdle/neck support, and where possible, elevating the chest. I follow this with a guided physical, sensory, and mental relaxation, aiming for the quiet place on the interior of the self, with no active memory of the past or anticipation of the future. The ongoing experience of the present moment precludes reflection, judgment, or anticipation. And the point is not so much to learn to make perfectly still everything that is problematic— the point is first to learn to stay. (Sutra I.14: Practice becomes firmly established when it has been cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time.)

Nowadays, as this small group has persisted and has stayed intact over time, we have expanded on the original strategy of stabilization before mobilization and do what amounts to a perpetual gentle, introductory-level class, emphasizing the cultivation and maintenance of physical and mental stability, and always beginning with a guided Savasana. I have gradually introduced supported standing poses, forward bends, supported backbends, chair twists (the open sort, like Bharadvajasana and Utthita Marichyasana)— almost a normal range of asanas. Most poses get lots of support, though, and there is the usual customization or substitution of alternative poses around injuries or conditions.

Even though inversions are key to all aspects of stabilization, Sirsasana has been virtually impossible because of all the spinal, shoulder, and brain concerns these students walk in with. I do spend time with preparation for Sirsasana and getting them as upside down as I can for part of every class. Apart from Sirsasana, there are no other problems we have not found different ways to manage. We have made a primitive rope wall by running belts over or around our strong doors, which allows for nice traction and for Adho Mukha Svanasana hanging from straps.

AMS: What changes have you noticed in the people you’ve worked with over this time period?

DD: Physically, in the long run, we have been able to gain ground with basic mobility and strength. However, we are limited in the leg work by knee problems. The majority of students have torn ligaments or cartilage, and one even prepared for and recovered from a knee replacement while attending this class throughout. We are limited in shoulder work by rotator cuff tears that were not reported or repaired. Nevertheless, with support, we manage a good standard range of movement in an introductory range of asana.

But there is of course the psychological element I am looking for, interwoven with the physical. I have one gentleman who could not— or would not— lift his rib cage at all, nor could he tolerate a backbend shape of any sort, including lying supine with a single “headstand” shape and thickness of blanket laid out under his entire back trunk and a folded blanket under his head. A year and a half in, he now drapes himself over a chair in Urdhva Dhanurasana and Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana, chest open, feet supported, and legs nearly straight (knee replacement), neck relaxed, breathing easily, head hanging down, and face smiling. He says he can arch his back now because he trusts me. I’m not going to outright deny what he says, but my take is a little different. This work expressly involves providing students with an experience of stability within and without. If I can set up the circumstances with position and props and words, they still have to do the work and then

“ In terms of my own teaching, this work has pushed me to be more creative in my use of space and props and to learn to develop poses in increments.”

recognize that stability themselves, to see that safe, grounded, movement in the world is possible, even in difficult situations. I admire them for it. It’s a long haul.

For the average student, almost every pose requires some form of support, and for a variety of reasons, some of these folks may never be entirely free of those supports. In spite of that, most of the students look like regular students. Even our burly psychologist who must be present in all our classes— formally on duty in case someone needs him— has developed a rather good-looking Trikonasana. An accidental yogi.

AMS: What is the biggest thing you’ve learned from teaching this class in terms of your own practice and regular teaching?

DD: More often than not, people with trauma, maybe especially old trauma, often don’t like to talk about it; they don’t want to think of themselves or be thought of by others as someone with a problem. They might come to class because of it, but that is not the same as discussing it, maybe especially with me. Patanjali (especially explained by Vyasa) tells us in his explanation of karma in the second pada that every interaction registers on the consciousness, and what registers can be either helpful or not helpful. With some, the impact leaves wounds and scars that distort the sense of self. Some of us can see nothing but the scars; others refuse to look at them, ever. The vets at my center tell me they come to this yoga class because it helps them stretch, relax, feel, and sleep better. If they are coming for any more profound reason, they do not speak of it. We just do yoga according to their capacity, week by week, constructing a grounded, present-moment experience of stability, from which extension, expansion, and strength may arise.

I do this because I believe that repeated doses of stability, safety, relaxation, and correct movement— that is, steady practice of nonkleshotic experience— will help to dissolve the old imprints of suffering and pain. No effort is wasted.

In terms of my own teaching, this work has pushed me to be more creative in my use of space and props and to learn to develop poses in increments.

In terms of my own practice, it has caused me to think long and hard about the practical meaning of Yama and Niyama, Dharma, and karma, and how any person threads his or her way through the little and big troubles of ordinary life.

AMS: Is there anything else you would like our community to know?

DD: In Sutra I.33, Patanjali says, maitri, karuna mudita upekshanam punya apunya: “Through cultivation of friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference to pleasure and pain, virtue, and vice respectively, the consciousness becomes favorably disposed, serene, and benevolent.”

Please take the opportunities that present themselves to acknowledge veterans for their service. My view is that this gratitude is a reflection of the reverence that yogis have for all life and also of the respect and understanding we hold for Arjuna, “scorcher of the Foe” of the Pandava Clan,” not because these veterans have the same wisdom, insight, and skill as Arjuna, but because they have had the courage and intelligence to face the painful reality of their dharma, which is about the most difficult one can have. We must also remember that not everyone chose it, either. Many yogis, including myself, are antiwar, antiharm of any sort. However, the meaning of being a yogi is far bigger, broader, and deeper than letting yourself be upset at a soldier for the choice he or she made.

Also, in this highly polarized political and social climate that characterizes our country lately, it is important for our yoga community to make an effort toward evenness by finding points of intersection between ourselves and those with different lives, politics, and worldviews. Teaching yoga to veterans is one of many ways of integrating our selves as yogis into our own larger society.

Last, never imagine that you, with your long and deep education and experience in yoga and life, “understand” what anybody else has lived through. I am not sure it is even important to try, for this reason: Tsogyal Rimpoche, in a lecture on skillfully living and dying, related a quotation from Milarepa, the great Tibetan Buddhist monk. He said, “If you want to understand a man’s past lives, look at his present condition. If you want to understand a man’s future lives, look at his present actions.” Everyone— teachers and students alike— needs to see themselves and others in this present moment.

AMS: Thank you, Devon, for this interview, and for your service to the Vietnam veterans you teach on behalf of all of us.

Anne-Marie Schultz (Intermediate Junior II) teaches philosophy at Baylor University and yoga at several locations in Austin, TX. Read her blog at www.teachingphilosophyandyoga. blogspot.com.