WARRIOR
POSES
HUFFINGTON
01.13.13
“WE’RE ALL HEAD INJURIES!”
sion away from where it builds
up when you are stressed, and
focus it on the ground so you feel
more balanced and connected,”
Carnes said.
When she started at Walter
Reed, she said, she was working
with eight wounded troops with
physical and mental health injuries. Some hadn’t slept for more
than two hours at a time, for years,
she said. “They were immediately
like, ‘I can’t do this, it won’t work,
you have no idea what’s going on
in my brain.’ I’d say, ‘Just try it,
it’s helped others.’ And probably
because they were desperate —
nothing else had worked, including drugs — they did try it. And
I saw, sometimes within the first
day, they started to relax. Snoring!
They’d tell me, ‘I don’t know what
happened, but I feel better.’”
One of her patients was struggling with outbursts of violent
anger, a common effect of PTSD,
and had gotten into raging arguments with his wife. Two weeks
into regular yoga classes, he went
home one day “and his wife lit
into him and he could feel a con-
frontation coming on,” Carnes
said. “He told me that he’d taken
a deep breath and told his wife he
was going upstairs to m