The Fort Leavenworth Family Advocacy Program is mixing education with yoga to encourage overall wellness during the month of October.
Kathrine Pohl, victim advocate coordinator for the Family Advocacy Program, is partnering with yoga instructor Kristin DeSouza for collaborative Workshop and Workout sessions each Saturday in October during Domestic/Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Month.
At 11 a.m. each Saturday, Pohl offers domestic abuse/violence education, followed by a free yoga session led by DeSouza.
“I started yoga years ago, and I knew I wanted it to be able to help me through the mental health issues, it was such a release, and so I always knew I wanted to be able to give back somehow with it,” DeSouza said, noting that the partnership with FAP for the Workshop and Workout sessions is a perfect opportunity for her to be able to help others take care of themselves.
Pohl said the Workshop and Workout offering was designed to help make everyone in the community more aware of the facts about domestic abuse/violence and to provide options for victims, as well as assist those who want to help their friends, family and neighbors who might be experiencing domestic violence.
“We really wanted to bring people in the community together,” Pohl said. “I work primarily with victims of intimate partner violence, but we wanted to expand beyond that and provide more education to anybody in the community.”
Pohl said the FAP curriculum focuses on healthy relationships, how to identify abusive personalities, stress management, overall wellness and what to do if someone might need help.
“In order to kind of wrap everything together, it’s really about learning more about maybe some things that are happening in your life, or happening in the lives of your friends or family, and how to take care of yourself, and so that’s why we wanted to incorporate yoga as a time for the participants to take time for themselves.”
Pohl said the Workshop and Workout sessions are a great way to decompress and start the weekend off well. She said the October sessions can be attended once or every Saturday, as the educational topics work alone but also build on the past session.
DeSouza stressed that the yoga portion is meant to be welcoming, not intimidating. She encouraged participants at the Oct. 5 session to not worry about perfection, but to just try it.
“The whole point of yoga is to be able to move your body and checking in,” she said. “…If you fall down, just do it again, nobody cares.”
Pohl said the combined education-workout sessions are a chance to share information about healthy vs. unhealthy relationships with community members, whom she said will often bypass the FAP informational tables at events because it is a hard topic that people don’t want to talk about.
“They don’t want to recognize that domestic violence and domestic abuse are happening in their community,” she said.
Those concerned for their loved ones or neighbors might not know how they can approach them without pushing them away or causing them to hide even more, she said.
“That conversation, when you are identifying that your friend might be going through something really tough, is a delicate conversation because they may not be ready to face that.”
During the Oct. 5 session, Pohl offered examples of behaviors that can help indicate when someone is not a safe person to be around. She gave the DoD definitions of domestic abuse and domestic violence, but noted that while “domestic” refers to sharing a home with someone, even a short-term dating experience can fall under domestic partnership.
“When we are talking about it with clients and when we are talking about it with law enforcement, it’s really those dangerous things that are happening that aren’t OK in a relationship,” Pohl said. “They are emotionally abusive or they are threatening things like ‘if you leave me, I will kill myself,’ or ‘if you leave me, there will be repercussions, just wait,’ and that is abuse because it makes people fearful for reaching out for help. Maybe it isn’t actual physical violence, but the fear of it is still there.”
Every relationship is different, and thus, Pohl said it can be difficult to identify what abuse is if someone is trying to match it up to the definitions.
“It is a social problem; it is rooted in social values that place importance on people having power over others,” she said, “so it’s not an anger management issue … it’s about power and control in a relationship.”
Pohl stressed that the issue is not caused by poor anger management or stress, nor drugs or alcohol or mental illness, not even being provoked.
“Abuse is purposeful, deliberate behavior. It’s aimed at a specific person to gain power over that specific person.”
She said abuse victims seeking help can face many barriers, including fear of being physically injured, but they also deal with resource issues, such as lack of money. Pohl said when she educates commanders and law enforcement officers about the cycle of violence, she stresses that money can be a huge barrier — it is often one of the reasons why victims go back to their abusers or won’t leave their abusers. On top of those barriers, she said victims often have a lot of self-blame.
“When I work with victims and they are finally putting boundaries down and saying (things) like ‘No more, I’m going to go to the cops, I’m going to report this,’ we have so many conversations of ‘If I would have just done this differently or it I would have just made more money or been more supportive toward them or had the house clean when they came home, this would be fine’ … They should not be abused because of that.”
After Pohl’s educational portion, DeSouza asked participants to relax into elongated inhales and exhales as they sat on yoga mats.
“You notice when we close down the body and find stillness, our mind will take over — so without being hard on ourselves, without judging, when those thoughts arrive of ‘what I have to do later today,’ to acknowledge the thought and return to breath, return to present moment,” she told them. “If it is part of your practice to set an intention, I invite you to take these few moments to do so — so that can be an emotion, it can be just a word, it can be a full sentence, but what arrives to the front of your mind and what can we return back to throughout this practice.”
DeSouza led participants through a series of movements and poses, offering descriptions to help them know how to position their bodies and recognize the benefits received.
Near the end of the yoga session, DeSouza read an excerpt from Rebecca Campbell’s “Rise Sister Rise” and led participants in a pose involving their arms wrapped around themselves, encouraging them to give themselves the same compassion, love and kindness that they show others.
“‘It is your humanness that inspires me — your ability to choose to rise, fall after fall,’” she read from Campbell’s book. “‘It is your humanness that inspires me — the time you chose the light when it was darker than ever before. It is your humanness that inspires me — how you found the courage to let the life you had so consciously created crumble and fall. It is your humanness that inspires me — when you share your heart, cracks and all. It is your humanness that inspires me — that you tell the truth about how hard life got and how you're different from before. It is your humanness that inspires me — the day you let your old self die, in order for who you were becoming to be born. It is your humanness that inspires me — how no matter how many times you doubted it, you never stopped answering the call.’”
The next Workshop and Workout session is at 11 a.m. Oct. 12 in room 157 of the Resiliency Center, 600 Thomas Ave. To reserve a spot, call or text 913-683-2537.
For more information on the Family Advocacy Program, call 913-684-2808 or visit https://leavenworth.armymwr.com/ programs/acs/family-advocacy.
Additional information, resources and referrals can be found at Military OneSource, with related articles on domestic abuse, pet safety, abuse/neglect prevention, types of abuse, and more at https://www.militaryonesource.mil/search?s=Domestic+Abuse+Articles.
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