Yoga For Healing Trauma: The Fawn Response

The word trauma has Greek origins meaning “wound”. Trauma is the detritus, wound, or scar, that is left imprinted on the nervous system after a painful event. Trauma is not only what happened to us, it is also, and perhaps more importantly, the psychosomatic memory that remains in us. Most of us are familiar with the trauma responses of fight, flight, and freeze. Yet there is a fourth trauma response called fawning, coined and pioneered by psychotherapist and complex trauma expert Pete Walker. The fawn response is a hybrid response, meaning it has two mechanisms. First, our body braces or constricts in response to something or someone that feels threatening. The second mechanism of fawning is performance. When we feel unsafe to express our full truth, a part of us will perform the yes in order to stay safe. Ultimately, fawning is the act of pleasing and appeasing people in order to avoid conflict. This occurs because somewhere along our life path we learned that it wasn’t safe to express our truth, ask questions, or disagree. Understanding fawning is a key component to understanding systemic injustice as it affects marginalized populations. The life-affirming practices shared here are grounded in Patanjali yoga and contemporary trauma theory, research, and practice. My intention is to support you in embodying an understanding of how the trauma response of fawning impacts your health, vitality, and authenticity. I hope you will benefit from the teachings shared here and that they will serve as useful tools in your day-to-day life.