Between 1986 and 2006, northern Uganda was locked in a civil conflict where the local people experienced and/or witnessed poverty, rapes, beatings, and murders. Recently, yoga has been used in therapy to treat those who have suffered trauma (Emerson, 2015). Called trauma-sensitive yoga (TSY), TSY is a form of body-based therapy where yoga movement is used as a springboard into exploring a person’s past experiences. The goal of this project is to train teachers, who have survived war in northern Uganda, to learn about and use mind/body awareness techniques, rooted in TSY, to help take care of themselves. Before the start of school, twenty teachers will participate in a 2-week mind/body awareness workshop based on TSY. Teachers will be assessed on culturally adapted well-being measures before, immediately after, and 13 weeks after the workshop. Twenty teachers wait-listed for the program will serve as the control, receiving the same measures at the same time. Differences between teacher groups on our measures will be assessed to determine the workshop’s effectiveness. If the workshop is found to be effective, we can consider extending the workshop to teachers and other professionals working in similar post-conflict regions.
