This is the fourth interview in an ongoing series called “At Attention, At Peace”; a conversation among students, teachers and officials in the military about the role of yoga in addressing PTSD. Click here to read parts one, two, three, five and six. To subscribe to the series, email ‘subscribe’ to [email protected] and receive links to a new interview each week

Annie Okerlin, RYT, is the owner of Yogani Studios, Tampa, Florida, and the president and founder of the Exalted Warrior Foundation.

Since March of 2006, Annie and the EWF instructors have implemented an adaptive yoga program throughout major military medical and veterans’ hospital facilities nationwide.

Annie designed the program to support wounded populations, including amputees, burn victims, and those with orthopedic poly-trauma, traumatic brain and spinal-cord injuries, PTSD and depression. She is currently pursuing certification as an iRest® teacher.

In this interview, she shares her experience coordinating with VA hospitals and medical facilities, the hidden structure inside of any healing community and how seemingly debilitating physical wounds can transform the spirit.

Full Interview

Lilly: Can you say a little bit about the process of collaborating with the VA? How did that start and what has that process has been like?

Annie: We started at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is actually no longer, it’s now Bethesda Navy Medical Center. That’s always been our calling card and it’s a big card to pull. Because of our president, who is a Rear Admiral ex-Navy SEAL, we had an extremely strong, supportive military connection. Still, when we approached the James Haley VA here in Tampa, which is the third-largest polytrauma center in the country, they were reticent. So, we asked what we could do to help the staff and the guys. When we described the work we had been doing at Walter Reed and shared some of the research and findings, bit by bit, they came around.

So, what started as one class a week in the transition unit has become four classes a week. We’ve reached the inpatients, the outpatients, and the spinal-cord injury guys, and the psycho-social rehabilitation and reintegration center.

Last Thursday, I had a guy come in from about 45 minutes away, an older gentleman, a Vietnam veteran who doesn’t really associate with other veterans much. I introduced him to another student of ours, a very vocal and involved Vietnam vet and it was like the two of them fell  in love. Since last Thursday this new student has sent me five emails just to tell me what an amazing day he had. He’s just so liberated in the knowledge that he has a community to reach out to.

That’s what it’s all about, is creating that community to help the reintegration process, to welcome them home, and to help pull them out from whatever space they might be stuck in as they re-find their feet. For me, yoga does that. It’s community, it’s support, it’s stability, and I feel very strongly that that sense of community can help anybody, but especially the veterans, wounded or not.

Lilly:  How would you define yoga in terms of its relevance to those returning from war? And has your definition changed in any way since starting this work?

That’s what it’s all about, is creating that community to help the reintegration process, to welcome them home, and to help pull them out from whatever space they might be stuck in as they re-find their feet. For me, yoga does that. It’s community, it’s support, it’s stability, and I feel very strongly that that sense of community can help anybody, but especially the veterans, wounded or not.

Annie: When working with a wounded veteran, (and I bracket that as seen and unseen injuries), if you are giving someone the tools to find and maintain ease in their own body and their mind—that’s yoga.

Lilly: What do you think are some of the biggest barriers right now, cultural, logistical or otherwise, to yoga being more integrated into the military? I understand that you’ve had a really positive relationship with the VA, but what would you like to see more of and what do you see as the main hurdles right now?

Annie: I think that because the ship of military and medical VA facilities is so big, it takes such a long time to turn it. However, I feel strongly that the awareness is there. Nobody I’ve ever met or worked with in these places has said “We want all of these people to be addicted to pain pills and sleep medicine.” People want to help. But I think there’s a stigma of yoga still, in the world and the United States, even though 23 million people do yoga now.

What’s hard is that there are some quacks out there who have messed up the ability for well-meaning, well-trained, well-certified people to come in and say “We’re a community resource, make use of us.” And everybody wants money.  That’s something that we’ve done that kind of come back to bite us occasionally. But we’ve donated our program into the facilities. All of them. Even into the Marine Corps Wounded Warrior detachments that were supposed to be in by the end of 2013. All of them.

We pay the teacher, but we don’t go to the military or the government for the money. That takes all the paperwork, red-tape nightmare out of it for the facility. We just need them to provide assent.

When working with a wounded veteran, (and I bracket that as seen and unseen injuries), if you are giving someone the tools to find and maintain ease in their own body and their mind; that’s yoga.

We were given a donation by a guy in San Antonio who wanted us to harness all of the veteran programming in San Antonio, because they have a huge base and a huge military hospital. They harnessed all of the small groups to form an umbrella group called the Triad Foundation.

Basically, all of the smaller groups could focus on their work instead of five different organizations trying to figure out how to afford a secretary. It was such a brilliant idea, and I’ve talked to a bunch of the guys down here and suggested that we do something like that. I think people really want to protect their niche, and I think coming at it from a yogi’s perspective I say “No! It’s community we need, let’s start creating community for our veterans to come back to!”

The other big thing that we’re working with, is getting the Military Mind-Body Health Consortium together, where we create a clearing-house certification board where the military or the VA can call us and request a yoga teacher, and we will have vetted these people or they will have done a training that we agree with. That’s the hope.

Lilly: Currently how many facilities is the Exalted Warrior Foundation bringing programs into?

Annie: We’re in nine different facilities, and up to about 20 classes a week throughout them all.

Lilly: So where are all of the facilities?

Nobody I’ve ever met or worked with in these places has said “We want all of these people to be addicted to pain pills and sleep medicine.” People want to help.

Annie– We’ve got four classes in Tampa. There are more classes in Bethesda. We have one class a week at the Brooklyn VA and we are supporting 2 classes a week with a teacher in San Diego. Last year, we were mandated by the Marine Corps to be in all of the Wounded Warrior detachments in the country. We’re also in Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia Beach.
Lilly: How has the mission statement of Exalted Warriors changed since you’ve started?

Annie: Our mission statement has pretty much remained the same: bringing adaptive yoga to wounded military members, veterans who suffer from both seen and unseen injuries. What’s kind of morphed is our idea of who we can consider a wounded soldier, a wounded veteran. The population is becoming so vast.

A lot of what we do is incorporate the caregiver into the class by giving them a period of time for their own practice, as well as giving them time to work with their patient. So they have more tools in their tool belt. It’s very important because some of these people are going to be with these patients on wards for the rest of their lives.

In Tampa we’re really mixed, mostly because we have the resources. We have guys that vary from never going to get out of their wheelchair, very limited communicative skills, to, say, a guy with a brain injury, still in the hospital, just getting stabilized, maybe preparing for more surgery, compared to a guy in transition unit, preparing to live by himself.

Lilly: Are you structuring the classes differently for each population? What varies and what remains the same?

Annie: It’s consistently a regular yoga class that we’re teaching. It’s a gentle yoga class but I amp it up a bit, because most of these guys are young and strong, or they were strong prior to injury, so they like to feel the challenge. That’s what brings them back. Usually they expect yoga to be boring. They’ll be like, “Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, but yoga is for sissies.” So, I’m like, “Come in and do the Marine Corps abdominal championships like we do at Walter Reed and then tell me how sissy this is!”

Because it’s important for me to develop the relationships not only with the participants but with the therapists as well, we’ll generally have a doctor or psychologist in the room with us. I go in early and shake hands and hang out, and if there are students who are not shaking hands or if they’re not maintaining eye-contact, I will check in with the therapist and ask what’s going on.

A lot of the time she’ll say that they haven’t done brain scans yet, they’re assuming at that stage that if there is PTSD, there is probably a traumatic brain injury, so if we could test thing like the vestibular system, namely balance, it would be helpful.

A lot of things the guys can cheat their way around on, but balance is huge. So, keeping them in the chair, we stand up, we do a couple of balance poses. Doing tree pose you can make a grown man fall over in 10 seconds. So I work really closely with the therapists, asking what they need to see, what can I do, what do I need to know going in. It’s a really nice relationship.

Our mission statement has pretty much remained the same: bringing adaptive yoga to wounded military members, veterans who suffer from both seen and unseen injuries. What’s kind of morphed is our idea of who we can consider a wounded soldier, a wounded veteran. The population is becoming so vast.

 On Wednesday, we have the PRRC, which is the Psycho-Social Rehabilitation and Reintegration Center. These are all veterans, out of the military, from all different wars. We have a Korean war vet, all the way to a guy who’s been home for three months. The whole gamut. A lot of guys have been sent to this day-clinic. There’s a lot of heaviness and a lot of psychological issues, PTSD not necessarily being the only one. We do the regular gentle class, but I end it early and we do a long yoga nidra, a long deep-relaxation meditation. We talk a lot about why yoga is great for understanding your habit patterns. If you see yourself coming into a behavior which is not conducive or not necessary, you find your breath, you do the best you can to ride through it with the least destructive behavior.

Lilly: What is the essential value of yoga, in your opinion?

Annie: I would say self-awareness. And from the yoga-Nidra perspective—learning the self. The idea of allowance is also very important. One of the reasons we were so successful at Walter Reed was that we were offering an alternative workout with no goal orientation. So when you’re trying to rehab someone’s leg or a residual limb if you’re working with an amputee, there’s all these goals that have to be met and it’s always about the next step. But my goal is just for them to feel good, to feel better than when they came in. They don’t necessarily know what it feels like to feel good. I’ll have someone who has been in a wheelchair for six months try backbends using a block for support, or someone who has had his legs amputated at the knee try hip-flexors with sandbags. So, I think, no matter who you are, yoga is comfort self-awareness and ease.

Usually they expect yoga to be boring. They’ll be like, “Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, but yoga is for sissies.” So, I’m like, “Come in and do the Marine Corps abdominal championships like we do at Walter Reed and then tell me how sissy this is!

Lilly: Do you have one student in particular who sticks out in your mind?

Annie: One, named Joell Trivera, who is considered the third most traumatically injured soldier yet. He was stepping into a humvee, covering a shift for one of his friends. He got a really bad feeling and looked down the street to see an RPG coming right at the vehicle. The vehicle was blown up. He was thrown, his right leg was taken off, and the three other guys in the vehicle were killed instantly. He had third-degree burns over 60 percent of his body. He lost his eyes, his eyelids, and most of the skin on his face. His jaw was cracked and shattered. He had massive skull penetration, meaning that it was blown off. Thankfully, there’s no indication of even a minor brain injury, which is unbelievable.

Joel in Warrior I

He’s blind, he’s an amputee, he’s lost most of the fingers on the one hand, and is probably going to lose the fingers on the other hand. He’s had 36 surgeries, has at least another 20 more to go. He needed a new skull plate, to round out the shape of his head. He had eyelids sewn in, so he could blink. And he’s the lightest, most vibrantly alive, positive person I’ve ever met. He now lives in Tampa. He travels a lot. He’s a motivational speaker, and he really embodies what I realized early on in this process. I don’t think I would be graceful as these guys. He is the triumph of the human spirit.

So when you’re trying to rehab someone’s leg or a residual limb if you’re working with an amputee, there’s all these goals that have to be met and it’s always about the next step. But my goal is just for them to feel good, to feel better than when they came in. 

Another friend of mine is a double above-the-knee amputee, about 33 and a Navy SEAL. He is now the top two or three seed in the world for adaptive Nordic skiing. He’s going to the Olympics in Russia. He’s just a badass. There’s a young gentleman at the Balboa program, I think a double below-the-knee amputee, he’s training to climb Kilimanjaro. And there are thousands and thousands of stories like that.

Lilly: What would you like to see in a book about yoga and veterans? What would be interesting or useful both within this tight-knit community of veterans and people in the military, and outside, such as yoga practitioners who might have never met a veteran?

Annie: There’s a lot of judgment with war, and I think people are looking at it as just thats- war- and overlooking the human beings who fought it.

I want to see more people, everybody, not just the yoga community, really aware that healing doesn’t have to be through yoga, or playing guitar, or poetry, or anything specific like that. It can be knowing that your community is there for you. As a culture I think we’ve gotten very far away from that.

There’s a lot of judgment with war, and I think people are looking at it as just that, war, and overlooking the human beings who fought it. 

~

Editor: Kate Bartolotta

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