Introducing Story Asana as a Process for Healing

Trigger warning: Gender and sexual-based violence is mentioned in this piece. 

Story Asana is a daily practice that combines meditation, writing, and spoken storytelling. I started having flashbacks, and I created Story Asana to process memories that I had forgotten for many years. I had just learned how to tell stories with a company called Narativ, and I was teaching storytelling to college students looking for jobs. I loved finding my own stories. I loved teaching storytelling to other people. And I had this idea that maybe storytelling would help me process all of the emotions and stories I had hidden after I was sexually assaulted the summer after third grade.

I developed a practice of daily writing, adapted from Julia Cameron’s, The Artist’s Way. I'd been keeping journals since fourth grade. When I was thirteen and my father got sick, he accelerated my writing by telling me to write more. It was then that I began focusing on stories that happen in the world with other people. And I found that outward focus very soothing.

I took this idea that a therapist had told me, which was, “Look at your own life as if you're the narrator. You are not Carol, the character. You are a narrator who can see from above and can see who did what and why they did what. You are safe.”

There are many books now that talk about how the body stores our memories of trauma. Bassel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, is one of the amazing books out there that shares how the body holds onto trauma and the ways we can begin to release it. Van Der Kolk describes the role that storytelling is how the human brain processes trauma. It takes things that are inchoate over a long period of time and helps put them in an order, almost like they give you a path forward. Storytelling is part of how the brain works both when you are dreaming and with EMDR, which is a rapid eye movement kind of visual therapy. This method involves moving your eyes in a specific movement while you process traumatic memories. The goal is to help people heal from trauma or painful experiences.

When I found EMDR, I had already been using storytelling as a daily practice for many years. The combination of EMDR and storytelling helped me heal very quickly, and then a lot of things just didn't agitate me anymore. They didn't trigger me anymore. They were literally in the past as stories, stories in the past tense. 

I've been doing Story Asana nearly every day since 2008, and it still helps me. When I'm stuck, triggered, or very angry, I go back to the very practical discipline of Story Asana. I'm really curious to see if it helps other people.

While Story Asana does not replace therapy, it can be a great supplement or starting point, as good therapy is not often accessible or free. For those of us that have trauma, who want to be healthy and happy in the present and able to build things in the future, it can be critical to have our trauma live in the past tense. So I'm just really curious if this process and practice I created for myself will be helpful for other people working through trauma.

We're doing a public beta of Story Asana starting on June 19th. I welcome your participation and feedback. If you would like to join and tell me what works – and what doesn’t work – for you and help us make it better for other people, you can sign up here.

It's completely free. I’m trying something new. Let’s see how daily storytelling works for you.