Yoga Fusion: Yoga in Action for Post-Conflict Reconciliation

This project focuses on yoga to foster the development of "common goods" - starting from individual responsibility towards the self and towards the community - mainly in post-conflict contexts where the sense of self and common goods is frequently challenged. According to the researcher: "Reconstructing common goods implies learning how they got challenged in the first place. Trauma stories like body memories often gets modified over time. If we develop backpain after changing our posture due to a foot injury, very often we forget about the foot injury and we think that the problem originated in the back. Yoga is a tool to map individual and social trauma, and to empower individuals to heal and reconstruct common goods through individual responsibility and empowerment." Within this PAR project, yoga is looked at as a common good and is explored within the framework of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Declaration of Cooperation: Mental Health of Refugees, Displaced and Other Populations Affected by Conflict and Post- Conflict Situations.

Specifically, yoga is understood as a potentially healing communication methodology at both social and individual levels in that it can be:

• A workshop facilitation technique to guide the development of shared narratives aiming at post-conflict reconciliation: Yoga Fusion introduces the body and its path through the asanas (poses) as metaphor to create shared historical narratives between opposite parties. The project "uses the body and its memory as metaphor for the body of the society and its collective memory." While yoga is a very introspective practice, "it makes us realize how every other person has...[his or her] own struggles, fears, and strengths. Same structure - the body - but different contextual characteristics. There is no 'right' way to be in a yoga pose, as there are adjustments, variations and work in progress for every individual until he/she can be steady and comfortable in the pose....The same process applies to societies, mainly after a trauma. The two sides of the coin don't realize that they have the same body, the same capability to be comfortable in the pose, but different histories and traumas that inform their movement and their perspective."
• A means of treating PTSD in post-conflict contexts: "Since the early 2000s experiments have been carried out to look at the benefits of Yoga Therapy on people with PTSD symptoms, and they all reported positive correlations between the therapy and an increased wellbeing of the patients."

Yoga Fusion is not an "alternative methodology", but, rather, a "complementary methodology" meant to increase the impact of ongoing initiatives. Pilot projects for both methodologies will be carried out with different PAR members to tailor the methodologies to specific cultural contexts. For each project, partner common goals are set and measured depending on the nature and scope of the partner's activities. For example, for the Patanjali Research Foundation, the goal was to further develop yoga therapy for PTSD with a new intended group to be reached: war victims. In the past, only studies tailored to veterans and natural disaster survivors were supported. In this case, the impact of Yoga Fusion is measured with the broadening of the group on which the evidence-based yoga therapy module for PTSD is tested. For Mandala House, the goal is to introduce yoga therapy and yoga as a workshop facilitation technique in the package of yoga activities that they offer. The same tailored approach to goals and impact assessment applies to each project partner: practitioners, activists, and policymakers.

Yoga Fusion is in charge of the outreach strategy to expand its PAR Network, and, at the end of the pilot projects, it will start an advocacy campaign to introduce holistic approaches in post-conflict contexts to international and governmental organisations. At this stage, each project partner tailors its communication and outreach strategies in conjunction with local and international communities, depending on the scope and network of the project partner.

Supported by a multidisciplinary team of professors and developed under the advisory role of the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, The Netherlands, Yoga Fusion will culminate in training and learning materials on both methodologies: yoga as a workshop facilitation technique and yoga therapy for PTSD.

Conflict