Your Emotions Are Not in Your Glute Max
What the Body Keeping the Score Actually Means and Why It Changes Everything About How You Teach
APEX Community members: this workshop is included in your membership.
- Live session Tuesday June 16 at 4pm EST
- Full recording sent after
- CEU eligible through Yoga Alliance
- Immediately applicable clinical framework
APEX Community members get every monthly workshop included. $97/month for the full community.
The neuroscience behind what actually happens in your room.
We say it constantly. Your emotions are stored in your body. Open your hips to release what you are holding. This workshop breaks down what is actually happening and why the mechanism changes everything about how you teach.
What van der Kolk Actually Said
The Body Keeps the Score is one of the most important books on trauma written in the last thirty years. It is also one of the most misread books in yoga spaces. We go back to the actual argument and what it means for your teaching.
The Nervous System Is the Mechanism
Trauma and chronic stress are nervous system states that express themselves through the body. The tissue reflects the state. It does not contain the experience. That distinction changes everything about how you respond to what you see in your room.
What Actually Happens in Pigeon Pose
When a practitioner becomes emotional in a hip opener something genuine is happening. The mechanism is nervous system mediated, not tissue based. Understanding why changes how you cue, how you respond, and how you support the person in front of you.
Polyvagal Theory in Your Room
Three nervous system states. Three completely different body signatures. Every practitioner who walks through your door is in one of them. Understanding which one determines what they can hear, process, and receive from your teaching.
The Fascia Question
What the research actually supports, what is emerging, and what goes beyond the evidence. The Fact, Model, Metaphor framework applied to one of the most debated topics in yoga and bodywork. You will know exactly what you can say with confidence.
Two Teaching Responses
If tissue holds experience, encourage more activation. Go deeper. If the nervous system generates experience, create safety. Support regulation. Know your clinical role. These are not subtle differences. They produce completely different outcomes for the person on your mat.
"The body does keep the score. What yoga offers is not a release mechanism for stored content. It is a practice that creates the conditions where the nervous system accumulates enough evidence of safety to shift out of chronic protective states. That is not a lesser claim. It is a greater one."Melissa Leach, Founder -- APEX Performance Institute
Any yoga teacher who has ever had someone cry in their class and wondered what to do.
You do not need a neuroscience background. You need curiosity and a willingness to examine something yoga culture has been teaching as fact without the clinical precision to back it up.
Teachers who have said your emotions are stored in your hips and want to understand what is actually happening when that feels true.
Teachers who work with practitioners carrying chronic stress, grief, or trauma and want to respond with precision rather than improvisation.
Teachers who want to understand polyvagal theory and what it actually means for the people arriving in their room every week.
Teachers who want to speak about somatic experience with clinical precision and hold that conversation confidently in any room.
Teachers who believe in the power of this practice and want the neuroscience to match the depth of what they already know it can do.
Teachers who are ready to understand the difference between creating conditions for nervous system state change and asking someone to release what their nervous system is using to keep them safe.
- M.S. Applied Clinical Nutrition
- 500-HR E-RYT, 20+ Years Teaching
- Pre-Script Practitioner L1 and L2
- CHEK Holistic Lifestyle Coach
- CFSC, SAFM Candidate
- YACEP, Yoga Alliance CEU Provider
- Former Programs Director and Faculty, Baptiste Institute
20 years at the intersection of yoga, movement, and clinical science.
Melissa built APEX Performance Institute and APEX Community because she wants to support teachers. To create a space where teachers can grow, where real conversations happen, and where we raise the standards of yoga together.
She is not a yoga teacher who does science. She is a clinician and master educator who teaches yoga. This workshop reflects exactly that.
The practice is sophisticated enough to meet people exactly where they are. We just have to be educated enough to do the same.
Tuesday June 16 at 4pm EST. Live and recorded. CEU eligible. $67.
Register Now -- $67Questions? Email melissaleachcoaching@gmail.com
