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Comeback Yoga was founded in 2014 to provide free, accessible, trauma-informed, science-based classes to the military community.
Comeback Yoga was founded in 2014 to provide free, accessible, trauma-informed, science-based classes to the military community. Courtesy Comeback Yoga
Comeback Yoga offers 38 free classes online and in-person in Colorado, Utah and Hawaii, three of which are at Fort Carson. Courtesy Comeback Yoga
Comeback Yoga offers dozens of free classes online and in person in Colorado, Utah and Hawaii, three of which are at Fort Carson. While two of those classes are closed to the public, the other is available to anybody who has base access.
Comeback Yoga was founded in 2014 to provide free, accessible, trauma-informed, science-based classes to the military community.
Comeback Yoga was founded in 2014 to provide free, accessible, trauma-informed, science-based classes to the military community. Courtesy Comeback Yoga
Comeback Yoga offers 38 free classes online and in-person in Colorado, Utah and Hawaii, three of which are at Fort Carson. Courtesy Comeback Yoga
Comeback Yoga offers dozens of free classes online and in person in Colorado, Utah and Hawaii, three of which are at Fort Carson. While two of those classes are closed to the public, the other is available to anybody who has base access.
Yoga isn’t all about touching your toes and standing on your head.
The 6,000-year-old practice is also a way to become more comfortable and confident in your body, and learn techniques that can help calm an overactive nervous system in order to make better life choices. It also has the added benefit of potentially easing back pain and insomnia and decreasing athletic-related injuries.
And for veterans and military service members, yoga can mean the difference between life and death.
“With my students, I know they’ve used breathing techniques and have not chosen suicide,” said Comeback Yoga Executive Director Kelly Wulf. “If you’re thinking life is too much and you can’t handle it anymore, doing some of those techniques for even a couple of minutes can help bring in rational thoughts so you can’t make a decision you can’t take back.”
Comeback Yoga was founded in 2014 to provide free, accessible, trauma-informed, science-based classes to the military community. The Denver-based nonprofit now offers classes online and in-person in Colorado, Utah and Hawaii, three of which are at Fort Carson. While two of those classes are closed to the public, one is available to anybody who has base access. You can find classes online at comebackyoga.org.
Live online classes also are offered every week: 8 a.m. daily and 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Go online to comebackyoga.org/online– yoga-practice or search for Comeback Yoga online at YouTube.com. Hundreds of archived classes also are available, including yin yoga classes, classes designed for those with traumatic brain injury, chair yoga, meditation and classes in Spanish.
“They’re tailored toward the military, but anyone can attend,” Wulf said. “We’ve found they’re really good for people who may have post-traumatic stress or some other trauma, who might be self-isolating or don’t feel comfortable practicing in a group.”
The niche classes look different than traditional classes held in a yoga studio. Teachers, trained in trauma-informed yoga and military culture, stay on their mat versus walking around the room. They do class alongside students, providing visual as well as vocal cues to help practitioners move their bodies into poses. There are no hands-on assists, and the room is set up so there are no students standing behind each other. Some teachers don’t use music, and those who do don’t play music with lyrics.
“A lot of sounds can be triggering,” Wulf said. “We have no idea what song a unit might have played before they went into a mission, so why risk it? There are no nature sounds, because if someone’s trauma happened on a beach we don’t want to re-create it for them.”
Teachers refrain from using Sanskrit names for poses, which often happens in traditional classes, and teach only in English. Savasana, the relaxation pose that ends most yoga classes, is called yoga rest.
“We want to make everyone as comfortable as possible,” Wulf said. “We find a large part of the military community is religious, and we don’t want to interfere with anyone’s religious beliefs by bringing in spiritual ideas.”
Before John Evans, a former U.S. Army combat medic, took his first class in 2017, he assumed yoga wasn’t for him and was mostly a workout for women. But he was willing to try anything to help him manage the post-traumatic stress, alcohol and drug addiction and suicidal ideation he was experiencing as a civilian after being deployed twice to Iraq.
It took only one class to change his mind. He went on to become a yoga teacher and taught for Comeback Yoga for about eight months. He’s now a veteran ambassador for the nonprofit.
“There’s more to the practice than meets the eye. To do it, and do it consistently, it’s not for the faint of heart,” Evans said. “It is not what our culture projected it to be. It’s become a bit of a personal refuge. Being dissociated from my body and living in my mind, it’s an opportunity to reconnect with my body and self. It’s so healing.”
Requests for classes are up almost 30% over 2019. In 2020. the pandemic put the kibosh on many in-person offerings, but the nonprofit is ramping up again. But because the organization is funded through individuals and not federal grants, funding has gone down 25%, due in part, Wulf believes, to COVID-19 and its ensuing lost jobs and wages and a decreased ability for the public to donate.
“We don’t have an office. We’re not paying rent. We don’t have a studio. We’re going to spaces where the military are. We need money to pay teachers and buy mats, and we’re falling short,” Wulf said. “We’ve been around for a while, and everyone assumes we’re reliable and will keep making it happen somehow, but we need the community to help to make it happen. We can’t do it on our own.”
Contact the writer: 636-0270
Comeback Yoga, 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Fort Carson Wellness Center Building 1843, 1891 Prussman Blvd., Fort Carson, free, available to anybody who has base access; live classes available online at 8 a.m. daily and 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 303-461-4961, comebackyoga.org/online-yoga-practice or search for Comeback Yoga on YouTube.com
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