About Us
Sonia Brown-Diaz
I'm Sonia Bown-Diaz, the Founder and Director of Yoga on the Inside Pty Ltd, a certified Social Enterprise that values itself on making a yoga practice accessible to ALL members of our community; in particular, those who are on the fringes and/or marginalised.
Providing trauma-informed yoga and embodied mindfulness practices as an act of SERVICE is just one in which I can personally and professionally align my values of simply being a good human being and not causing further harm to others, especially in a world that is so divided it seems.
I also value mentoring others in this space by providing training and being involved in events as a speaker.
How Yoga on the Inside was conceived
In 2003 I experienced the stillbirth of my twin sons (Izaak and Kurtis). This devastating loss brought about an insurmountable level of grief that was difficult to process to say the least.
I had taken up yoga in 2005 as a form of gentle exercise. Little did I know that profound changes that I would begin to notice within myself. These ‘shifts’ were seismic.
More than 10 years after this event, I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Although this diagnosis wasn't at all surprising, it did make sense as to why I had deeply been disassociating with my body and why I had been experiencing significant depression.
The practice of yoga, as an ‘adjunct’ to other modalities of support and care that I was receiving, has been one of the ‘constants’ in my life and has assisted me to deal with the rollercoaster of life which always has something new and challenging (as well as joyous) installed for us,
Being able to share this practice with others impacted by trauma has seen me take on professional development in Yoga Teacher Training, as well as further education with Prison Yoga Project, Frontline Yoga, and Evolve Communities (learning about culturally informed care
Yoga for Healing
The transformative effects of my practice of yoga and the mindset changes that began to emerge through consistent practice has allowed me to process and determine my
actions and reactions on a daily basis to what shows up in my life.
The way in which we talk to ourselves and in how we practice compassion towards ourselves and others is imperative in today's world more than ever.
The Yamas and Niyamas outlined in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras provides us with the ethical and moral codes by which to live and are the essential foundation for our whole practice.
A trauma-informed yoga practice has allowed me to be gentle on myself and remind myself that in every moment that arises, I have choice and control as to how I will
behave and respond (instead of react), and that being aware of my body movement and breath is always a place I can come back to, to centre and ground myself.