Page 378 - Total War on PTSD Final

grew, and I started to trust myself more and more. The trust was a new and freeing experience.
I finally realized that the cause for my trauma was the loss of trust in myself. It was immediate and felt permanent. After the trauma of the miscarriage, I lost any remaining trust I had; I felt that my body and mind were completely broken. I found myself thinking, “For goodness sakes, my body couldn’t even grow a child, something my body was made to do!” The feelings of hopelessness at that time were overwhelming. This time of my life may have been the lowest but in hindsight, I am grateful for it. The experience showed me that I needed to change in order to get better. It drove me to seek help and to eventually understand that I was not broken, and the shame I had been carrying for more than a decade had been a burden I was willing to shed. It is a burden none of us should bear, but we have to work through it. We cannot change the past.
Other methods of exercise helped as a distraction, teaching exercise helped sometimes, but other times made my anxiety worse. Pilates has been the most comprehensive solution to manage my PTSD and re-build the trust I had lost in myself. If you haven’t tried Pilates yet, I highly recommend you find an instructor. There are a lot to choose from, so I recommend finding an instructor that is certified through the Pilates Method Alliance (PMA), the only governing body for Pilates instructors. If the instructor has earned a certification through the PMA, it means they have completed at least 450 hours of practice and are knowledgeable of all the Pilates equipment. The PMA is more than a trusted source of Pilates teachers. According to Jojo Bowman (2015), the PMA also has a specific initiative called “Heroes in Motion” (p. 168), dedicated to helping Veterans with Pilates. It is still growing, and there are many Pilates practitioners that are using the
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