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Using yoga to treat soldiers with PTSD

by Heather Hauswirth

Guam - In 1969 former U.S. Army sergeant Frances H. Wolford received a Purple Heart for his bravery. He was wounded in combat in Vietnam, and to this day he has flashbacks.  "I was wounded in the forehead. That's why I don't feel like enjoying Christmas," he described.

The holidays are especially hard for Wolford, who has yet to be treated for his condition, but about 2,500 veterans receive treatment at the Guam Vets Center annually. 65% of them have undergone treatment specifically for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Local Guam yoga therapist Debbie Purcell says she uses yoga as a form of therapy to treat patients with PTSD, and that she's had great success with vets by getting them to focus on the breath.

"It's an additional way to bring healing into the body, when you are talking about PTSD or stress or anxiety, we carry a lot of trauma in our physical body we are very unaware of at times that can manifest into disease and yoga therapy can assist with that," she said.

Today Wolford has two sons serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he worries about the effects of war on them and their fellow soldiers.  "I myself feel bad when I see those guys, when you get hit you don't know whether you be alive or you die," he said.

These fears, Purcell says, are exactly why it is so critical to get treatment.  Yoga therapy is just one way to recognize and ease the pain, as she explained, "They are able to sleep for the first time in ten or fifteen years, they are able to relieve pain in the body they have been carrying around since Vietnam and there is a lot of research going on right now at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington with returning veterans that are able to find great relief with yoga and yoga therapy."

Yoga therapy may offer new hope and relief from the traumas of war for veterans like Wolford and for those currently on active duty like his two sons.