Yoga for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) with Dr. Kyla Pearce

Yogaland Podcast

Andrea Ferretti

Health & Fitness, Yoga, Yogaland

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Whether mild (commonly called a concussion) or severe, TBI can create long-term health challenges ranging from cognitive fatigue, to memory loss to insomnia and mental health issues. This episode explores how LoveYourBrain's free yoga and meditation program benefits people affected by TBI and their caregivers.

Since 2015, Dr. Kyla Pearce, Senior Director of Programs and Research at LoveYourBrain, has trained over 2,500 yoga teachers and clinicians in how to adapt yoga for TBI. She was the primary investigator on the largest published study of yoga for TBI, which found significant improvement in quality of life, resilience, cognition, and positive affect among 705 people with TBI who participated in the LoveYourBrain program.

LoveYourBrain was founded in 2014 by brothers Kevin and Adam Pearce following Kevin’s severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) from a snowboarding accident in 2009 while training for the Olympics. Their family’s experience navigating Kevin’s recovery inspired them to create LoveYourBrain.

To date, LoveYourBrain has supported nearly 50,000 people worldwide, through research-backed programs offered at no cost to empower the TBI community with new tools, resources, and connections.

We talk about:

Common challenges after traumatic brain injury
How hard it is to have an invisible injury
What the research says about yoga for traumatic brain injury (TBI)
How Dr. Pearce designed the LoveYourBrain six-week yoga program — from asana adaptations to types of meditation to group sharing
The importance of cultivating resilience rather than a return to “normal”
Post-traumatic growth — what it is and how we can all benefit from seeing life’s challenges through this lens
Mindful March — how you can support people with TBI in accessing yoga
LoveYourBrain’s online teacher training program

Lastly: March is Brain Injury Awareness Month! Go to loveyourbrain.com/challenge to join their Mindful March Meditation Challenge and support their efforts in keeping yoga FREE to those affected by TBI.

There are lots of resources on their website as well as info about teacher training: I've created a curated list of links for Yogaland listeners: www.jasonyoga.com/podcast/episode350

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, I'm Andrea Ferretti, and this is Yoga Land.
0:11.9	Today, my guest is Dr. Kyla Pierce.
0:14.3	Dr. Pierce is the Senior Director of Programs and Research at Love Your Brain, which is an
0:19.5	organization that provides free yoga and
0:22.4	mindfulness classes for healing after traumatic brain injury or TBI. The CDC defines TBI as a bump,
0:29.9	a blow or a jolt to the head that disrupts how the brain works. And concussion is the most common type
0:36.1	of TBI, which I'm sure you've heard of. You might think
0:39.6	of concussion as a mild injury, but any TBI can have long-term far-reaching effects on a person. Every
0:49.2	year, there are more than 3 million TBIs in the U.S. and Canada alone. So that's one every 11 seconds.
0:56.6	And it's a really complex, challenging thing. It affects different people differently, but it can
1:01.9	have physical effects. It can affect memory, sleep, mental health. It can also lead to social
1:09.3	isolation. One of the things that Dr. Pierce pointed out to me in our
1:12.5	discussion is that once a person gets home and out of the acute care setting, it's often invisible.
1:20.0	So their attention might be different. Their ability to get through their day and plan and organize
1:26.0	might feel very different, but no one else can see that
1:29.8	around them. So that can lead to feelings of deep, deep isolation. And this is where Love Your
1:36.4	Brain comes in. They've created programs and research that have shown that yoga and mindfulness
1:41.7	can really help. It can help with fatigue. It can help with
1:46.4	sleep. It can help with mood. It can also help people make connections with others who
1:52.6	understand what they're going through. So we had a great, fascinating conversation.
1:58.6	Dr. Pierce also shared some of the research that they've conducted
2:02.2	that shows tangible results, positive results. I want to really encourage you to go support them
	...

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