Post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries are the hallmark war wounds of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, affecting anywhere from 18.5 percent to 43 percent of combat veterans. If not released in a timely manner, the trauma of war can store in the muscles of the body and begin to affect daily functioning of the soldier. This research examines how yoga functions as a holistic, body-based, community oriented treatment option for veterans with PTSD and TBIs. This paper draws from literature on PTSD symptoms and treatment, yoga class sequencing, and interviews with therapists and yoga teachers to insert yoga within a wider landscape of Complementary and Alternative Medicines being used to treat veterans. After going through Yoga Warriors International teacher training, observing a yoga class for veterans with PTSD, teaching yoga at Ft. Carson, Colorado, and conducting interviews, it is evident that yoga may be a viable treatment option for some veterans. Individuals should be empowered to choose the treatment method that resonates the most within their healing process. Research shows yoga can be a singular grief and stress management tool; pranayama, (yogic breathing) stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and calms the body. This thesis considers the physical aspects of yoga in the context of communities of yogic practice, which together create productive environments for healing.
Our worlds are storied landscapes (Cajete 1994). We shape and perpetuate our realities through the ways we story every aspect of life, including what health and illness look like respectively (Kleinman 1988, Avila 1999, Gonzales 2012), the boundaries of community (Peña 1998), what counts as knowledge, what being a resident of a place entails, and what it means to be human. Power differentials, including those created through colonization and genocide, come into play in determining which narratives enter and remain within public discourse (Scott 1990). When the places where we reside – “place” referring not only to physical spaces but the relationships of things to one another (Deloria 2001) – do not feel safe and accepting, we suffer open wounds to the soul. In order to re-establish our daily realities as embracing places for our souls to return to and reside, we are in need of una gran limpia, a radical cleansing and decolonization of all of our relationships. There exist systems of knowing with far more power than any colonizing narrative, a power that comes from first allegiances, original instructions, and webs of original relationships that we are embedded in. I have chosen to participate in the gran limpia by contributing a creative ethnography and a documentary. My intention is to bring together images and voices into a plática (heart-to- heart talk) (Avila 1999, Gonzales 2012) bearing witness to Indigenous Knowledge as it speaks truth to the concept of residence.
There are bits and pieces writings and compilations, but there are very few comprehensive works that tell how and why the African-American population of Pueblo, at one time a greater number than the African- American population of the capital city of Denver, became settled and established in the “Steel City.” That is what this paper will attempt to do: provide a comprehensive perspective on the establishment of an African- American population in Pueblo, Colorado by 1930.