One breath at a time: FSU professor uses yoga for therapy

By Jennifer Calhoun
Staff writer
A Fayetteville State University professor has developed a unique therapy technique that uses yoga breathing to help victims of violence, abuse and other traumatic events.

Dr. Susan Franzblau, a research psychologist at FSU and owner of downtown’s Om Yoga Studio, started using the breathing techniques as a way to help battered women heal themselves and regain control of their lives.

Since then, controlled studies have shown the breathing techniques are working, especially when used in conjunction with patient testimonials, or spoken accounts of abuse and trauma.

Franzblau said studies show the yoga breathing and testimonials have led to statistically significant decreases in depression and increases in self-confidence and self-control.

The process itself is simple, and, by all accounts, relaxing.

Franzblau’s graduate students work one-on-one with clients during several 45-minute sessions over a six-week period. The clients are guided through simple yoga poses, which mostly require participants to sit or to lie on their backs.

While in the poses, clients are asked to breathe in different ways, a task that requires them to focus on their breathing, which relaxes their minds and bodies, Franzblau said.

“It makes you pay attention to your breathing, rather than your thoughts,” she said. “It helps you to concentrate and focus and get rid of thoughts that interfere with what you need to do.”

Kelly Fields, a graduate student in the department, said clients always have positive comments coming out of the breathing sessions.

“Afterward they feel really relaxed,” Fields said. “They come back saying, ‘I needed that!’ You can tell by their faces they feel better.”

Franzblau, who has taught yoga for 6 years, said she came up with the idea a few years ago, when she was looking for ways to combine her interests in yoga, psychology and helping women.

Since then, she has received about $200,000 in grants from the National Institutes of Health to study the effects of the breathing techniques.

Franzblau and the Psychology Department at the university continue to offer the breathing sessions to people who are experiencing the effects of combat, sexual abuse and domestic violence.

The sessions are free and open to men and women, civilian and military. The program includes a free CD for patients to practice the breathing techniques at home.

Franzblau said that despite the positive results of the program, only one battered women’s shelter — in Durham — has put the yoga techniques to use so far, which Franzblau blames on a lack of understanding or knowledge about yogic practices.

But she hopes to get the word out, so more people can be helped.

“I believe this can work as counseling,” she said. “This is something a woman can take with her — or a soldier — they can practice it on their own.”