Laura Khoudari on strength and sensitivity.
As soon as I heard of Laura Khoudari’s work, I wanted to know more. She is a trauma-informed strength trainer, working with women in a gym setting but incorporating all sorts of deep and innovative techniques to heal trauma. The photos she shared on Instagram were unusual: pictures of Laura putting up huge weights, with thoughtful captions about how to better regulate our nervous system or manage anxiety. Laura and I spoke recently about her work and her forthcoming book, Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time. Below, you can read highlights from our conversation.
(1:17) – Laura was a reluctant strength trainer at first, only sticking with it because it helped her heal from a back injury. It took years before she began to like it, and even longer before she discovered Olympic-style weight training.
(7:20) –How she defines trauma. “Trauma is, to me, totally separate from the thing that had happened, say, in a car accident.” It’s not that the details of the event are irrelevant, but trauma is what happens inside us. “Something came on too strong and too fast and the nervous system didn’t have time to process it. And now you have this unprocessed autonomic response hanging out in your body. It is easily triggered by certain things. There are ways that this can lead to injury, chronic pain, and sometimes behaviors that really derail life.”
(13:12) – The unexpected connection between strength-training and trauma.“The whole point of strength training is literally stress overload in order to drive adaptation.” In strength training, you are skillfully introducing stress to the body and building resilience, but in a way that doesn’t lead to injury or overwhelm.
(15:18) Laura has learned, painfully at times, how to value recovery and self-care. Several years into her strength training, she was the picture of fitness. Her friends admired her physique and she passed her yearly physical with flying colors. In fact, between powerlifting, Olympic lifting, and karate, Laura was training 10 times a week.“I thought I could train my pain away.” But rather than healing herself, “I was not allowing any recovery. My trauma response was to never stop training.” One morning she woke up with debilitating sciatica.
Laura’s unique background in Somatic Experiencing, and her current graduate education in counseling, lead to a model of training in which awareness and compassion are at the core. It wouldn’t be unusual to see her clients journaling at the end of a strength training session or learning to set boundaries by engaging in the physical act of pushing something away.
(25:18) Nowadays, Laura has paused her work as a trainer to finish Lifting Heavy Things. A book that is part self-help, part memoir, LHT is a toolbox for people dealing with trauma, as well as a guide for practitioners (such as yoga teachers, trainers, etc.) who want to better understand the effects of trauma on their clients.
You can learn more about Laura on her website, where you can also sign up for her wonderfully personal and useful newsletter. Lifting Heavy Things: Healing One Rep at a Time comes out in May 2021 but you can preorder it now.
Laura Khoudari is passionate about giving people the tools they need to heal from trauma and cultivate mental health and wellness. Her approach to strength training restores nervous system health, fosters a sense of safety in the body, and gives people the tools they need to process trauma so they may move beyond surviving and begin thriving. Her work has been widely recognized by the trauma and fitness community, and she has been featured on Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Outside Online, Medium, Tonic, and Girls Gone Strong.
Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time (Interview)