SisterFriend 2020 Bar Raisers

Tammy Ward has been an RCMP member for 23 years, achieving the rank of Sergeant after nine and a half years.  Her career has allowed her to work in most of the communities in New Brunswick and as far North as Kimmirut in Nunavut.  As a police office, she draws upon her lifelong experience in fitness and teaching to help deal with the stress of the job. Going for a run or stepping onto a yoga mat helps her process and release horrific events, such as the 2014 shootings in Moncton, and difficult losses.   “Yoga keeps me grounded,” she says. 

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Policing often involves supporting people on some of the worst days of their lives, so Tammy understands the traumas some people have endured.  In Yoga, this perspective allows her to meet people where they are at, physically and emotionally.  As part of her own healing and living with PTSD, she built on her 25 years of yoga practice and teaching by taking specific yoga courses for Trauma and PTSD in 2014 and 2016. She began offering this class, without charge, to police officers and Military veterans as peer support to help them develop coping strategies to deal with anxiety, depression, panic attacks and other symptoms of PTSD.  In February 2018, she was ready to offer Trauma Sensitive Yoga in her home studio in Hanwell, NB, tailored to the realities of women who have experienced trauma.  At first, the group class started off quietly, with participants not knowing what to expect; it quickly became a place of healing, sharing, laughing, and bonding. “Offering this class helped me in my journey of healing as much as the women who came and shared in the practice,” Ward explains.  “It makes my heart smile.”