Project Welcome Home Troops Breath Workshop provides training in a unique set of natural stress relief practices to veterans and their families. Stress management instructors, in consultation with heath professionals who have treated combat veterans, designed the program. The project is not-for-profit and is sponsored by the International Association for Human Values (IAHV), a 501(c)3 humanitarian organization. A mainstay of IAHVs work has been providing aid and trauma relief worldwide at disaster sites. Workshop leaders are volunteers certified in these stress management techniques.

MEDICAL STUDIES
Clinical studies of this practice, as reported by the Harvard Mental Health Letter, April 2009, report:

--  Australian Vietnam veterans diagnosed with severe PTSD lowered their symptoms by 26% in 6 weeks and improvements persisted at a 6 month follow-up;
--  hospitalized depression patients found 67% had remission in 4 weeks;
--  depressed alcoholics found a 75% drop in depression scores after 3 weeks of practice;
--  depressed alcoholics showed a decrease in stress hormones in the blood. (stress hormones cortisol and corticotropin did not drop at all in control group).

BACKGROUND
The program's stress relief practices have been used successfully for over 20 years by other organizations in a variety of settings including: police departments, United Nations peacekeeing forces, prisons, war veterans and war survivors in Kosovo, tsunami victims in Indonesia, earthquake victims in India, Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, traumatized New Yorkers after 9/11, and Australian Vietnam veterans with severe PTSD.

IMPORTANCE OF AN EXPANDED APPROACH TO STRESS RELIEF

Many Vietnam era veterans' lives are still influenced by the trauma they experienced forty years ago, often despite decades of therapy. This demonstrates the need for something more to relieve severe combat stress. Our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans deserve every opportunity to rid themselves of the residual stress from their combat experience.

Today, many trauma experts agree that some form of a physical approach is necessary to relieve severe stress because of the connection between mind and body in the way traumatic memories are stored. Traumatic memories are buried deep in the unconscious, inaccessible to the rational thinking mind. Yoga based stretching and breathing techniques have the ability to release stress from the system without the need to talk or recollect about the stressful memories.

Trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk's paper "The Body Keeps The Score"suggests strongly that only using stress-relief methods that rely on talking have limited effectiveness. He is now a strong advocate of yoga practices combined with other physical and mental therapies. Another therapist with a view, Dr. Peter Levine, author of "Healing Trauma", argues that trauma is "locked in the body, and it's in the body that it must be accessed and healed".