The Cat, the Vole and the Release: My First Triggered Response

300 Diaries — a special entry. My first triggered response of the training, a night of being hunted in my dreams, and why I see it as a sign that things are moving.

Content note: This post talks about past trauma, including abuse and abandonment, and about frightening dreams involving predators and violence. Please read gently, and only if it feels right for you today.

I'll be sharing my full Week One summary very soon, but I wanted to call this one out separately first. Because this has been my first real triggered response of the training — and it deserves its own space, rather than being squeezed in between hatha sequences and business classes.

Before I came out here, I wrote openly about what I expected this training to bring up. I knew there would be releases — some painful, some not so painful. I just didn't know what they would look like, or when they would come.

And shock horror: the very first time we did a practice specifically designed to release trauma, I had a response to it. Not weeks in. The first time. I don't see that as a setback, or as something going wrong. I see it as a really positive thing — because it shows that stuff's moving.

The practice that started it

Here's what we'd done that afternoon. It was the last session of the day with Kosta: a 40-minute moving meditation in which we held a series of gentle poses for one minute each. In every pose we worked with a breath visualisation called the microcosmic orbit.

On a four-count inhale, you imagine energy moving from the sacral chakra — the area just below the belly button — down and around the perineum, then rising up the length of the spine to the crown, like a cool, silver light travelling up your back. On the exhale, you imagine it flowing back down the front of your face and body to the sacral chakra, with a warming sensation. Up the back, down the front, round and round.

Honestly? I didn't think I was doing it right. I kept wondering if I was imagining it properly, if I was 'getting' it at all. But clearly I was — because afterwards I felt such energy. My whole body felt charged, a kind of vroom, vroom, pulsing energy, and I felt full of energy.

We finished with an 18-minute hold in a variation of Baddha Konasana, butterfly pose. Instead of letting the knees drop open, as we often do in restorative classes, we held them at around 45 degrees, so the hip flexors stayed gently under load while the rest of the body completely relaxed. This variation is used to help release trauma held in the body.

Around 15 minutes in, I felt something unlike any physical sensation I've ever had. Not a sharp spark or a shooting feeling, like releases I've felt before. It was a wave — a big one — right between my belly button and my sacrum, through the sacral chakra. I still can't tell you whether it was moving up or down. It was just there, moving.

And then it clicked: that's exactly the area we'd been focusing on for 40 minutes in the visualisation. Something in those lower, denser chakras — the ones linked with safety, emotion and the body — moved and released. I believe that's what opened the door to the night that followed.

Wide awake

When I went to bed I felt pretty euphoric and productive. Got some work stuff done and time was ticking by so I prepared for sleep. Then, rather than drifting off, I found myself lying there wide awake and restless. I was tired — so why couldn't I sleep?

So I sat with my body. I noticed I was aching in places. And I realised this wasn't just being overtired. Something was stirring.

Guilt, judgement and an old wound

As I lay there, I started to feel really bad. Guilty. Like I was a bad person. Guilty for enjoying myself so much here, and guilty for my dream of moving to Thailand. I started thinking about my daughter, and the judgement came flooding in.

So I did Tara Brach's RAIN meditation — Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture — to help me unpack what was happening. And as I went deeper, I recognised what was really going on. It wasn't about what other people might think of me. It was my own inner child wound: the abandonment I felt as a teenager, and me imagining my daughter feeling the same.

But her life is completely different from mine. She's growing up in a stable, loving family between our home and her fathers. Following my dreams isn't abandoning her — I hope it inspires her. And nothing is set in stone; these six weeks are, in part, a test to see how it feels.

Once I saw that, I had a good cry — only about 30 seconds — and then slipped into a strange, half-awake kind of sleep. That's when the dreams started.

A night of being hunted

I don't think I've ever had a night like it. Every time I woke up and fell back to sleep, I dropped straight back into the same kind of nightmare. The whole night was about not feeling safe: being hunted, with bad things happening all around me.

The first dream took place in the attic of a huge house. I grew up in a very small house — but I shared a bedroom in the attic with my three sisters, and the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that's what the attic signalled. In the dream, people were being killed. My dad was abusive and cheating on my mum. And there was a serial killer — a true psychopath who enjoyed hunting and killing. I still can't work out whether that was my dad, or someone separate in the same dream. It didn't feel like a dream, either. It felt like a lifetime — like I was actually there, living through the whole ordeal over a long period of time.

Then enother dream stood out. I'd opened a little stall in an indoor market. Someone asked me to cover their stall — for no money, with no handover — so they could go away and look after themselves on holiday. Of course, I said yes. While I was there, a man I knew in the dream to be a predator turned up and tried to get me into trouble: hiding things from me, trying to get me arrested. Customers were shouting and complaining. People were trying to break in from outside. I locked the door to protect everyone — which then stopped the police getting in, and I got told off by the police too. I couldn't do anything right.

And all the while, a few stalls down, my own little stall — the one I was trying to open — failed and was vandalised, because I was busy looking after someone else's.

When I woke, the meaning felt really clear. That's people-pleasing. Saying yes when it costs me, not being true to my own path, not putting myself first — and watching my own dreams get trampled while I hold everything together for everyone else.

But underneath it all was something even older. A big part of my trauma is being abused, abandoned and hunted by a predator. Last night, that feeling of being prey came out in my dreams in so many different forms, layered on top of my real-life experiences. It was heavy. But I think it was part of the purge. A purge I came her for I might add. It is ready to be released.

The cat and the vole

As a resut of the above, you can imagine that this morning I walked up to class feeling fragile. There's a cat that sometimes hangs around at the top of the retreat, maybe 150 to 200 steps up. Another student, whose room is near mine, and I bumped into each other on the way and started joking with it — "Come on, cat, are you coming to class?" Then we both realised at the same moment: it was stalking a little vole.

My first thought was: I can't watch this. Then: it's nature, Jade — don't get involved. But then the vole started jumping, trying to get away, and the cat went after it. And something just took over. I picked the cat up and carried it up the stairs, giving the vole time to escape, before I let the cat go.

My heart was fluttering as if I had been the one being stalked. It was such a visceral, physical reaction. After a whole night of being hunted in my dreams, I saw myself in that vole. And this time, someone stepped in.

Some people would call this coincidence. I’d call it synchronicity — the word the psychologist Carl Jung used for those moments when something happening around us lines up so meaningfully with what’s happening inside us that it can’t feel random. Of all the mornings to walk up those steps, it was the one after a whole night of being hunted in my dreams — and there, laid out right in front of me, was a predator and its prey. I don’t see that as an accident. I see it as an opportunity: nature holding up a mirror, giving me the chance to see my story clearly and, this time, to write a different ending. It didn’t just show me what had happened to me. It handed me the chance to move forwards from it. A gift.

Afterwards, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd read in The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. One of the approaches he describes for healing trauma involves recreating a painful scene — with other people stepping into the roles of those involved — and then reshaping it into what should have happened: the protection that never came, the rescue, the different ending. He also writes about how trauma can leave the body stuck in an action it was never able to complete, and how taking that action — even years later, even symbolically — can help the body finally feel safe.

I've also written before about Teal Swan, whose done some work that centres on letting yourself go fully into a painful memory, then revisiting it and doing what you feel should have happened.

I didn't plan any of it. But with the night still so fresh — hours of being the hunted one — I think that's exactly what I did, intuitively. I didn't freeze. I didn't look away. I took action: I picked up the predator and carried it away, and the little one got to escape. It's fascinating how everything is coming together — the books I've read, the releases I've had before, and now this.

Forty minutes of tears

By the time I got to class, my heart was pounding. The first 40 minutes were breath work — Uddiyana Bandha, Nauli, Kapalabhati — and I sobbed through all of it. It was probably the most intense emotional response I've ever had in a class. A real purge.

Melody — my angel for this training (I'll go into this on the week one recap) — had no idea what the last twelve hours had been like for me. She didn't know I was feeling fragile. Yet when I walked in, she'd already set up a mat for me next to hers, as if she just intuitively knew. When she saw me crying, she glanced over, a little concerned, and simply stayed there. Just knowing she was beside me was everything. It felt safe to cry. Safe to purge.

And then, all of a sudden, it was gone.

I had a bit of a headache after class, and today I've just felt very tired. But overall, I feel so much lighter. The last twenty-four hours — from the microcosmic orbit and that trauma-release hold, through the night, to the cat on the steps and the tears on my mat — feel like one long release.

The veil is thin

I hadn't even clocked it myself until I spoke to Melody briefly over breakfast afterwards, and she pointed out that last night was Halloween — a night when, in many traditions, the veil between worlds is said to be at its thinnest. Whether you believe in that or not, I can't help wondering if that's part of why everything felt so intense and so powerful.

Either way, it certainly felt like something old was ready to leave. That bloody halloween boogey man had been haunting my dreams all night!

Why I see this as a good thing

I want to be really clear about how I'm holding all of this, because it would be easy to read this post and think, "Oh no, Jade's not okay." I am. In fact, I think this is exactly what I came here for.

Trauma doesn't just live in our memories — it lives in the body. When something that's been held for years starts to loosen, it rarely leaves quietly. It can show up as restlessness, as dreams, as a reaction to something as small as a cat on some steps. That doesn't mean the practice has stirred up something bad. It means the practice is reaching the places that needed it.

So the tiredness today? I'm taking it as part of the integration — my body processing and settling after a big shift. I'm resting, drinking plenty of water, being gentle with myself, and noticing that underneath the tiredness there's a lightness. If this is what happens the first time, I'm curious — and honestly, a little excited — to see what else is ready to move over the coming weeks.

What I want you to take from this

I'm not sharing this to frighten anyone away from yoga. Most classes won't look like this — and a gentle class at the studio is a very different thing from weeks of intensive, deep practice on a 300-hour training. But I want to be honest about what this kind of work can do.

• Feelings don't always arrive labelled. Sometimes all you know is that you can't sleep, or something feels off. Getting curious is where healing starts.

• A triggered response can be a sign of progress. Sometimes old things have to come up before they can leave.

• The body holds what the mind has tucked away. Breath work, meditation and certain postures can help it let go — sometimes in ways and at times we don't expect.

• Tears on the mat are welcome. Crying in class isn't falling apart; often it's things finally coming together.

• Look after yourself afterwards. Rest, water, food, and people you trust. I've got my angel, Melody, and wonderful teachers here — please make sure you have your people too.

• And if you're a people-pleaser like me: your own stall matters too.

A safe space to start

If any of this resonates — if you carry things you've never quite been able to put down — please know that Inner Lifetime is a beginner-friendly, trauma-aware space where you're always welcome to go at your own pace, rest when you need to, and feel whatever comes up. Your first class is on us: use code 1STCLASSFREE_IL when you book at www.innerlifetime.com.

If this post has stirred something difficult for you, please reach out to someone you trust. In the UK, Samaritans are available any time on 116 123, and Rape Crisis England & Wales offers support at rapecrisis.org.uk.

Inner Lifetime, Unit 3, 421 Newark Rd, Lincoln LN6 8RS

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