The Athletics Department, Brace Center, and Community Engagement Office organized a workshop on Trauma-Informed Weight Lifting (TIWL) on Sunday for students and campus adults. The event was led by mental health counselor Cate Doyon, who first gave a presentation about the research done on TIWL and then showed attendees some helpful exercises.
Director of Community Engagement Monique Cueto-Potts was the main organizer of the event. Inspired by a colleague who had mentioned trauma-informed yoga, Cueto-Potts began to look more into TIWL, which she had read about before, then deciding to organize the workshop.
“I wanted [the attendees] to see weightlifting in a different light than stereotypically we see it portrayed. I also wanted them to get out of it the research and the theory behind why weightlifting is especially helpful for people who deal with chronic stress, [post traumatic stress disorder,] anxiety, and depression, because it’s a fairly new wave of research, probably from like 2018. I wanted them to learn about the connection between weightlifting and the physical health and mental health benefits that it has for people who are dealing with those issues,” said Cueto-Potts.
Doyon’s presentation intrigued Lucy Nichols ’26. As a gym-goer herself, Nichols attended the event with an awareness of the multitude of reasons that one might go to the gym, but not much about those reasons related to mental health. Hearing a professional standpoint helped grow her knowledge of the topic of TIWL.
“One of the things that really stuck with me was just the emphasis on we need to understand that not everybody experiences the gym in the same way that you might or that you do. Everyone’s coming from a different place in terms of comfort level, in terms of experience, in terms of what they’re getting out of it, and that one of the most important things to do if you’re in that kind of space is to just be mindful and appreciate that not everyone has the same level of comfort with different things for reasons that you might not even understand or be able to appreciate,” said Nichols.
Brigitte Leschhorn, Instructor in English and Transitional Director of Equity, Balance, and Inclusion (EBI), attended the event without much prior knowledge of TIWL. She was curious about how others may feel uncomfortable with physical activity for reasons of mental health.
“There’s a lot of spaces that we don’t think about where people who suffer from traumatic stress don’t feel safe. We take the gym for granted and people going to the gym. But there’s a lot of people who, for whatever reason, don’t feel comfortable working out in a gym, don’t feel comfortable working out with other people, or don’t feel comfortable sometimes even just with physical activity. I wanted to learn more about what it is and how we can help make those spaces more comfortable for people and students who suffer from traumatic stress,” said Leschhorn.
She continued, “[Cate Doyon] mentioned the similarity between an anxiety attack and working out. She talked about how your heart races, you start sweating, and all of those things. There’s people who are suffering from mental health issues and depression and so on, who avoid that physical exertion because the brain is telling them, ‘Hey, we avoid this because this is what an anxiety attack feels like, right, this is what a panic attack starts to feel like.’ I had never thought of it that way… So now I’m super interested in it.”
Cueto-Potts felt that the event was successful and would like to organize other similar events. She shared intentions to further circulate TIWL to others outside of Andover in order to help others.
“I’m actually going through the training myself right now with the hope that I can get certified in trauma informed weightlifting and then offer it not only to campus adults and to students, but also offer it to local organizations who work with people who are dealing with chronic stress or trauma-related symptoms or anxiety and depression so that those organizations can offer workshops like that to people who might benefit from them,” said Cueto-Potts.
