Chandler Tyrrell, a lead occupational therapist at Reston Hospital and yoga teacher at Down Dog Yoga, is uniting her skills and passions to increase awareness for people with traumatic brain injuries.
Tyrrell created a fundraiser campaign under the umbrella of LoveYourBrain, a non-profit organization aiming to help people with traumatic brain injuries and raise awareness about the importance of brain health. Tyrrell taught a donation-based yoga class at a Down Dog Yoga studio for in-person and virtual participants and has raised more than $1,500 for the campaign so far.
March is "Brain Injury Awareness" month and organizations launch campaigns to spread awareness about people and their loved ones who have suffered from a brain injury. Tyrrell works with patients who have had a stroke or a traumatic brain or spinal cord injury.
"A traumatic brain injury can be an 'invisible kind of injury' because the person may look like they're able to move around and do their daily tasks," she said. "But those kinds of cognitive, social, emotional and coping things are all heavily impacted."
Tyrrell helped create a yoga class at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, where she previously worked, designed for hospital patients. The class included a combination of chair yoga, mindfulness and meditation techniques. She participated in a LoveYourBrain training in 2020 meant for healthcare professionals to learn more about the benefits of yoga for hospital patients.
LoveYourBrain programs provide free and accessible yoga classes to people with traumatic brain injuries. The classes give patients time to socialize with one another and then are led through breathwork techniques, yoga postures and meditation practice, Tyrrell said.
"From an occupational therapy side of things we can address the body and the physical deficits of the body all that we want, but the mind plays such a huge role in that," Tyrrell shared.
She works with patients on a daily basis to rebuild good coping skills as a result of an injury so they can navigate their daily lives. Tyrrell uses techniques that are part of LoveYourBrain yoga practice, like breathing exercises and adaptive postures, to help her patients.
"They need to have good coping skills to figure out, 'okay, this traumatic thing has happened to me, how can I cope with it? How can I continue on living doing the things that I want to do, even though I have this disability now,'" she said.
Patients with traumatic brain injuries and their caregivers can access yoga classes and group discussions online. In-person programs are on pause for the near future.
The Brain Injury Association of America estimates at least 2.8 million people in America have been in an accident that results in a traumatic brain injury. One traumatic brain injury every 11 seconds occurs in the U.S. and Canada each year, according to LoveYourBrain.
A traumatic brain injury can be caused by a forceful bump, blow or jolt to someone's head or body, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Tyrrell said traumatic brain injuries span over someone's lifetime and at times affect the cognitive, social and emotional personalities of a person.
"If you broke your arm, the arm is going to heal and you can do exercises to get stronger. The therapy for a traumatic brain injury doesn't quite work in that same way," she said. "It's more about awareness, environmental modifications and giving a person the skills to be able to adapt and change to whatever situation they have."
Tyrrell said awareness is one of the most important pieces to focus on when it comes to helping patients with traumatic brain injuries.
"When I talk about [traumatic brain injuries] with my husband and friends, they are like 'what is that?' 'I have never even heard of that before.' So it's really important to build awareness of what it is like, what it looks like and how we can support people that have it," Tyrrell shared.
"I think that is a really big piece for me is building that awareness," she said.
Anyone interested in learning more about traumatic brain injuries and raising awareness about the topic can visit LoveYourBrain.com and find Tyrrell's campaign page here.