Yoga Therapy
Why Yoga Therapy?
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Stress
- Grief
- Trauma
- Physical tension related to stress
You attend yoga therapy for all the same emotional reasons that you would attend regular therapy. Yoga therapy is particularly helpful when you become so caught up in thinking about and rationalizing your problems, that you become disengaged from your internal experience – physical, emotional, energetic and spiritual.
By paying attention to your body in therapy, you access more parts of the brain. Traditional cognitive therapies access processes like rationalizing and thinking which occur at the top of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex. This allows us to think things through and make rational decisions about the next steps.
When talk therapy alone stops achieving results, body-based therapies can access further information to inform the healing process. Yoga therapy has the holistic advantage of including awareness of processes that occur in the bottom or deeper parts of the brain like the brainstem (breath, heart rate) and limbic system (emotion, reactivity, memory).
Yoga therapy requires you to pay attention in different ways than regular talk therapy thus, eliciting additional neural pathways and opening gateways to integrate new information and experience.
Yoga therapy combines mindfulness, physical stimulus and client centred dialogue to help you fully notice moment to moment sensations, ideas, feelings and images.
In the stillness of the present moment, solutions are not required, but they often arise.
What happens in a session?
Yoga Therapy sessions begin with simple movements to bring your awareness into your body and to prepare you for sitting meditation. After the movement, there is often a guided meditation which helps you become present to what is happening now in your body, breath, ideas and emotions. This information is used to get clear about your intentions for the session.
After the meditation/centering process you will be assisted through breathing exercises and/or yoga postures. The breath and movement are a stimulus to help you get focused on your present moment experience.
During a session, you will be observing your edge—a place of heightened awareness or sensation but not pain. As you move through the session, we will enter a non-directive, client centred dialogue. The purpose of the dialogue is for you to listen, learn and communicate what is happening at this moment, within your body.
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I will assist you in accessing information stored in your body-mind by:
- providing inquiry and presence along with low or no touch assisted stretches,
- engaging in simple dialogue to clarify your experience
- holding space for you to embark on your unique process.
Your job is simply to tune in, listen and report your experiences. When the session is complete, you will be guided through an integration process to make sense of your experience.
Integration happens when the information that arose from your embodied experience has a chance to mingle with the cognitive knowledge of your day to day life.
Finally, from the place of knowing you will choose action steps to move forward on the path of personal development and growth.
Benefits of Yoga Therapy with Me
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Here’s what my clients often report:
- A feeling of deep relaxation
- Development of skills to stay calmly focused and alert
- Deep personal insight leading to greater emotional stability
- Enhanced mental clarity
- A more positive perspective on life
- Greater body awareness and ease of movement
- Physical relief from chronic aches and pains
- Relief from stress, anxiety and fears
If you’re ready to get started with Yoga Therapy, contact me for a free, 15-minute consultation and we can discuss your concerns and how I may be of help.