Yoga in the Therapy Room: Tips for integrating trauma informed yoga

Why should you consider using yoga in therapy? Which parts of yoga can benefit and deepen your therapeutic practice? How can yoga empower your clients?

• Benefits to using yoga in therapy
• Getting started: take small steps
• See what your clients already know
• Keeping yoga trauma-informed

Yoga can be used as a bottom-up therapeutic practice for trauma-informed healing.

Clients who struggle with trauma are generally more successful in using bottom-up therapy practices first, such as breathwork, meditation, yoga. They have less success with top-down practice, such as CBT and traditional talk therapy.

You can use these bottom-up approaches to help the client regulate emotionally and physically before leading into CBT and talk therapy.

- Yoga can be used to achieve emotional regulation because it is present-moment focused.

It helps clients to center themselves on the "now" and be present within themselves and what is happening around them.

- Yoga can be taught as a coping skill. Therapists can teach basic yoga poses or breathing techniques to their clients for them to use at home or whenever they feel unsettled.

It empowers clients to have more control over their regulation and emotions.

Yoga training is a big commitment of time and money. Help yourself through this accreditation by taking it in small steps.

Consider taking classes in your own time to become more familiar with yoga before getting a certificate.

If you do not want to teach movement, you do not have you. You can start with teaching basic breathwork to your clients.

Remember, it starts with a relationship: build this first. Build a relationship and trust with your clients before diving into doing yoga with them.

Decide what you want to teach. Where is the starting point for you?

The key to teaching this is to know this pose or breathwork inside and out, and for you to feel totally comfortable with it before teaching it to someone else so that you can guide them. Here, repetition is important.

Create a safe and welcoming space. With both telehealth and in-person, make sure whatever is around and behind you is soothing and peaceful.

Welcome them warmly to ease them into this new space and the yoga.

Introduce yoga to your clients as an option. It is an invitation, and your clients can decline if it is not for them.

If your client does consent to yoga and wants to incorporate it into their therapy with you, discuss yoga with them to see how familiar they are with it already.

- Let your clients know they can stop at any time or to ask a question

- Enquire about potential injuries, surgeries, or limitations your client may have so that you can modify yoga for them

- Tell clients to stop if they feel pain

- Provide clients with a time frame about how long the yoga may take

- Notice where you are seated and where they are seated so that they feel that they have enough space

- Practice alongside your client

- Assign some poses or breathwork sessions as homework for the clients so that they know they can use yoga as a tool to help them regulate

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

How can you achieve full-bodied mastery for success and enjoyment for life? What is the relationship between willingness and willpower? Why should you be mindful of who you listen to?

From Program Manager at Microsoft to award-winning author of Healing Happens and international keynote speaker, Avital Miller has passionately shared spiritual, healing, and dance programs to thousands of people worldwide for over 15 years. Avital helps people feel a touch of love in their hearts, joy in their spirits, and peace in their minds.

She is a certified energy healer, healing breakthrough consultant, former Yoga and Fitness Teacher, and graduate of Washington University with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Major in Dance.

Visit Avital Miller's website, and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

Visit her Youtube Channel and listen to her Podcast, Healing Happens.

Sign Up for Avital's Live Webinar!

• Go with the flow of life
• Do not listen to everyone or everything
• Willpower for your life
• Do what you can do
• "What is the gift?"

Have dreams, goals, ambitions, and desires, but marry them with a level of ease and trust that things will work out how they need to.

Life is in constant flux, a push and pull, and people can enjoy life more when they allow themselves to be led as well as when they take the lead.

Take a stand and make decisions for your life as an active agent. Do not give your power and agency away by letting other people make decisions for you.

Be mindful of who and what you are listening to. Many famous people in the world were told at the start of their careers that they would be failures: Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Spielberg, Michael Jordan, Lady Gaga:

Imagine the impact that each person in the world could make in pursuit of their dreams and ambitions if they chose not to listen to those who tell them that they cannot do it.

Being willing to live your life and be active in your experience can lend you the willpower to do challenging things. Willpower and discipline are the keys to carving out success in your life – you just have to be willing to live.

What is your reason to live? Studies have shown that severely ill patients often heal faster or better when they have something to live for. What is going to give you your willpower?

Do what you can do and what is within your ability to make your life better, healthier, more joyful, and expansive.

Say yes to the things that inspire you, challenge you, and bring you joy.

Do what you can do within your realm of abilities to get to a healthier, happier place.

What is the gift that you can learn from your own story?

You do not have to deny the challenges that come up with health issues while you observe the wisdom that you can garner from having experienced them.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

Have you ever worried that you will be judged by others because you use holistic strategies in therapy? Do you feel like you are in the "holistic closet" due to people's misperceptions about holistic modalities? Can you stand in confidence of your work?

Janis R. Cohen, LCSW, is internationally known as The Intuitive Therapist. She has worked with children, adults, couples, and families for almost three decades. Janis combines her extensive clinical expertise with psychic and intuitive gifts of clairvoyance, empathy, and mediumship. She uses this unique skill set to get to the root of a challenge with razor-sharp accuracy and to offer specific and effective strategies to resolve her client's problems.

In addition, Janis offers Intuitive Therapeutic Psychic Readings to people who want clarity and direction for their most pressing issues around money, love, relationships, and health as well as connecting them with loved ones who have crossed over.

Janis has authored articles in PINK Magazine, Associated Press, and has published her own columns in local newspapers such as The Jewish Times, Aquarius Magazine, and Conscious Living Magazine. Her podcast, The Intuitive Therapist, merges therapy with intuition, spirituality, and metaphysics.

Visit Janis Cohen's website and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

• Stand in your confidence
• Stepping into your gifts
• Find your holistic community

You need to stand in your confidence in what it is that you do. Do not be apologetic or uncertain.

Most people have interests in the work that you openly enjoy doing, so appreciate your skills and abilities and put them to good use.

It may not be an easy journey in the beginning because this work is not for everybody, but if it is for you, then have passion for the work that you do and commit to expanding your skills and expertise.

One of the first things to do, if you are feeling nervous about your work, is to address the fear that you feel may arise if you do fully step into your gifts. What is scary about explaining your work to people?

Judgment is a big piece that people fear, but counter that by asking what if it helps people? What if you can teach people in your life the things that you know and do well? They can become some of your best supporters.

Surround yourself with people who support and inspire you.

Seek out colleagues, mentors, and advisors who either are in your current position or have been there who can help support you.

Join various groups and meet-ups, search for knowledge and you will find those who have similar interests and stories to yours.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

How do you introduce faith into counseling with clients? Why should you be mindful of the content that you consume? What happens when faith does not quell pain?

Alissa Schneider is a licensed mental health counselor who specializes in helping people struggling with anxiety, OCD, and eating disorders. She uses an integrative approach with her clients while being very compassionate, and she integrates faith into the counseling sessions should her client desire it. She wants to help people who are struggling with chronic issues that are getting in the way of living a full life, and her aim is to help clients live a life of meaning.

Visit Alissa's website, contact them at (561) 449-2478

Connect with her on LinkedIn.

FREEBIE: Access and read Alissa's free ebook and more!

• Introducing faith into counseling
• Encourage clients to work with positivity
• Faith and thoughts
• Faith and difficulty

Include questions about faith and religion on the informed consent form that clients sign at the beginning of treatment.

You can ask your clients about their faith but allow your clients to lead the conversation about their religious beliefs.

Open-ended questions can be helpful conversation starters and are more ethical than outright claims or statements.

In therapy and counseling, encourage clients to look for and create positivity. This does not mean that you should pretend that everything is okay. Instead, look for the good rather than taking in the bad unchecked.

You can be mindful of what you listen to, what you watch, and who you speak to. Being aware of the content that you expose yourself to is important.

There is a difference between active thinking and automatic thinking.

Automatic thoughts can feel difficult to control and they are products of your subconscious. Do not try to control them specifically, but you can change them through mindfulness and intentional work.

On the other hand, active thoughts are the ones you create. You can create active thoughts in response to automatic thoughts as an effort to "reprogram" your brain.

Bringing faith into your thinking can help keep you aligned with creating positive, active thoughts instead of being stuck in an automatic cycle.

Most people use prayer to try and change or fix something, but that does not work. The human experience is to move through difficult things with the ability and capacity to get from one side to the other.

Prayer helps you move through your life, but it does not take away your struggles. Prayer brings you strength to overcome them.

People can bring pleasure and joy into the midst of pain while they overcome it and lean on their faith to give them the strength to get past their pain.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

Are you working in your zone of genius? Is there a difference between marketing a holistic practice to a regular practice? Is your current marketing strategy connecting you to your ideal client?

Joanna Sapir has been a teacher and mentor for more than twenty years — from the classroom to the gym floor to wellness practices around the world. She works with established practitioners that are doing innovative and transformational work in marketing, sales, and administration. Joanna's special ability is helping practitioners become true leaders of their businesses. Her goal is for them to find more fulfillment and purpose in their work, serve their clients more deeply - and create predictable income and streamlined systems while doing it. She believes that when you step into leadership of your business, you show up for the world in a bigger, better, and more powerful way than ever.

A San Francisco Bay Area native, Joanna now lives in Sonoma County, is the mother of two teenaged sons, and is a national champion in Olympic-style weightlifting.

Check out Joanna Sapir's website and listen to The Business (R)evolution Podcast. Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

FREEBIE: The Client Champion Formula workshop

• Business systems
• Work in your zone of genius
• Marketing versus sales

Every successful business relies on effective systems. As the business owner, it is your job to figure out how to make things run well, and how to make them run smoothly so that the business can grow on its own while the day-to-day work gets completed.

These types of systems can be your:

• Sales system
• Marketing system
• Client service system

Having slick business systems is a great help to solo practice owners and entrepreneurs because it enables the business to help the owner. Make the business work for you, not the other way around.

Consider hiring an administrative staff member to help you run your business so that you can work in your zone of genius, instead of spending your time and energy doing things you either highly dislike or are not all that good at.

Work in your zone of genius and excellence, and outsource the rest:

• Zone of genius: where you light up with enjoyment at doing the work and are great at what you do.
• Zone of excellence: where you are good at the work, but it does not light you up.
• Zone of competence: you can do the work, but you are not great at it.
• Zone of incompetence: you are not able to do the work properly.

Marketing is centered around getting noticed and attracting attention to your business.

Do not use mass-marketing strategies for your business, and instead market yourself by speaking directly to your ideal client. The message in your marketing will therefore change from "look at me" to "I see you".

The sales process starts once you are in conversation with them about them becoming a client of yours. It is usually the leads who become clients.

Simple marketing process:

• Marketing to your leads: these are the people in your email lists, who follow you on social media, and those who interact with you on an occasional basis.
• Marketing to the public: you market to the public to create leads.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

How can crystals be used in therapy to deepen a client's connection with their subconscious mind? Where do you start in becoming acquainted with crystals? How do you cleanse them after sessions?

Teresa has been a counselor for nearly 30 years and qualified as an LCMHC in 2014. Her professional experience includes working in crisis intervention, with individuals with disabilities as a Student Support Services counselor, and as a community college Director of Counseling Services. Teresa has experience treating young adults and adults for a wide variety of life challenges such as chronic medical conditions, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, dissociation disorders, trauma, TBI, career changes, self-discovery/identity crisis, military retirement, and relationship issues.

Since she was a teenager, Teresa has been fascinated by alternative spirituality and belief systems. She has read Tarot cards intuitively for most of her life, and she is a reiki master, hypnotherapist (trauma-focused), EMDR, and EMDR Flash practitioner.

Connect with Teresa on LinkedIn and Psychology Today. Book a consultation with her at Thrivemind Counseling and Wellness, LLC.

• Using crystals in session
• Cleaning crystal energy
• Crystal grids
• Getting started

If clients are open to using crystals in session, they can consider holding selenite crystals in their hands.

Therapy works in unison with the subconscious mind and that is where the most healing can happen.

Even though therapeutic experiences can be had in the conscious mind, often deeper and more revealing insights are had when someone is in sync with their subconscious. Using selenite crystals in session can be a way to encourage that.

Crystals have been said to carry the energy of those who have held or handled them. You can cleanse your crystals in various ways, such as:

• burying them in the earth for a few weeks or months
• moon bathe them during a full moon by leaving them on a windowsill at night
• leave them in the sun during the day
• soak them in rock salt

Crystal grids are based on sacred geometry.

The star of David is well-known as an example of sacred geometry, and it can be replicated with crystals into a grid.

Quartz crystals are a good place to start. Hold it up to the light and see if you can find a rainbow or pyramids and different shapes.

Amethyst and rose quartz crystals are also good introductions to become acquainted with if you are wanting to get to know crystals.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

Do you treat patients with OCD? Why can you not treat OCD like anxiety? How does ERP work alongside CBT for effective OCD treatment?

Dr. Roseann is a mental health trailblazer, founder of The Global Institute of Children's Mental Health, and Dr. Roseann, LLC. She is known for brain-based solutions for struggling kids and her work has helped thousands reverse the most challenging conditions, such as ADHD, anxiety, mood, autism, learning disability, Lyme, and PANS/PANDAS using PROVEN holistic therapies such as neurofeedback, biofeedback, and psychotherapy.

She is the author of the first-ever book on teletherapy activities for child and adolescent therapists, "Teletherapy Toolkit" and "It's Gonna be OK!" She gives parents step-by-step solutions for their struggling kids with her books and remote neurofeedback program. A media personality, she is often featured on dozens of media outlets: Fox, CBS, NBC, PARENTS, and New York Times.

Visit her personal website and childrensmentalhealth.com.

Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and Pinterest.

Find out More about Roseann's Get Unstuck Summit!

Freebie: Check out these free coping statements!

• OCD
• ERP
• CBT and OCD treatment

OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, is not always related to anxiety and it cannot be treated as anxiety.

People may comfort others who suffer from OCD instead of reminding them that they are capable of self-regulating as well.

Exposure and response prevention is about educating the client in the neuroscience behind behavioral changes and enabling them to self-regulate based on behavioral changes.

Clients are given the tools to overcome their OCD by learning about what their triggers are.

Later in therapy, clients interact with safe exposure to those triggers and learn behavioral strategies to overcome the OCD and compulsive needs for rituals.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is an important aspect of OCD treatment. However, it needs to work in unison with behavioral strategies and not only be based on talk therapy.

If you work with clients who suffer from OCD, consider taking on training in ERP because it adds another necessary and integral dimension to their treatment.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

Why is it integral to uncover blind spots to find total healing? How many physical ailments are due to disturbances in a person's biofield? How do negative patterns of emotions and habits cause bodily manifestations of discomfort?

Debora Wayne is the Founder and CEO of The International Chronic Pain Institute. She is a world-renowned energy healer whose leading-edge, non-drug method, known as HighSpeed Healing™, has (virtually) helped tens of thousands around the world to rapidly release Chronic Pain, Depression, Anxiety, Trauma, Battles with Weight, Binge-Eating, Chronic Fatigue, Insomnia, and other chronic conditions.

A highly sought-after speaker and #1 Bestselling Author of "Why Do I Still Hurt?", Debora has earned degrees and certifications in Psychology, Hypnotherapy, & Chemical Dependency Counseling. She has 35+ years of practicing and teaching Meditation, is a nationally recognized Glass Artist, a former professional Modern Dancer, a Certified Yoga Instructor, and leads the Only Practitioner Training worldwide in her proprietary method known as HighSpeedHealing™.

Visit The International Chronic Pain Institute and connect with them on Facebook.

Connect with Deborah on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Clubhouse, and LinkedIn.

• Make an effort to find blind spots
• Do not fixate on symptoms
• Anxiety
• Debora's advice to listeners

The root cause of physical ailments, especially chronic illness, is often much deeper than we realize.

The misaligned and maladaptive habits that people unconsciously form negatively impact their mental, physical, and emotional health.

The world focuses solely on the physical manifestations of illness and does not look further than the symptoms. It disregards the research that most illness begins before the symptoms show.

Symptoms are the manifestations of the problem, but they are not the problem itself. Therefore, to achieve overall treatment and healing, especially physical healing, there needs to be a level of awareness of what is going on inside a person.

Consider their habits, thoughts, emotions, and so forth.

Disturbances in the biofield, due to harmful patterns of thoughts and emotions, manifest as uncomfortable feelings in the physical body which are then labeled as symptoms of anxiety or depression.

The body is providing you feedback on what is happening internally. The symptoms are manifestations of feedback and are not the root cause. Therefore, to heal the body, it is necessary to identify and work through the disturbances in the biofield and internal world.

- If you are suffering from any type of pain or symptom from disease, do not stop searching for healing. Take the next step and keep trying to find the solution.

- Take quiet time every day to listen to what your body, mind, and spirit are trying to tell you. Try to spend more time in nature.

- Develop a personal practice that will help you develop a relationship with your inner self.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

What is an energetic cord? Can energetic cords become harmful if left alone? How can you clear and cut energetic cords from yourself?

Michele Lundstrom is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in private practice and an intuitive empath. She is also a Shamanic practitioner, Certified Advanced Chakredy® Practitioner, Reiki Master, Empath Coach, Teacher, and Energy artist. Michele provides intuitive readings through your subtle energy (the chakras) to help identify and prioritize what your energy wants to bring to your awareness; as well as energetic imbalances and direct channeled healing energy to the chakras. She is a carrier of lightning medicine since she was struck by lightning a few years ago.

​Michele also offers coaching for empaths and intuitive medical and mental health professionals.

Visit Michele's counseling website and see also Luminous Ignus.

Connect with Michele on Facebook, Instagram, and Psychology Today.

• What is an energetic cord?
• Negative and positive cords
• Cutting energetic cords
• Setting energetic boundaries

Mainstream speech already contains expressions such as "no strings attached" or "cut the ties", so the ideas of energetic cords are already known to people.

People can "attach" energetically to someone in a good or a bad way, drawing and giving good or bad energy to them.

As a therapist, you may be corded into someone, or someone may have corded into you if you are constantly thinking about them outside of the therapy room. If you are stuck in a running loop thinking about a person, there is a high chance of an energy cord between you two.

If a child is healthy, secure, and confident enough in themselves, they will start pulling away from their parent. The parent can then care for them emotionally and give them love and encourage their autonomy.

In an unhealthy relationship, this cord would turn into manipulation and control for the parent to keep their child close. This dynamic is present in romantic relationships as well.

You can practice cutting energetic cords by:

- intentional meditation

- using crystals

- speaking out and confirming the boundaries of your energetic field

Start with your intention and your belief system, which could be in God, Source, the Divine, the universe; all of these can work.

Create a sort of barrier around yourself with energy that comes from a source, such as your religion, beliefs, or even from the warmth of the sun or the feeling of being grounded from the earth. Use this energy as a bubble around yourself.

Program this barrier with love, security, and safety, and imagine it existing gently around you.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)

Why is detachment important for making intentional decisions? What is true willpower? What do you know about the ego?

Leonard Perlmutter(Ram Lev) is the founder and director of the American Meditation Institute and is the originator of National Conscience Month. He studied in Rishikesh, India under Swami Rama of the Himalayas. Leonard has presented informative Yoga Science and meditation workshops at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, The New York Times Forum on Yoga, the Washington University Medical School, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and has served on the faculties of the New England Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine and the International Himalayan Yoga Teachers Association.

Leonard is the author and editor of Transformation: The Journal of Yoga Science as Holistic Mind/Body Medicine. His Heart and Science of Yoga® course curriculum has been certified by the Albany Medical College, the American Medical Association, and the American Nurses Association for continuing medical education credit.

Visit the American Meditation Institute website. Connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn.

Read Leonard Perlmutter's book, Your Conscience.

• Meditation to unlock your mind
• True willpower
• The ego
• Your conscience

Meditation helps a person to become detached.

By becoming detached, a person is no longer bound to their emotions and their immediate reactions.

Through detachment, people can pause and observe something that happens around them instead of immediately reacting.

Meditation teaches detachment, and detachment enables pause, and pause allows people to sit in their peace and decide from a place of stability and calmness, instead of mindlessness and fear-based reactions.

From taking intentional action from the pause, people can direct their energy and focus on the things that they can see genuinely do matter.

Therefore, they can practice true willpower, because they can recognize the wise and unwise decisions and are willing to wait or work to make the best and truest decision happen in reality.

The training of meditation can, therefore, be used in every aspect of daily life. The teachings of meditation can be superimposed in many ways, and we can rely on these teachings when making any decision.

The ego has a limited perspective and so it cannot perceive anything other than what is known to be good. It wants to remain with what it knows, because it fears change, even if what it knows is overly difficult or painful.

The ego is often in wrong, but it never doubts. It defines every relationship or life event as either pleasant or unpleasant, and it only wants to serve the pleasant, therefore opposing everything that is unpleasant.

It is important to remember that not everything that is pleasant is good for us, and often the things that are unpleasant are good for us. Therefore, do not always blindly accept the ego's recommendation on things, because then you will be the one who suffers.

In order to start making shifts, you need to parent your unconscious mind and the ego. Teach them to be quieter and listen to the conscience, the seat of your wisdom and creativity.

For the sake of an experiment, make your thoughts, words, and deeds come from your conscience to experience a different way of being.

Download the Free guide: How to build confidence and competence bringing yoga into the therapy room

The Yoga in Therapy Collective —where therapists learn, grow, and get support with yoga-informed practices

Explore the Yoga Basics for Therapists course—designed to help you confidently and ethically integrate yoga into therapy

Yoga Basics: The Therapist's Guide to Integrating Trauma-Informed Yoga into Sessions

Instagram: @chris_mcdonald58

Join the Free Bringing Yoga Into the Therapy Room Facebook group

Leave a review and subscribe to this podcast

Self-Care for the Counselor: A Companion Workbook: An Easy to Use Workbook to Support you on Your Holistic Healing and Counselor Self-Care Journey ... A Holistic Guide for Helping Professionals)