199 Welcome to Yoga In The Therapy Room | Defining Integrative Yoga Practices For Therapists: Episode By Chris McDonald

Chris McDonald: Have you wanted to bring yoga into the therapy room, but are unsure how? Maybe you've gone to yoga class yourself and recognize the positive impact and want to learn ways to integrate different practices with clients, or maybe you have yoga training, but are unsure of next steps and how to offer it safely and ethically.

Welcome to the first episode of yoga in the therapy room. Today, we're kicking off with a deep dive into the rebrand from the holistic counseling podcast, where I'll share my vision for this exciting new direction. We'll explore what yoga truly is and how it can be redefined within the therapy space to offer more profound healing and support.

I'll also outline the types of episodes and topics you can expect in the coming weeks, ranging from practical tips to in depth discussions on integrating yoga into your sessions. Whether you're new to the idea or looking to deepen your practice, this episode will set the stage for a journey towards creating a more inclusive, accessible, and transformative approach to therapy.

Tune in and discover how yoga can become a powerful tool in your therapeutic toolkit. On today's episode of Yoga in the Therapy Room, let's jump in. Welcome to Yoga in the Therapy Room, the nontraditional therapist guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice. I'm Chris McDonald, licensed therapist and registered yoga teacher.

This podcast is here to empower therapists like you with the knowledge and confidence to bring yoga into their practice safely and ethically. So whether you're here to expand your skills, enhance your self care,

Welcome to the first episode of Yoga in the Therapy Room. I'm Chris McDonald, Holistic Therapist. and registered yoga teacher. This podcast is the non traditional therapist's guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice. And yes, that's the new tagline. I wanted to bring this tagline out for you to hear and know that this is a safe place for therapists who are in the non traditional realm.

If you are a somatic therapist, or you're wanting to bring more body based practices into your clinical sessions, or maybe you're curious about integrating yoga practices in sessions and want to learn more about yoga, Or maybe this is just for you and your personal yoga practice. That is great too and very welcome here.

So if any of those apply, or you're just curious in general, you are in the right place. This podcast will focus on all things yoga and ways to integrate ethically and safely into therapy sessions. Today's episode will focus on bringing you more clarity about what to expect from this rebrand of the Holistic Counseling Podcast.

What the vision is for this podcast, defining what yoga is and redefining the differences of what yoga in the therapy room is all about. I will also touch on the types of episodes and topics I'll be bringing into you and also definition of yoga. and what that means in the therapy room. So redefining that as well, because I think we need some clarity on what this is.

Because when we say the word yoga, people get a lot of ideas of what that means. And I think we need to really talk about that. So let's jump right in. I wanted to start first, since this is the first official episode of the podcast, with what is yoga? So when you think of yoga, what comes to mind? Maybe you picture people in crazy poses on Instagram or something else.

And usually it's movement practices, right? So let me define, and again, this is very challenging to define yoga because it means so much to so many people around the world. It's a very ancient tradition. Going back to India as far as 1800 BC. So this is a really been around a long time. So yoga is defined as to yoke or unite or defined as oneness, meaning everything is interconnected.

No separation between anyone. or anything. The practice aims to create union between body, mind, and spirit, as well as between the individual self and universal consciousness. BKS Iyengar Yoga defines it as an art, a science, and a philosophy. It touches the life of man at every level, physical, mental, and spiritual.

It is a practical method for making one's life purposeful, useful, and noble. As honey is sweet from any part of the honeycomb, So is yoga. It enables every part of the human system to become attuned to its essence, a conscious seer within. Let that seep in for a moment listeners. I just love that as honey is sweet from any part of the honeycomb, so is yoga.

And that's what I found in my journey through yoga. I originally was doing yoga once in a while and I really enjoyed the practice. I remember leaving one yoga class and thinking to myself, wow, I just feel amazing. It's been a gradual journey for me. I've taken some classes, like I said, along the way I started to get into a regular routine of once a week.

And then once I moved to taking some trainings with yoga and how to integrate into sessions in 2015, I took some chair yoga. I found that I really was drawn to helping other people discover the calm within, discover tools to manage mental health through yoga practices. And again, yoga is not just movement.

It's also breathwork, meditation, and so much more. Eight Limbs we'll get into on future episodes, not today. And I want to have the message out there for therapists listening that many of you are probably already doing yoga. That's the amazing part. I had met with some listeners for some focus groups and As one of my listeners was talking, she's like, I don't know about integrating yoga and I'm uncomfortable and worried about licensure, scope of practice, all of that.

But as she was talking, I was like, I just want to stop you a moment. You are doing yoga. She was doing mindfulness practices, connecting to the body. How does that feel in your body? Creating awareness. I think we can also use the word awareness in defining yoga. So if you bring the body into session, to me, that's yoga, creating awareness for clients, creating a safe space, openness, being there for our clients.

But let's get to defining yoga and therapy, redefining it, I should say, because what people may think initially is that we're doing a 53 minute yoga class with clients. That is not true. It is an integrated practice. So it's not standalone because of course, if we're doing a 53 minute practice, that's a yoga class and that is not mental health therapy.

So when I say integrated, it's part of the session. Maybe it would be starting the session with some breathwork or grounding. It also could appear mid session with using some practices. Let's say somebody's depressed, some energizing practices. I know I use some tapping and many of you do as well, or getting up and doing some energizer kind of movements, like a shoulder swing or something else, just even bouncing on the feet.

to get some energy moving. So another way to look at this as a complementary and alternative way of integrating yoga. So it's complementary and alternative practice combined with traditional therapy. So using talk therapy, but also bringing in yoga as part of it, helping clients connect to the body. And it could be pausing clients.

I do this often to say, you know, especially people that talk a lot. Cause of course people. come to us because they many times don't have someone they trust or feel like it's a safe space to share their deepest concerns. So sometimes they talk a lot and it can be hard for us to even get a word in because we're providing, you know, that safe container, the listening space.

But sometimes, I will interrupt gently and just say, can we pause for a moment? I'm hearing what you're saying. I'm here for you. What do you notice in your body as you say that out loud? Again, yoga is bringing awareness, asking them to connect. Tropical Storm Debbie is outside my window as I record this.

So hopefully we can get this recorded today. Present moment awareness. So thinking of mindfulness, grounding practices. Many of you already do those. So that is yoga. How can we bring clients back to the present moment? And if you talk to clients, even I'm thinking like gestalt therapy, where you ask them here now, what do you notice now?

Not yesterday, not right before the session. What about right now? Tuning in. An important part of yoga and therapy is also trauma informed. So we want to make sure that we provide, like I mentioned, the safe container for And that we limit triggers for clients and just it is an awareness practice for therapists to learn.

I think, of course, many of us already do this naturally, but sometimes we have to really think about like closing our eyes, asking clients to close their eyes may not feel safe for people, especially if they have PTSD that can feel triggering to go within. So we have to do that gradual as a gradual process.

So you can ask them to keep their eyes gently open, looking at the floor as an option. So it's, it's offering choices. and options. Because with trauma, many clients had the choice taken away. So we want to empower them. Do they want to choose the space to sit where they want to sit in the session? That could be trauma informed.

Maybe they feel uncomfortable sitting in a certain spot in your room. So figuring that out, especially in person sessions, we have more control over that. Of course, if they're at home, it's up to them to choose the space. I'm just thinking in person. Keeping the environment around you. Comfortable with nice soothing colors.

I know my office at home, I have more purple colors that people seem to really connect with making it a holistic space with my holistic decorations, soothing objects, crystals. I bring that into my in person as well. Just that environment alone can help people feel a little safer and calmer. That will be a whole other episode trauma informed yoga.

What does that mean or trauma informed space in general? How can we offer that to clients? Cause that's a whole training in itself and learning, right? Another value for this podcast that I believe to my core is yoga for everyone. This is just not for fit people. in their 20s. I want this accessible for everybody because I'm someone with chronic pain, so I've had to really be mindful when I go to yoga classes, especially someone new, that I have to really tune in and notice how this is impacting my body and being careful not to do too many twists or go too deep because of my back issues.

And sometimes I can't do several poses, but that's okay. I've given myself that permission. It's okay to have a variation. And we talk about variations as well for trauma informed because we don't want to say modification all the time. Cause sometimes people take that to that, Ooh, I can't do what other people can do.

And that can create a whole internal process of anxiety. So what's a variation. It's a different feel, I think, if you think about that variation. One of my core values personally, and for this podcast, is I believe yoga should be accessible for everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, or background.

It's important to me that our practices and discussions are inclusive and respectful of the rich diversity reflected in our own communities. including the BIPOC community. I think it's so essential to provide this warm, welcoming, and supportive space for all individuals so that they feel safe enough to engage in yoga and experience the benefits of yoga in the therapy room.

So thinking about how can we create this environment for people with disabilities, people in wheelchairs, people who struggle And traditional yoga classes, because as therapists, we see a whole wide range of people. And this is so important that we offer this access and accessibility. Because I've had so many people come to me and say, I can't do yoga.

And I'm like, are you breathing? If you're breathing, you're doing yoga. You brought mindfulness. an awareness to your breath. Now something to think about as well as bringing a gentle approach to yoga, it's not about doing handstands, headstands, the most advanced poses, because that's not accessible to most people.

Bringing mindfulness in the therapy room, and mindfulness is research based, just knowing that. And just know there's so many different ways to bring yoga in the therapy room. I believe in teaching these practices to help clients have those coping skills and hands on tools that they can use on their own, because they're not going to be with us forever.

So just knowing that this is empowering clients to build that inner resiliency, to open their window of tolerance, so they can be less reactive when stress comes, or other difficulties in their lives that they have, is really important. These tools, just this week, I was feeling super overwhelmed at the beginning of the week.

I had a bunch of things coming up and trying to keep up with the multiple parts of my business. And I had several things happening at one time. So what I did was take my time at the end of the day and did a soothing yoga practice. integrating some restorative yoga and I felt so much better. It's like I was able to melt the stress and anxiety away and found myself again in that calmer space because everything else I was doing, breath, meditation, nothing would help.

But once I did the gentle practice of movement, did the restorative pose. I was able to feel much more regulated, and this lasted most of the week. Now, of course, I had my moments still. Nothing is perfect, but then I just went back to my yoga practices, and that's the beauty of this. If we can teach clients these skills, that's what made me think, connect this to the clients we see.

So if they're like, man, I'm having a rough go, instead of let me just stay in this, Place of anxiety and not knowing what to do and having the restless energy and just keeping quote unquote busy So they don't have to manage it Oh wait, I can always turn to my movement and yoga practice. Have you been interested in adding yoga into your therapy sessions, but are unsure how?

Get ready to unlock the power of yoga in your clinical practice with my recorded one hour training, Startup Strategies for Integrating Yoga into Clinical Sessions. And earn one continuing education contact hour. In this training, learn how to harness the powerful benefits of yoga and breath to help your clients learn how to reduce their anxiety and depression.

You will also learn how to differentiate between slow mindful yoga and fit yoga to tailor your approach for therapeutic settings. Get started with confidence and develop skills essential for integrating yoga into your practice. How to create a trauma informed approach. And you even get a script to help you learn how to guide clients safely.

Safely through a yoga sequence for anxiety, transform your clinical sessions and empower your clients with a healing power of yoga today. All of this, including one CE for only $65. Go to HC podcast.org/startup yoga. That's HC podcast.org/startup yoga today. Now, if you don't wanna teach yoga in session, that's totally fine.

It's not for everyone. I've had some people I've talked to, some other listeners, that they just model practices. Well, here's a practice that you could try at home, but let me just show you. I do that sometimes, too, if we're running out of time. I just did that with another client and talked about legs up the wall or legs up the chair as a restorative pose and showed them.

We didn't have time to do it in session, which is totally fine. And then I sent them a picture of it. So they would have some kind of reference, point of reference, and assign that as homework. And I've talked to other listeners who integrate yoga in the way of sharing practices that they've used, sharing links to other yoga classes on YouTube.

You're still integrating yoga. Just allowing someone else to teach it. I think that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with that. So know there's different levels with this. It doesn't always have to be you teaching and doing the practice with the clients. If you're uncomfortable with that, that's fine.

Just figure out different ways maybe that you could bring it in. So just know it's, it's defined and redefined in different ways. You can also share yoga philosophy. So if you don't want to teach, or maybe you want to integrate fully different parts of yoga, You can do the psychoeducation piece of what is yoga and how it could benefit them, sharing some of the yoga philosophy.

Yamas and niyamas are ways of being in the world, how we can live a yogic lifestyle. We're not going to get in too far in that today, but that's an option as well. So I think the whole point of this discussion today is I just want you to know that there's so many ways you can bring it into session. Just know it's available for you to bring in and whatever feels in alignment.

for you. Whether that's sharing, just practices, modeling, or just bringing links in to share, it's okay. So what are some of the coping practices or tools? This is so much more broad than you might think. It's not just movement. Movement can be there, of course, and I find it's very healing if you're teaching it.

But of course, if you're just sharing other practices, that can be very helpful, like I said. sharing different teachers that might teach some of these with links. So we can bring resourcing, and I know with EMDR, there's a lot of resourcing involved. We bring that in for brain spotting too. So what I mean by resourcing, so it can be whatever helps someone to feel more safe or comfortable in a session.

With brain spotting, we ask clients, where in your body do you feel most grounded right now? Of course, some people struggle with this, so you may have to assist them. Even having them close their eyes if they feel okay doing that, and just doing a body scan from head to toe, and just checking in. Where do they feel most grounded?

Usually most people, I would say 95 percent of people, can usually pick one spot, and just let them know, even if it's one of your fingers. It's okay. My little pinky on my right feels more grounded. That can be a spot to go back to in their body if they're feeling activated, if it's too much in session.

Let's go back to that grounded space for a moment. We can breathe into the resource. Let's take a moment to breathe into that. So inhaling and breathing into it several times using different grounding practices. So this is a wide range of ways of doing this. I mentioned the body scan, that's yoga.

Connecting, bringing awareness. We can bring grounding with mental grounding, like having them name all the states if you're in the U. S. or different countries in the world. That's taking them out of the body for a moment, giving them a break if they're feeling like it's too much. It's helping to create that container, right, with those difficult emotions.

Also, physical grounding, even just pushing feet into the floor can be physical grounding. Movement, of course, can be grounding for people marching in place if they need to, getting out some of that stress energy, just breathing in itself. Pranayama, we call that in yoga, can be grounding. Soothing practices can be grounding.

So putting a hand on the chest and just Breathe. That can be part of a session. Setting intentions with clients. I've done this as well. Amy Weintraub talks about this in her book for yoga skills for therapists that we can just take a moment, have them close their eyes, do some grounding. And then just allow an intention to form in their mind, thinking about that.

What is an intention for your session today? So this gets them a little more involved with the process instead of, you know, we can see how the process of therapy unfolds, but sometimes having a direction, maybe they just want to release stress or maybe they want to be able to feel a little calmer by the end of session, or maybe a little uplift if they're feeling more depressed and depleted.

Whatever it is, we accept it and we go with it. If they don't know, that's okay too, so we can accept that and just see how things go and what bubbles up for So asanas Are those yoga poses everyone's familiar with? So those can be part of yoga in session. Breathwork, pranayama I mentioned. There's tons of different kinds of breathwork that you can bring into sessions.

We'll be talking about some of that in this podcast. Meditations, visualizations, chanting. So even chanting om or other Sanskrit or helping clients come up with affirmations they can chant. That helps stimulate the vagus nerve, which turns on the parasympathetic response, which helps clients to feel more calm.

Using mudras, which are basically hand positions. Most people are familiar with prayer pose, which is both palms together in front of chest. That's a mudra, Anjali mudra. So it's sometimes we can use those in different ways. We'll be talking about that in this podcast. I mentioned the mantras. We can use mantra with breath as well.

Even just using quotes on yoga philosophy or ways of being. I know I've created different quotes before and just have clients pick one when they come in session and read it aloud, teaching clients about intuition, trusting their inner wisdom, higher self, whatever words you want to use for that. I think that's another way to bring it in.

And many of you probably already do that. In DBT it's called wise mind. So if you're using that, that's definitely tapping into the inner wisdom. Now this is not all the tools out there. I just wanted to give a brief overview that it's not just movement. There's so many different ways we can bring this into session.

I recently had a client that wanted to dance and I'm just like, I'm, I'm very at my core. I'm Carl Rogers. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's boo. And by the end, she came in so tense and crying by the end though, she was smiling. There was joy. She connected to herself, her core self, and her body. We were able to laugh and be silly.

So just being open to what comes up in session I think is so important. Now what kind of episodes can you expect from Yoga in the Therapy Room? This is a solo episode, so I'm going to be providing more solo episodes. I think that's important to share my knowledge with you, since this is my podcast, in more different ways.

I'll also be having guests because I think I don't know everything, nor do I claim to. I want to be able to have other people come on to talk about different types of yoga and different ways to bring it in session. We'll talk about topics in a moment, solo, like I said, guests and then coaching episodes.

So I do want to include listeners. That's part of my values with yoga in the therapy room is to include you. So if you have a burning question that you want to talk about, we can do a coaching session. I'm not doing those just yet. Wanted to get things rolling maybe in the next year. Be offering those and be able to work through any struggles with integrating yoga, questions you might have, ethics, safety, et cetera.

Because I do hope to offer that in the future, some coaching consultation for. therapists. The important thing to remember is that this is only going to be specific for yoga as far as guests go. I just want to make sure that you're aware of that in the solo episodes because since I'm niching down, I feel like holistic counseling podcast was great, but it was very, very broad.

I mean, we had every kind of topic on holistic, which was what I wanted, but now I think niching down is going to be important. So we're all on the same page and listeners can really connect more. I think that's so important because if you think about it. Let's say that you provide EMDR. There's some kind of camaraderie with connecting with other people who provide the same kinds of techniques.

And even though we may connect as quote unquote general holistic therapists, having the specific modalities that we all integrate together, I think we can learn so much from each other. And I still have the same philosophy as before of creating holistic community. Still going to have my Facebook group going to be changing the name for yoga in the therapy room, but still holistic counseling, still self care.

So still some of that still stays the same, same core values. And of course, bringing in locally some holistic happy hours to connect with people in person. Cause it seems like people didn't want online anymore. So I'm hoping that that can continue. I think that's so important that we do need to see each other.

Oh, and one other episode I'm going to include once a month as a solo is yoga snacks. And again, this makes me laugh if you heard my pivot episode, but I think this was one of my listeners in my focus group mentioned having these, but it's going to be a shorter episode. 15 minutes or less where I bring a yoga practice.

So it could be a meditation, could be a breathwork, could be yoga philosophy, something that you can just connect with and do in the moment. I didn't want meditation or breathwork in front of every episode because I know for me, I've listened to some podcasts where they let's start with meditation. I'm like, I don't want to start with meditation.

So sometimes we're not in the mood or we're, you know, we're driving and it's like, then I have to get back to the episode. It just becomes a thing. So I thought making specific yoga snacks for you so that. If you're like, you know what, I need a meditation that is available for you, or let me learn a breath work or some other practice, some grounding today, something so that you can learn those when you want to.

And you can save those for a time that's available. Cause I know listening to podcasting, you may be driving, you may be going for a walk, you may be doing something else. So it's not always accessible to do these practices. So that's what I'm super excited about to offer those. Cause I feel like that's what I.

I'm called to, to my core is to teach these practices to therapists so that they can help clients they serve. And that's why I created my yoga basics course for therapists, which is integrating, helping therapists to integrate yoga into sessions, clinically, safely, and ethically. Cause that is of course, on the forefront of everyone's mind and safely as an emotionally safe and physically safe.

So not just physically safe. We'll be talking more about the ethics and so on in future episodes. So let me talk about some other topics. So I'm going to be bringing in as part of the release, September 18th, debunking myths about yoga and therapy. So it's going to be general myths about yoga, but also yoga and therapy.

We're going to go deep into that. Embracing the yogi within, stepping into your role and identity with yoga. This came up a lot because what I have found over the years is. There are some people who can jump right in and bring these practices in easily, but then it's not so easy for everyone. So I want to be able to really help people think about this and their identity and how they can integrate it more into their core self and who they are and what that could look like.

How can we step into that? So I'm not going to go too far into that right now, but one thing that came up with my groups that I talked to you, my focus groups, yoga and neurodiversity. How can we help? And again, this goes back to my accessibility, yoga for all people. How can we help LGBTQ plus community, those with chronic pain, yoga sutras, and I mentioned the yamas and niyamas, trauma informed yoga, accessible yoga.

How do we make it accessible? I'm looking at getting more training on this as well. I've had some training, but I really want to make this specific so that it can be accessible for everyone. Specific yoga practices for client issues. So if you have a client who's depressed, what do you do? How can we integrate yoga with that?

Integrating with counseling theories. DBT, CBT, Polyvagal, Yoga and Tarot. I really want to have a guest on for that. Spirituality practices. There's so much we can go into. It's so much broader than you think. And all those tools I mentioned, yes, those can definitely be episodes. There's a lot there. And a real quick, as far as the redefining yoga and therapy of what it's not, we mentioned what it is.

It is not advanced yoga because that is not accessible for everyone. And we see such a wide variety of people. Now, have I done mat work with clients? Yes, I have. A short practice, short flow is integrated in the session, but usually it's with people who have a yoga practice or I've had some clients as yoga teachers, so it's more accessible to them.

So it is kind of. Thinking about how can we individualize yoga for individual clients and their needs and preferences. Not everybody wants to bring them out. That can be uncomfortable, right? In session. But I've had some people, let's go, let's do it. And you know who I'm talking about, some of these clients who are more open to this.

And I, when I say advanced yoga for me, advance can be, sometimes Downward Dog can be advanced for some people knowing who we're working with. Crow pose. I can barely do crow pose. I couldn't teach that. It's really, to me, that's advanced. Handstands, headstands. That's, some people can do that as part of the practice, but I don't know, maybe some people can integrate with clients, but I think that's really tough to do.

Fitness based focus. That is not what this is about. So we're not trying to help clients to get their heart rate up, burn calories, et cetera. We're not trying to help them. build muscles, you know, sometimes there can be a strength component with what we're doing, but that's not the intention with bringing yoga in the therapy room.

And of course, it's not the same for everyone. I do try to keep some different practices in the front of my mind each week to bring into sessions, but not everybody is going to connect with whatever it is. I thought for that week, sometimes I'll be like, Oh, this person could use this chest stretch today based on what they're saying and the difficult.

issue they're having connecting with their heart and what they're wanting to bring out into the world. So maybe we do a chest stretch with some visualization of bringing some things into their heart, something that can be the front of their mind. I hope this is making sense for everyone. I think we have to be very clear, specific on what yoga in the therapy room can look like and is.

Because if we're not, people will define it for us. And I think that's an important part. of all of this is that whenever you have clients that you're going to bring these practices in, that you are clear with them as well. Because I make sure to really describe the yoga that I do is not your typical gym yoga.

It's not fitness based. It has a different intention and the science behind that. Not all at once. We may talk about this over a period of time. But that clarity is essential on how you advertise, market yourself to what you put on your website, your informed consent forms, which I know that is the number one thing people talk about to you, the paperwork part of all this.

How do we work on our notes with this? How do we create informed consent liability, which we will touch on those. for this podcast. Stay tuned for that as well. Phew. That was a lot. So that brings us to the end of another episode and you will have more than one to choose from when all of this drops. So be sure to tune in.

We're going to keep Wednesday when episodes do drop, but have you been interested in integrating yoga into sessions, but are unsure how? How would you like to earn one CE credit as well? In my recorded one hour course, you will learn the powerful benefits of using basic mindful yoga, breathwork, and meditation with clients to help reduce anxiety and depression.

You'll learn some basic strategies for getting started, including room setup, how to keep it trauma informed, and a script for teaching some poses, and ideas of when to use it in session. Also discussed is how you start building your confidence with these practices. Ready to jump in? Don't miss out. Go to hcpodcast.

org forward slash startup yoga. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash startup yoga. And once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love. Thanks for listening to today's episode. The information in this podcast is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal, medical, psychological, or any other kind of professional advice.

We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. Yoga is not recommended for everyone and is not safe under certain medical conditions. to see if it's safe for you. If you need a professional, please find the right one for you. The Yoga in the Therapy Room podcast is proudly part of the Psychcraft Network.