Category Archives: Yoga therapy

September 22, 2011 · 9:37 pm

Core of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy

It begins with the body.  It’s the physical body that is the medium, providing fertile ground  for exploring.  And “exploration” is exactly what takes place by attending to the inner experience of what is happening – moment to moment – in the body as well as in emotions, thoughts  and in the connection to what feels greater than all these put together.

You might wonder how this happens.  Essentially, it is through an amazing process of noticing sensations, memories, feelings, words and phrases, colors and images that surface as the body is moved and supported in postures and patterns.  As this occurs, the Witness (the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner) allows the client to explore whatever is noticed, spoken or not.  While the focus of the client throughout the session is inward, the practitioner provides physical safety, active listening and an invitation to explore whatever shows up at the edge of awareness.

I want to say, “That’s all there is to it,” but one must appreciate that simplicity can only truly exist when there is a solid foundation beneath it.

At the core, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is a process, not a protocol or a treatment.  It is a relational process guided and supported by the practitioner in which the client interacts with himself, navigating his inner body experiences.  This way of being with a client is based on a two-fold path: one that incorporates the eight limbs of yoga, anatomy, body mechanics and verbal skills and a second that develops the skills of mindfulness, compassion, intention and appreciation for whatever happens.  The core combines both; the practitioner combines both.

Simply put, the process facilitates the client staying in the present experience of his body as he explores what’s happening now, in that moment.  It all happens for the client from the inside out – enabled by the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner.  And while the therapy session moves forward from beginning to end, the take-away is created by the client, never prescribed or taught by the practitioner.

A Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner is so much more than a teacher or a healer, emerging out of a process that is based on the fact that human beings have the capacity to heal themselves.  They require only fertile ground and a climate that promotes healing and change to occur.   What can happen then is truly amazing…

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September 10, 2011 · 6:19 pm

The Weight of Loss

There has been some space since the last writing.  Weeks have gone by with life reflecting an unsettled, at times, refusing-to-be-named, inner experience.  It wasn’t until walking meditation this morning that the name surfaced and clarity ensued.  It’s the Weight of Loss.

How is it that changes in life that result in the loss of a person or place or familiar role, or an event that changes forever the idea we have of our world, can leave us carrying such a burden?  How is it that loss can be so heavy?  Isn’t there an oxymoron in there somewhere?  And even as the weight of loss shifts and becomes lighter over time, how is it that it can get so heavy again at the time of the anniversary of that life-changing event?

Perhaps, in part, because we unconsciously feed this loss and nurture it, thinking that we can go back to what was.  All the practices that support our awareness and acceptance of change, our experience in meditation, doing or being yoga, becoming mindful of the present moment again and again, don’t often shift the core of loss that we carry.  We walk around it, observe it, sometimes challenge it, rage at it, but almost never do we greet it with compassion and gratitude.

What would that even feel like?  Does it seem possible to be grateful for an experience of loss that we didn’t ask for or welcome?  Perhaps one needn’t appreciate what happened, but in order to take the next step, to move forward in life, there must be some letting go.  Otherwise, what happens is that weight accumulates, and with each loss, the burden becomes heavier.  Then, at some point, there is no going forward, and letting go is more and more difficult.

Consider that compassion and gratitude may be as light as loss is heavy.  Maybe instead of putting on the heavy overcoat of loss today, one could try (or even simply imagine) wearing a coat woven of compassion and gratitude.  It doesn’t have to be gratitude for the whole event or experience of loss.  It can be compassion around one small aspect of it.  A kinder, softer way of relating to that one piece.  It would be akin to having an intention of being kinder and softer towards oneself – toward the one who carries this burden.

That might be a beginning – a next step down the path of lessening the weight of loss…

This post is dedicated to all those who carry the weight of loss – especially from the events of 9-11-2001.

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July 1, 2011 · 8:02 pm

Becoming Yoga Therapy

How does one go from the experience of yoga to “yoga therapy?”  I’m sure for some it’s a big leap, and for others, more of an unfolding in the direction you have already been facing.  I realize there has been much focus of late on the benefits of yoga and, certainly, much is to be gained from practicing yoga.  Of course, it all depends on what it is you are looking for.

Consider in what ways your wanting and desires might direct your practice – is it losing weight or better sex, increased strength and flexibility, letting go of stress, lowering your blood pressure, perhaps a few moments to be with yourself.  Or are you going for the greater connection – to something greater than yourself?

How does this practice shift to “therapy?”  For some, there’s an evaluation of a person’s current status, then an application of elements of yoga to target whatever symptoms have been identified.  Valuable, it may be, as when I see a practitioner for my knee pain and am given postures to practice to help alleviate the pain and strengthen surrounding muscles.  The practitioner brings respect for my body and physical issues, and I bring a willingness to participate and follow direction.  Then I take the recommended postures home with me to practice.

I’m going to say that the operative word here is “practice.”  Imagine that there is another approach – where the client shows up and is guided in a process where he can access information in his body while being supported in yoga postures. Where he is assisted in real time exploration of what’s happening now for him – whatever may be showing up in the physical, mental, emotional or spiritual parts of himself.  Difficult to imagine – perhaps.  But completely possible and not dependent on “practice” but on living your yoga.

The essentials of living your yoga apply to the practitioner and create the path that leads to a fully launched yoga therapy practitioner.  The process of “becoming” means that you know yourself, you understand what triggers you and what gets in the way of you being present with unconditional acceptance of the client.  It means you can meet the client where he is and offer an invitation for him to explore whatever is happening for him during his session.  You appreciate what he’s ready to work on and accept that he goes the direction he chooses.  And the most real aspect of this experience is that it is anchored in his body, so, of course, he takes it with him when he walks out the door.

This is the way of the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner.  It’s not the only way, but it is the only way that offers such an extraordinary invitation from the perspective of “living your yoga,” not “practicing” it…

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May 25, 2011 · 4:04 pm

Community on Your Mat

This post is for those of you who thought you were alone on your mat during your yoga practice…

Are you aware of the community of others that you bring with you?  It’s not your neighborhood community necessarily, though I suppose it could be.  This concept of “community” means those around you who share the way you live your life, your ideas and values – who support you in your work or play or nudge you to move forward  to take the next steps toward whatever your goals may be.   These are people with whom you have a relationship of connection, some bond that brings you together even when you are apart.

It’s kind of like having back-up when you face whatever you are facing on your yoga mat.  Remember that all manner of issues can show up during your practice, extending far beyond the physicality of a pose.  Consider how this community shows up for you – maybe it’s a lineage of past and current teachers beckoning you to stay with the difficulty you face.  Perhaps a handful of  friends, family or spiritual leaders you admire.  Or it could be simply the friend or lover you are meeting later.  Who knows how many it takes to make a community.

Whether it’s many or few, I trust that we all have a community that surrounds and supports us – often more than one community.  Each may serve us in different ways, but they are a source of energy and connection that provides us with a more solid foundation to walk whatever road we choose.  I suspect that there are times when this community is more imagined than real or more a desire to connect than a fait accompli, but it can be the energy around imagination or desire that sustains.

We all get to create our own community.  Even when we are alone on the mat, we are a member of the community of all those who practice yoga.  Communities are like that – they can be more or less personal, depending on what we need them to be.  So, who is your community, and how do you need them to show up for you today?

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May 2, 2011 · 5:36 pm

Heart of Your Practice

Had some recent experience of  “heart” lately – not only mine but the heart of a community.  Seems so many words come to mind to describe heart and all of them are always rich with meaning and depth.  Whatever the descriptor, it’s meant to capture what is at the core of one’s being – albeit at that moment, not necessarily for all time.  The experience can feel so big or consuming that it’s as if that one word or two is all there is, and there is no room for anything else.  No matter what it is that grabs your heart, how important it is to allow for shifts and changes in what takes up space there.  Seems this allowing may be what keeps the heart alive, keeps it beating.

How vital it is to bring “heart” when showing up for your practice – whether yoga or meditation or meeting another on the mat in yoga therapy.   What this means to me is that you bring passion to what you do.  There you are with attachment in your heart because then you are living and breathing what you do.   The voice inside tells you that this is who you really are (or who you want to be), and the energy of your heart is maybe a bit too attached to what’s happening there for you.  But isn’t this attachment what enables you to bring all of you authentically to your practice?  Wouldn’t feel right to show up “half-hearted,”  would it?

So, my real question is how to put your “heart” into your practice and allow non-attachment to come in as well.  This is the moment when your heart is filled with passion – where it’s so full that you can ride that path of attachment all the way to where it lets go and sets you free.  Otherwise it becomes an encumbrance, holding you too tightly and gets in the way.   It may seem a bit contradictory at first, but a few breaths into it and perhaps you can feel how it’s like breathing in and breathing out.

How awkward it would be to try to walk about with lungs full all the time.  Seems like there has to be some letting go in order to keep us alive…

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April 15, 2011 · 5:43 pm

Grieving on the Mat

One doesn’t come to the yoga mat in order to grieve, but grieving is a whole body experience.  So, if grief is what’s happening now, then it’s going to be there in every breath, thought, emotion and movement of your practice.  Grief has a way of moving in with you, taking over your inner household in a more permanent way than most other experiences do.  As it sidles up next to you, it can be almost comforting while it takes the place of the one that is lost or dead or gone.

So, do not expect that you can show up for your yoga or meditation practice alone when grief is in abundance.  But know that you can share the experience.   Grief can be the cushion on which you sit or the partner that helps support you in tree pose.  Imagine that grief is what fills in the empty space left by the one who is gone; it’s what allows you to take the next step in appreciating and understanding the loss.  It’s there when you’re crying or cursing or focusing on your practice.

How would it be then to bring awareness to the changes you notice in your body and breath as you move through your practice?  Notice what’s different – where there is heaviness or perhaps unexpected lightness.  See how muscles hold on – where there’s grasping so tight that it seems as if there will never be letting go.  In the passing thoughts and waves of emotion that move to the foreground and then recede, bring attention to how being in the moment supports the whole of you in your practice .  Notice feelings of fullness and shifts into emptiness, and then, bring awareness to the fact that nothing remains the same.   Ever.

Know that grief may move through you.   Doesn’t it make sense to acknowledge that you bring it with you onto your mat?   Your body and your breath are the vehicles for moving grief through your cells,  and your practice can be what helps shape your experience of loss.  There is something wonderful in accepting that you have choices with grieving as you do in other aspects of life.  You may choose to sink under its weight or you may choose to welcome it as the partner it can be in supporting you to move forward.  You might even be able to do both at the same time – as in  those postures that require the balance of opposing energies…

This post is dedicated to Karen Hasskarl who left her family and friends on April 9, 2011.

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March 29, 2011 · 12:37 pm

Movement on the Mat

Amazing to consider how movement begins – how it is to be at the point where your body extends the “you” that is inside and takes it out into the world by shifting some physical part of you.  I wonder how much our movement follows intention and how much it supports our intention of being in the world when we begin to move into and out of yoga postures on the mat.  How different are these movements than the ones we do when off the mat?  How much more attention is involved in beginning movement on your yoga mat?

Do you decide ahead of time how to move – what posture to do?  Is there a sequence to follow?  Is it familiar and routine?  Is there an ideal of what the movement looks like or feels like?  Does it feel like stepping onto your mat or sitting in lotus is where you begin moving, or is that something like a prelude to movement?  Does it matter?

Perhaps it matters only in the level of awareness brought to beginning movement and appreciating what moves you to move.  What might it be like to allow the emergence of movement in whatever way it shows up at that moment on the mat?  What does that look like?   Do you begin with small motions and low energy, in a way that you honor the process of beginning?  Perhaps you start with warm-ups, creating heat and then sparking fire.   Imagine jumping onto the mat and throwing yourself into big energetic movements right away.  How would that serve as a beginning?

Or is there a settling down of energy that happens when you step onto the mat?  Moving into stillness and allowing movement to emerge from there.  The energy that drives your movement can be subtle or consuming, and it can also be drawn from that expansive range in between.  Beginning motion on the yoga mat can serve this energy in different ways.  Sometimes moving might be about creating more energy, and, at other times, it may be in service of controlling or managing the energy that’s there.

For sure, there are shifts of energy in motion throughout your practice.  I’m suggesting that there’s a flow in your movement on the mat – moment to moment – from beginning to middle to end.  I don’t mean in terms of a vinyasa flow or choreographed movement, but motion that has the energy of a wave.  You may not always be aware of exactly where and how it begins, but somethings shifts when you begin moving on your mat.

So the next time you begin your yoga practice, consider these questions – What happens to the “me” when I bring my full awareness to moving my breath and body on the mat?   Am I the mover or am “I” what’s moved?

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March 10, 2011 · 11:39 am

Centering

I imagine that Centering is a process that means something different to everyone.    Do you begin your practice of yoga  with a Centering?  If you do, what is it like?  If you don’t, imagine what it might be like.

Consider these two options:  A Centering where you are checking in with the different aspects of yourself to see what’s happening in the moment and another Centering where you are trying to bring all of you together to experience yourself in a more grounded place.  One is about noticing, not trying to change, not bringing in judgment, just allowing.  The other requires more  intention, though it may also ask you to notice and allow it to happen, but essentially requires you to work with what you notice, to make some changes, maybe let some things go.  I am drawn to say the second demands more effort – though perhaps not necessarily so.

The first option is difficult enough if you really check in and allow without judgment whatever is happening for you in that moment.  How is it to notice how you are breathing, what parts of your body are speaking to you and what parts are quiet?  What is it like to acknowledge what emotions are up for you, both big and small, consuming or not?  What happens when you open up to thoughts and images that are taking up space in your mind, and how do you not get caught up in the story?  And, finally, what does it even mean to look at what might be present for you in that space beyond your body-mind, that connection to whatever might be bigger and more encompassing?  Okay, it is a lot to take in.  Thankfully we all have filters, so we’re not continually overwhelmed by what’s happening now.   I recall the story of the millipede who stopped to consider how he was able to walk with all his thousand legs and feet and then finds that he can’t take another step!

Perhaps this is where the other Centering process steps in – where the work of centering really happens.  This is where you bring it all together, just as it is.  (And try not to think about who it is that’s doing this, just appreciate that it happens.)  Accept that what you’ve noticed is all right here, right now – knowing that to be all that you are in that moment, the present moment, is the most centered you can ever be…

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March 4, 2011 · 11:15 pm

The Still Point

Consider that your yoga practice always begins from a still point.  It may be a nanosecond of stillness, but there is that pause where you are about to begin.  It may just be the equivalent of a long breath in and a longer exhale.

But where is that point – really?  Is it inside some part of you?  Is it in your body, mind or emotions?  Or perhaps in that connection to the spiritual or however you  choose to see what that may be for you.   It could just be that part of you that knows you really well.  The part that knows why you’re there on the mat and what you bring and what you want to take away.  In your core – you know, the part that is often the object of strengthening efforts.  Yes, the part that doesn’t look like it did some years ago or, anyway, not the same as the picture in your mind of what it should look like.  But, I digress…

Perhaps asking what the still point is might be the better question.    Is it a point that we create when stepping onto the mat or one that’s always there but hidden sometimes.  Is it something to look for or does it just show up?  What does it look like?  How does it show up?  Is it an absence of movement?  I think not – because your heart is still beating,  blood is still flowing and you are still breathing.  Movement is happening, not stillness.  So, is it the mind that stills itself as you begin?  Wonder how many of us would never begin if waiting for the mind to be still before we start!  I’m not certain at all that it’s an absence of movement, thought or even emotions.

Suppose the still point were an abundance – an overflow of connection with a stillness bigger than yourself.  And that is what you tap into as you begin your yoga practice.  Like the pause between in breath and out breath – it needn’t be very long or full, or have other identifying qualities, but it is there none the less.  Feels in some way like a coming together, a gathering up, so to speak, and then opening out to take the next step.

Or, perhaps the whole point is about you, the whole of you, becoming that still point by the end of the practice…

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February 11, 2011 · 10:21 pm

What You Bring With You and What You Take Away

Not the obvious, but  suppose you were to bring nothing to your yoga practice – or, actually, no “thing.”   Might you be able to show up having examined what’s necessary for you to begin?  I’m wondering if you really need more than a willingness to participate fully…

Certainly, you bring experience, but while that may add to your level of confidence, it may have little to do with where you are in the moment that you are beginning your practice.   You may also bring knowledge, stored inside, from earlier yoga classes or studies – knowing the postures, pranayama, mudras, alignment and more.  My image of what you may bring could fill backpacks and suitcases and feels like way too much to bring with you.  Requires heavy lifting!  How to leave them aside so that you can show up as if this is the beginning – as if this is the first, the last or the only practice you are doing.  Just this one practice – right here, right now.

But there’s more!  You also bring your stories, in your mind and in your body.  Beliefs about yourself and also what they mean for what you can do or who you can be on your yoga mat.  These backpacks and suitcase can be heavier than the experiential ones, and we often carry them around with us for a lot longer than we even realize.  Of course, they may be true, or have been true at one time, or perhaps not really true but of service to our ability to move forward and negotiate the world.

I wonder how en-lightening it can be to set these things aside – welcoming new experiences and the possibility of different stories.  How would it be to discover what’s new for you (or what has always been there underneath the surface of the familiar stories, knowledge and experience).  Consider what you might want to take away and whether that means you may have to give up some of what you brought with you.  Might even lead to change…

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