Yoga Therapy Student by Abigail Weissman, Psy.D.

One of the reasons why I chose to become a psychologist is so that I could deepen my understanding of people and how to support them in becoming their happiest and healthiest selves. I’ve noticed of late that I want to learn different ways to help clients heal from pain in their lives that has put up a barrier to them feeling fabulous.

To me, trauma consists of painful experiences that overwhelm one’s coping skills and strategies. Trauma or traumatic experiences means anything that people have gone through that have impacted them negatively in their lives. It’s the hard stuff that can make life tough. I’m not going to go into all of the possibilities of what trauma can be as people have different responses to similar events.

Although I don’t talk about the “t” word (trauma) very often with clients, I’m always wondering how a client’s life events impacted them. Did it shore up their resiliency? Or did it overwhelm them? Or both or something else? I notice their words as they describe their experience(s). It is also hidden in the places and spaces in between and among the words. Pain linger too in the body and I notice it in session. This is the stuff of sessions: words and somatic (bodily) movement or lack thereof. And it is powerful, all of it. 

I have been trained as a talk therapist. This means that I have been trained to use words (and silence) to help clients understand themselves and their situations more clearly than before they came into therapy. I have found talk therapy to be incredibly helpful to me personally and for clients. Talk therapy has supported clients to connect deeply to themselves and to get the insight into their lives that they have longed for and I have seen great healing happen.

As of late, I’ve realized that I want to be able to gain more skills in better helping clients notice and appreciate the wisdom their bodies have to offer.  

While I hope to keep learning from all sorts of teachers along the way, I’ve found myself drawn into learning more about a particular school of yoga therapy, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (or PRYT), and how the PRYT training can, in their own words,  provide “comprehensive education for you to professionally facilitate client-centered, direct, embodied yoga experiences that can radically transform the lives of those you serve.” (from pyrt.com ‘s home page)

Until my connection through PRYT and its teachers, I’ve always thought of yoga to be only about poses. I imagined trim and flexible athletes twisting themselves in pretzels or meditating quietly. I’ve long wanted to enter their world and learn how to be super chill and grounded. 

Concerns

I also thought that it was, in a way, appropriating another’s culture. I always felt kind of icky to be yet another white person practicing yoga. I’m still wrestling with being a white person learning about and practicing yoga. I’m talking about my concerns with trusted colleagues and friends, trying to understand the nuances, and will continue to educate myself (through reading and listening) in the complexities. 

I have, in the past, skipped past my concerns and gone to quite a few yoga classes at various studios, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had mixed experiences. Teachers were  often fabulous and inspiring and at times, fat phobic, assuming that my big body couldn’t do the poses that the other students could, that I was less flexible, less apt, and certainly always needing to be reminded that it was okay for me to do a modified pose which I found was a way of saying, “you can’t do this one, so don’t even attempt it.” I often was scared that my body really couldn’t learn to do those poses so I kept to my role, my place, if you will, and stopped checking in with my own wisdom about my body to see what it could and couldn’t do, rather kept assuming that I was unable to participate. I was angry and sad, and I was craving a connection to my body and its wisdom that I felt unable to get.

Until the Level 1 training

Until the Level 1 Phoenix Rising training, I didn’t know that modifications actually were there to support me to connect to my body. I knew logically and, in my head, but it didn’t fully feel real in my body that there was no need to listen to someone else’s idea of what my experience was supposed to look like or be like. I learned that my body could be fully present and that teachers were there to support me learning from myself (and to make sure that I didn’t hurt myself). I didn’t know that it was more than okay that I could utilize yoga to connect to my physical self, its limits, and its possibilities. 

And I didn’t know that yoga is not all about the asanas, the poses. I didn’t know that there is so much more to yoga (meaning union) than poses. I had no idea how much there was to learn and that the learning could be so accessible to a newbie like me.

The Phoenix Rising Method TM Essentials (Level 1) - Part 1 & Part 2, The Convergence of Yogic Practice and Psychotherapy allowed me to learn through direct experience.

I loved the course. It was for mental health therapists and yoga teachers to learn together about yoga therapy. Even in the first training, I had many “direct, embodied yoga experiences.” I practiced assisted yoga poses and I learned how powerful it can be to work with a partner who is there to support my learning about my own body. Some ways my fellow student guides did this was encouraging, supporting, and empowering me, the student client, to decide how long to hold a pose, how far of a stretch feels right for me at that time, when I wanted to stretch more, when I wanted to ease up the pose and so many other things that I don’t have words for, but that my body felt so grateful to have experienced.

Level 1 was life changing.

I saw personal and professional growth.

In one course, I had time to practice saying yes to my body and where it wanted to move and where and when it (and I) wanted to stay still. I learned how to be a creative partner in helping my colleagues learn about their bodies and how to support them, with bolsters and blocks and blankets on the mat and presence and I watched and listened and saw and heard them getting their needs honored and met. 

It was powerful. It was so powerful. Deep and rich experiences abounded. 

I learned that I could help provide these healing experiences for others, even as a beginner, without touching anyone physically. We used props and the hands of my learning partners to help guide them(selves) into postures that made sense for them. 

At this training, I could be both; a psychologist who doesn’t touch her clients and a psychologist who got to witness her fellow student colleagues receive truths from their direct experience that nourished them. 

It was amazing. I can’t say enough about the experience.

I have so much to explore, so much more I want to learn, that I decided to continue my studies and in early December 2019 have completed Phoenix Rising’s Yoga Therapy’s Training Level 2 class. This time the class was in La Jolla, and it was 5 days and 40 hours of helping clients better “attune... to their own inner guidance” and learn how to add dialogue to the process. I was excited and somewhat terrified to once again, enter into a world where talk is not the go-to modality.  https://pryt.com/yoga-therapy-training/level-2/

The Level 2 training was fantastic. Again, I was worried because I find comfort in words, in talking, so the thought of learning to connect to my body first, is scary for me. And I did the training anyway. It was, at times, very nerve wracking. I didn’t expect to feel so much emotion during the training. I sobbed during many of the exercises. I wrote. I walked more and stretched more than I had in weeks. I ate in accordance to what my body needed me to eat and I slept better than I have in years. This training was about me learning how to attune to what my body needed and how to follow its needs so I could learn how to attune to others’ bodies in the future. I learned a tremendous amount, both about myself, and about these techniques. It was so exciting to begin to find moments of ease as a (student) practitioner amongst the training.

I want very much to continue through the levels of training to become certified in this way of working. It’s a big undertaking to participate in Level 3 but I do hope that I will be able to figure out a way to start the next level of training soon so as to have a more thorough understanding of Phoenix Rising yoga therapy, including the theories behind it, and all the specific learning that I need to have to better understand how bodies work. 

At this present moment, I can say that even as a student, I have learned that Level 1 and Level 2 has enhanced and enriched my work as a clinician, both in the office during direct work with clients and outside of it, as a trainer and educator of other psychologists, counselors, and therapists. 

My world view has changed.

I have more of a sense of the full person who enters my office, body and mind. I trust the wisdom of my clients even more than I did before I took these trainings. I have deepened my knowledge of how the body holds painful memories and wisdom and I have more of an ability to help others connect to their own guidance, at whatever pace is right for the client. I have a new and expanded appreciation of some of the ways that people can learn from their body and ways that I can assist in supporting others to find their truth(s). 

For more information about Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy and all of its awesomeness, please check out its web page at https://pryt.com/ Again, I am not certified in this modality. I am not being mentored in an ongoing way around its practices. I am still a talk therapist, although I am now a talk therapist who is influenced by my learning at Levels 1 and 2. I am grateful for the training I have received and look forward to learning more about supporting my clients through more training in the future.  

Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear or read your feedback to the post and your experiences with yoga and yoga therapy in general. We still have a few spaces available for new therapy clients so if you are looking for a psychologist to support you in finding healing through the wisdom of your body and your mind, please sign up for a free 15-minute consultation session with a Waves’ psychologist at www.wavespsych.com/contact