hi now I’m willing to bet if I went
around the room and I asked how many of
you have ever wanted to improve your
quality of life probably almost every
hand would go up and guess what you are
not alone Americans spend almost thirty
four million dollars annually on
alternative health anything from
acupuncture to yoga the self-improvement
industry is currently valued at almost
ten billion dollars and of the roughly
10 million Americans living with serious
and persistent mental illness roughly
2/3 of those people elect to receive
psychotherapy or counseling treatment so
what do these numbers tell us well these
numbers tell us that a number of people
really are looking to improve the
quality of their lives and we are
willing to use a variety of strategies
to do so and that’s exactly what I set
up to do when I started going to my
first yoga class about 14 years ago and
when I completed my yoga teacher
training about six years ago and finally
when I completed my master’s degree and
got my licensure and mental health
counseling about two years ago I wanted
to find strategies to improve my quality
of life and to help other people do the
same now being both a yoga teacher and a
mental health counselor is a bit of an
interesting experience sometimes I feel
like I have one leg in each world and we
don’t always speak the same language now
in the mental health world we operate
largely for
medical model of treatment in this model
we find diseases and we treat them
criticisms for this model that we
sometimes find and the yoga and holistic
communities are that because we focus on
treating the symptoms sometimes we get
the vibe that we focus on what’s going
wrong with people instead of what’s
going right or that we break people into
parts instead of looking at them as a
whole and on the flip side in the yoga
community we help people foster
spiritual and personal development by
learning strategies to help decrease
your susceptibility to any mental
illness or stressor in the first place
we look at treating the root of the
unhappiness versus just treating the
symptoms but there are criticisms here
just like there are with anything and in
the mental health community worst case
scenario is that some people think that
these yoga practices might be a little
bit too woowoo as I like to call it and
in the best case scenario people are
actually very open to it but they don’t
always understand the philosophy or the
mechanisms with how yoga helps people to
make these changes but imagine if we
really could integrate these two models
and have proactive supportive strategies
to help improve the quality of our lives
and also techniques to help treat the
distress or the symptoms when they come
up now that for me would be a truly
holistic model of treatment and I’m here
to tell you as a yoga teacher and a
mental health counselor I actually don’t
think it would be that difficult because
I believe that these two systems have a
lot more in common than you might think
so let me show you this is the Ashtanga
eight limbed path of yoga and
historically yoga teachers have used
this as a pathway to enlightenment in
the mental health world we would call
this a treatment plan a list of steps
that we’re going to take
help make you feel better I’m not going
to go into the nitty-gritty but I want
to give you a basic understanding so we
can find where the similarities lie now
the first two steps of this eight limped
path are known as the Yama’s and the
knee Yama’s these are behaviors and
attitudes that we cultivate to help
ourselves improve our quality of life
and examples of behaviors that fall
under these categories are things like
non-violence moderation and perseverance
the next step
asana is what most people are familiar
with when they think of a yoga class
these are the poses downward dog child’s
pose
after that we cultivate what’s called
pranayama or breath control learning to
change the way that we breathe and I
think of this being so helpful we think
if people have something going on like
anxiety where we all know that feeling
of not being able to catch our breath
the next step is known as pratyahara in
this step we learn to draw our senses
inward to shut out external stimuli so
that we can really look at what are we
thinking what are we feeling and what
are we doing
from here we cultivate concentration we
learn to focus once we’ve drawn the
senses inward we can focus on just about
anything does it really matter what the
point of focus is just that we learn how
to focus on something and from here we
achieve what some people to consider
meditation true meditation some people
call this witness consciousness so now
that we’ve moved inside we’ve started to
concentrate we’re able to use that
witness consciousness to explore what
we’re thinking what we’re feeling and
what we’re doing from a place of
non-attachment and non judgment and
finally we’ve cultivated all of these
practices hopefully we achieve Samadhi
or the Bliss state some people call this
unity consciousness so where we feel
totally integrated within ourselves
possibly with our higher power or with
the greater community
now how do
connect to evidence-based mental health
treatment I want to introduce you to
cognitive behavioral therapy this is one
of the most widely studied forms of
therapy it was developed in the 1950s
and 1960s and has been extensively
researched to treat everything from
anxiety to depression to OCD PTSD or
even phobias of things like spiders
Heights or airplanes and cognitive
behavioral therapy basically says if you
change the way you think and you change
what you do you will change how you feel
and this is my favorite form of
cognitive behavioral therapy which takes
that a step further and this says it’s
not just what we think and what we do
that affects how we feel it’s also how
we feel in our physical body and the
environments in which we live
so having heard a little bit about both
of these models I want to ask you really
what is so different sure one may be a
linear model and one may technically
have more components but look what
happens when we start to combine them we
start to see that this eight limbed path
actually has a lot to offer to change
our emotional state through practices
like the Yama’s and the jnanis we learn
to change our behavior through asana and
pranayama we alleviate the physical
distress that can trigger things like
anxiety or depression we learn to look
inside to study our feelings and if
we’re lucky enough to achieve that bliss
state or that unity consciousness that
can certainly affect the way that we
feel and through the process of learning
to focus our mind we change the way that
our brain is thinking so the thought
process but through the witness
consciousness we’re also looking at the
thought content what are we thinking and
we can compare or contrast what we’re
thinking to see how it matches up with
what’s going on in the environment so
I would actually argue in many ways that
yoga could be considered the original
form of cognitive behavioral therapy and
imagine if we really truly did integrate
these two models using the
self-awareness and the insight that we
practice during our yoga practice and
then having a professional support with
which we can process this experience and
then obtain guidance and feedback so for
me when I think a holistic model I think
that would be really the most holistic
healing experience that we could provide
so I want to leave you with this I said
in some areas that there are people out
there who still believe that yoga may be
a little bit woowoo I hope that you
leave here today understanding why I
believe that is not the case and that
you consider using these practices to
help yourself heal help yourself learn
and help yourself grow
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