What Psychotherapy Can Learn From Yoga

I’m not the first, second, or third yoga teacher to segway into a profession in psychotherapy. The overlaps are numerous, and any private fitness instructor (even those focused on strength building or weight loss) will tell you how quickly they are positioned into the role of therapist. As a yoga teacher, I both enjoyed and resented this put-upon role. What I thrived at was collaborating with clients to implement yoga (and yoga adjacent) philosophies, many of which have found their way into modern psychotherapy for client care. More difficult was the fact that I wasn’t trained as a therapist and that I was being asked to perform outside my scope of practice (I didn’t even know this term at the time) without any warning or preparation. It could be destabilizing.

Jump to the present day, where I spend most of my day in the role of psychotherapist, but am often asked about yoga and how to use it in therapy, both by clients and clinicians. This is exciting and somewhat uncharted territory that many of us, both in the chair and on the couch, could benefit from digging into. Below are some thoughts on yoga + therapy.

Benefits of trauma-informed yoga for the client:

1. Clients learn to get out of their heads and into their bodies. Clients can circle round and round, intellectualizing, rationalizing, planning, and reflecting. Yoga practice is an embodied way for them to access the present and get familiar with the here and now.

2. They utilize body-informed decision-making. We all know the expression “trust your gut,” or “I’ve got your back,” but how do we connect with and determine the validity of all the signals our body is giving us? Yoga teaches how to both hear the body’s intuitions and test them out.

3. They present with more focus and intentionality in sessions. Find yourself or your client replaying the previous week? Through yoga, clients learn to tune into what is deeply important and to reflect on the bigger questions of existence, purpose, and meaning during their time in therapy.

Benefits of trauma-informed yoga for the clinician:

1. The clinician will find rapid attunement with the client. The centering and yoking aspects of the yoga practice make it a seamless process to find the right attunement and slip into the worldview of the client. From this place, meaningful and resonant reflections, interpretations, and interventions pour out of the clinician with ease.

2. The clinician will easily support the client in nervous system regulation. Nervous systems co-regulate. A clinician who is grounded, centered, and breathing, and who has a large window of tolerance, will automatically reduce emotional disturbance in their client and teach their nervous system to do the same.

3. The clinician will naturally support the client with resourcing. A therapist skilled in trauma-informed yoga understands how to tap into internal and external resources such as breath, gaze point, movement, choice, grounding, and community, and can demonstrate and collaborate with their clients in these areas.

These are just a few of the benefits of trauma-informed yoga practice for therapists and their clients. Explore these concepts and more in my book, The Essential Guide to Trauma-Sensitive Yoga: How to Create Safer Spaces for All, and in soon-to-be-announced workshops!