Yoga for Mental Health

Yoga supports the mental health of participants by integrating the traditional practice of yoga with psychoeducation and techniques that improve emotional health.  It can be a helpful complement or adjunct to talk therapy or a stand-alone practice for self-care. Similar to talk therapy, the practice of yoga in this program provides dedicated time to bring awareness to aspects of ourselves that we typically tune out or avoid through the course of our busy days and lives, and potentially, work through them. 

For many of us, the body is like the junk room where we store stuff we want to deal with later.  Like our minds, the body is also home to our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs – any time we have internal sensations (numbness, tingling, nervous stomach, tension headaches, etc.) or gut feelings, we are experiencing, at a physical level, the same kind of thoughts and feelings we experience in our heads.  Similar to encountering ruminating or intrusive thoughts in our heads, thoughts and feelings can also get stuck in and boomerang throughout the body. 

The process for working through thoughts and feelings that are stuck in the body is similar, but separate from the ways in which we work with the mind.  Often, we cannot think or talk our body out of reactions. However, by focusing awareness on our bodies as an equally important repository for our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, we can explore these thoughts and feelings, as well as help manage and work through them at a physical level.

How Yoga for Mental Health can complement talk therapy:

Yoga for Mental Health helps brings attention to the body as a barometer for stress

Dedicated yoga time can help us understand how much we tune out our physical signals and sensations throughout the day and bring greater awareness to how much tension and stress we hold in our bodies.  Gently and progressively, yoga invites us to feel the tension and release it through breath work and movement.  It also teaches skills we can use throughout the day to help manage stress levels and restore energy to our bodies.

Yoga for Mental Health helps explore beliefs about oneself

While beliefs about ourselves often positively define us, they can also limit us, since some of our beliefs are not necessarily accurate or helpful. We limit ourselves when we engage in all or nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, or catastrophizing what may or many not happen, and treat those thoughts as facts.  Inaccurate or unhelpful thoughts can change for the better when we challenge them.  Like talk therapy, yoga for mental health can challenge our beliefs about what we can do physically or how quiet we can be mentally. It can also uncover physical and mental strengths we may not be aware of and help us see ourselves in a more positive light.

Yoga for Mental Health helps explore what we are feeling

Negative feelings, by definition, are unpleasant and can be distressing.  Rather than work through them, we often avoid or suppress them, where they ruminate in the mind and ricochet through the body. Through breathing and movement, yoga invites us to slow down and explore what we are experiencing and feeling in the moment – as well as challenging our emotional “self-talk” - what we are telling ourselves about our emotions.  Yoga practice can also provide physical calming techniques to help manage negative feelings.  Interestingly, positive feelings also reside in the body, so the same breathing and movement process that helps us manage negative feelings can also help uncover and amplify positive feelings as well as feelings of gratitude.

Yoga for Mental Health helps explore beliefs about oneself in relation to others

In the group setting, yoga can help us explore social aspects of ourselves – including feelings of belonging and connectedness to others - as well as our natural tendency to compare ourselves -and our bodies - to others.  In the group yoga setting, it is easier to pay attention to our critical self-talk and the mental labeling we engage in about who we are, what we look like, and how competent we feel in relation to others.  By promoting a group norm of self acceptance, compassion for others, and kindness to our bodies, individuals participating in Head & Heart Yoga for Mental Health can explore and amplify thoughts and feelings around tolerance, open-mindedness, patience, and empathy for oneself and for others.

Yoga for Mental Health as a gift to oneself… and others

There’s something in our collective cultural work ethic and belief about needing to do for others that is directly at odds with needing to do for ourselves.  In fact, self-care is still perceived as a selfish act by many, and only to be gifted to oneself after everyone else is taken care of. Doing for others requires first having an ample reservoir of physical and emotional energy to give.  If we deplete the reservoir without refilling it, we can easily burn out.  Yoga for mental health is one way we can provide a restorative gift to ourselves that allows us to continue giving the gifts of our time and energy to others.  Therefore, it is not selfish at all - it is a win-win.

Using Yoga for Mental Health to work through pain, illness or trauma

Yoga can be a helpful adjunct to talk therapy for treating the physical and emotional aspects of pain, illness or trauma.  When individuals experience pain, illness or trauma, the body activates an automatic protective system known as “fight - flight - freeze.”  When this system is triggered, routine functions such as being able to think clearly or engage socially with others can diminish. If the triggers are severe or frequent, the fight - flight - freeze response can become a subconscious operation that can switch on at even the slightest trigger.  While Head & Heart Yoga for Mental Health can be especially helpful to individuals who want to recognize and work through the fight – flight - freeze response, the pace of the yoga, some of the postures, and/or the demands of the group setting can be overwhelming for certain individuals.
For this reason, we recommend individuals in treatment for pain, illness, or trauma first work individually with a therapist who incorporates yoga into treatment sessions, or seek out private sessions until both the therapist and the individual feel ready enough to join the group setting.

Our trauma-informed yoga classes are designed for:
~Small Groups
~1:1 Sessions
~All experience levels

Contact Philadelphia Integrative Psychiatry to sign up for Integrative Yoga.