My Internal Sense
I always sensed that the mind and body were intricately connected. While in college during the 90s there was no clear career path for how to work with the phenomenon of the mind-body connection.
Following college, I entered a PhD program in counseling psychology with a minor in health psychology. I spent years completing coursework, working in hospital settings with patients, and doing research on the psychological ramifications of living with cancer and with chronic back pain.
And at the end of a decade of school…. I still felt at a loss for truly understanding the mind-body connection. Moreover, I had little supervision on how to implement mind-body clinical interventions.
This pushed me into a bit of dark night of the soul. Despite a busy and thriving private practice, I felt like I was not delivering the mind body work that I so clearly knew was needed.
Enter Yoga
I had been practicing it for personal stress relief since the start of graduate school, but had never even considered it to be a potential “clinical intervention” for my patients or a road map of how to connect the body and mind.
Until…I took a 3 month yoga immersion in 2005 that introduced me to the philosophy and deep wisdom at the core of this practice. A lightbulb went on for me.
This was the missing link I had been searching for all those years in graduate school. I found it in the study of yoga.
Twenty years into clinical practice and fifteen years into yoga teaching, I now deeply believe that these 2 disciplines, when integrated, are the key to enhanced mental and physical health.
Psychology and yoga, while certainly not the same, are complementary. While they are both powerful healing methodologies in and of themselves, there is a synergistic effect when used together.
The Course
I designed this course because it is exactly what I was searching for during my graduate school years – a clear and concise way to integrate the mind and body. It’s what so many therapists and students in training have come to me asking for. It’s what my yoga teacher trainees want to learn more about. And, it is why I routinely have a wait list of patients wanting to work with me because of this focus on the mind body connection.
I’ve seen firsthand that when we apply the time-tested tools of yoga (that now are also being empirically supported by current research), our physical and mental health is greatly enhanced.