This blog is offered upon invitation from Kate of You & The Yoga Mat as participation in her month-long blog tour on Sequencing. Thanks Kate! You can sign up for the whole series here. There are many other brilliant teachers offering their expertise on this virtual tour.  Be sure to check out Kaya's piece today as well as Dagmar's tomorrow.

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For me teaching is a conversation. A conversation between the student’s awareness, the student’s body, the asanas and my witnessing. This dialogue makes every class, every private, every student unique. Why do I use one adjustment on one student and a gentle verbal cue on another? Its subtle. Honestly, its not a pure formula of sequential steps I learned from teacher training. Rather its a combination of the theory I know, the body I am seeing, the person inside that body I am seeing and my own sense of intuitive presence. In all honesty, the last piece is the foundation for the work I do. Let me say it to you plain. Your awareness—your sense of your internal world— is actually the gateway to understanding another. So that can be our topic for another day. 

But what seems pertinent as a skill set to share with you at this moment is one of the distinctions I balance with every student, in every class, in every private. The distinction between Affect and Effect. Balancing Effect and Affect allows you as the teacher to use all the good science you know to actually help the student in the vein of what the yoga can offer them. Allowing for their affect, or their inner life and emotions to be present, calls on you as the teacher to stand in witness to what is actually unfolding in the moment for the student. 

Only teach the student and we risk missing the education of the actual movement form. Only use my perception and risk too much self error and subjective viewing. So to find the interest and value in the complex dialogue I use a very clear distinction between what I know the yoga can do for someone, the Effects of the yoga, and a spacious being with the student’s experience as it arises on the path, known as their Affect. 

Depending on your lineage, your style, and your interest in asana you know a certain amount of prescriptive protocols to establish a desired result from the yoga or to resolve a certain issue. Think about depression for a moment. Depending on where you come from in your teaching you know that a certain set of poses or poses done in a certain manner will yield the effect of brighter mood and less depression. 

I am not here to say this is true or untrue. I do not really believe in any one set of protocols and I see tremendous value in many of them. If you say “Oh, backbends are good for depression because they open the ribcage, encourage deep breathing, lift the chest and take the energy of the body up”.  I would say “Yes. I agree.” But I would also not be expecting that immediate response from a student. You see the road to the desired result can be long and arduous. So if the student is working on lifting their mood. I might have a whole slew of appropriate poses aimed toward a desired effect on their body, mind and nervous system. But I am also keenly aware that anything could happen along the way. 

In order to reach that desired effect, they might experience tremendous grief. They might experience a kind of rage. They may at times look even more despondent. The nascent teacher assumes that the effects of the asanas will invariably coincide with a matching affect. And when there is not that matching an assumption that the yoga is not working often arises. The point I am trying to make here is that there are plenty of times where what is happening in the moment and where you are headed may look and feel different. 

So yes, have your protocols and know the effects of the poses in such away that you can use them in your private work with clients towards specific issues. Know the science of the yoga and the asanas and build your sequences. Yes. Awesome. Keep doing all the good work. But also know that where you are headed is not the same as the experience of where you are going. Students need (hell, we all need) free reign to experience whatever we experience in yoga.

My suggestion as you begin working with this distinction in your teaching and facilitating is to continue the good work based on your science and knowledge of the asanas and human beings in asanas. And then observe. Keenly observe what happens for your students in each pose. Observe their fascial gestures. Observe their breath. Observe their energy. Listen to what they are telling you. In fact, a deep emotional expression or even the experience of numbness along the way toward depression or anxiety relief or healing a disordered eating pattern is not only shall we say fare game. It is a sign of health. You can remind your students that all of them is welcome on the mat. And that experiencing their process towards the aim of the yoga is part and parcel to what you are up to any way. 

Now one side note here that is not such a side note. Your ability to be with what arises for students then becomes critically important. But that we leave for another day.

Years ago I got it in my mind that yoga would solve everyones issues. Specifically I simply knew that anyone recovering from an eating disorder would benefit from a yoga class. And specifically a type of yoga that was boundary enough in its alignment technique and completely unabashedly heart-affirming in its philosophy. I assumed this because in large part it worked for me. So I set out to develop a Yoga for Eating Disorders program I entitled Amaryllis. (Named because after my complete neglect and forgetting this bulb was buried in my car it bloomed anyway. So the metaphor seemed rather catching). I pitched this to a local out-patient network I was volunteering for and we set sail. A few folks came. And returned for more.

But here is what I saw happen.

Firstly, as I suspected, their emotions rose to the surface. They got angry and sad and would shake sometimes. But what I had under estimated was myself. I thought I had it all worked out and dialed in. Wrong. I didn't know what to do with all these emotions flying around in yoga class. I didn't know what to do as I felt myself pulled into someone else emotions. I stuck to the yoga and the philosophy as a crutch. Hobbling along insisting it was enough for these students.

Wrong.

As time went on, some of the students symptoms and disordered eating habits reared their ugly heads even worse. They were slipping. The yoga was so eliciting it was triggering a return to the old and familiar shores of self harm behaviors masked as self soothing, I-am-in-control behaviors. I was devastated, ashamed and leveled as I witnessed my teaching technique fail me. And then, I noticed my symptoms and behaviors were creeping back in. Years of hard work could not stop the binge and purge. I felt like such a royal sham. I remember distinctly thinking to myself and knowing deep inside that I could never be the kind of yoga teacher I wanted to be if I did not gain more ground and more skills specifically around shock and trauma and even more so in how to deal with everything else other than just asanas.

I needed relational skills. I needed healing skills. I needed regulation skills. So I set out on a mission. I decided to go back to graduate school. Now mind you I was completely adamant about not taking the GRE so part of my mission was to find a school where avoiding that dreaded standardized test would be acceptable.

Flash forward I found myself at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. Now, Naropa is its own story for another day. Upon moving to Boulder I also met one of my most important teachers and mentors still, Melissa Michaels. I became intricately involved and apprentice to the teachings of Somatic Psychology and Psychotherapy via my studies at Naropa with amazing teachers like Leah D'Abate, Ryan Kennedy, Chrisitne Caldwell, Wendy Allen and Arielle Schwartz. Simultaneously I became deeply apprentice to the teachings Melissa provided through 5 Rhythms dance, Earth Based Spirituality and Rites of Passage. I learned and began to embody the understanding of how activation and shock runs through one's body and how one can find healthy ways of moving it. I learned what resourcing truly looked like in my own system and in hundreds of other people. I learned Trauma first aid and movement-based ways of working with big emotions and stuck emotions in the body--in my own--and in others.

I continued to watch, observe and listen to my yoga community and to the students who came to classes. Little by little I began implementing my studies and experiences into my classes and privates. I watched and listened to how it landed and what result followed. I experimented more. I watched and listened more. Over time I refined this 'method' into a kind of trauma sensitive yoga class that was not so much or even at all specifically "Yoga for Trauma" or "Yoga for PTSD". I simply formulated for myself some ways of seeing, being and working through yoga that no matter what anyones story was, the class was safe and effective.  I took to heart the teachings of yoga in a new light that yielded effective results so that students could be themselves more fully and experience their own bodies in ways I know are in the long term far more useful than simply "feeling better after yoga". 

No one needed to self-select themselves to go to trauma sensitive yoga. They could just come to yoga class. Because let's face it, we are all wounded. We are all traumatized at some level and "We are all in shock" as Stephanie Mines writes. 

I do not believe what I am up to in this manner is rocket science. Nor do I believe it is yoga therapy or yoga psychotherapy (Although I did write a paper on that very blending-- a yoga based psychotherapy which was published a few years ago). I believe this is Psychologically Sound Yoga. I believe this is a yoga that capitalizes on the therapeutic and even psychotherapeutic benefits yoga inherently yields sans the mystery and seeming magic of it just being "better than therapy". I believe this is Re-Sourced yoga. I believe this is a yoga that asks the teacher to be the greatest healing of all. It is a tall order I know. But frankly, the world is pretty messed up. The yoga industry is to what it used to be and we have work to do.

Having watched and studied hundreds of people moving their bodies at the same time, I know that when one person is disregulated in their nervous system, the entire field is altered. Similarly, when the leader or teacher of a group is deeply rested in their system they are far more capable to be dynamic, spontaneous and gregarious in their ability help regulate others. That very ability can heal at the non verbal level by setting in motion a host of feelings and sensations towards greater health and wholeness. 

So I ask you: Have you realized you needed a few more skills to get the job done in a way you truly wanted? Have you ever felt so pulled into your students crisis you cannot see straight. Have you ever felt like a student in your class took the psychic and energetic reigns before your could do anything? Have you ever seen students eyes rolling back in their head? Have you had a student who could not stop crying? or talking? or laughing? Have you ever had a student whose eyes were so wide they looked a little vacant but you really weren't totally sure what was going on? Have you ever found yourself preaching the yoga is going to work and to your dismay (but of course you won't admit it) it isn't totally jiving?

These gaps became intolerable to me. So I went out and sought an education and an experience to close the gap in my own body and in my own teaching --hoping somehow and in someway-- maybe in a far a way land and in some distant future, I could just maybe change the industry of yoga. 

Born from my own frustration, shame and grief. Born from my own longing. Born from my own being completely leveled by the work of teaching more times than one. Born from deep study in this realm. And born from the understanding that not every yoga teacher needs to go to graduate school for psychotherapy, I created Applied Psychology for Yogis. There are other pieces to how this larger work got conceived, gestated and birthed.

But that can be for another day. 

And that is sort of how it happened.

I find I get cyber inundated all the time now. Newsletter after newsletter. Sale upon sale. Buy this. Try that. Read this. Listen here. Go there. Be here. Look at me now. And now. And now.  Its exhausting to be so berated by the constant stream. Truthfully, as someone on the other end too, it is exhausting to keep up with doing the inundating.   I actually think a lot of us are tired from too much screen time. So If you have taken the time to read this, well thank you.

Those trusty algorithms we love to hate and hate to love are designed for the loudest and flashiest to be assumed the best. Don't you sort of find it the least bit scary that you can be "perceived" as an expert based on how many connections, programs, and likes you portray or are projected to portray? I fear at times I have caught "subjectivitis" which is an overuse injury of the ego perpetuated by self promotion and shared self realizations, teachable moments and self related business ventures.

Its hard. We want to feel connected in an age where the world is simultaneously disparate and oh so small. Our natural instincts to create community have found voice and pathway through the ethers and the internets. The impulse is so human. So natural. So necessary. We are not meant to be isolated beings. Patanjali was wrong. Enlightenment is not self realization. It is the awareness of being both simultaneously oneself and interpersonally connected. It is not my choice or even preference that the women who are like my sisters basically live on the other side of the country, and one across the globe. But luckily, our global interconnectivity keeps us not just in each others hearts but also in present contact through Skype and email and the like. Community is no longer the immediacy of location. Our community is as they say, global. 

As you know I have dedicated my work to expanding repertoire physically, emotionally, relationally. I do this by working individually with people offering mentoring and counseling. I do this through holding workshops. I do this through the online teaching world. And when the time is right again, I do it through weekly classes.

I have prided myself on trying and I think for the most part been successful at finding “Right Relationship” to social media. By that I mean I have built not an online business but an online educational environment with at times therapeutic benefit. When you think about it that way, its pretty cool what I have been able to create with the gracious and lively participation of people from all over the world. In many ways it is a dream come true. I worked with media very deliberately and thoughtfully. Ditching all pieces that felt icky in my body. I took online courses and felt into what worked for me as a student and learner and what was draining, unnecessary and arbitrary. I did my best to not shame or blame or victimize my colleagues into purchasing programs. I stated observations. Noted my feelings. And provided an invitation to a potential solution. I engaged conversations with relationships I had been nourishing through yoga practice for years. It has for the most part been so organic. No recipe. A conversation. So far it has worked mostly (well up until Facebook went and changed their stupid algorithm again).

Not everyone is suited to the online work. For some people engaging in a webinar is tediously annoying, always comes up short, and creates confusion and not understanding. A screen is not a person. But I am experimenting with the notion that if the two people on either side of the screen are be embodied and themselves while learning, teaching and engaging, than maybe the screen becomes the tool for transmission. A technological boon. Not a drone of community destruction. I have worked pretty hard to set up systems within my system that insure a culture of recognition, safety, learning, connection and service. And yes. I do believe that is palpable online. But I think it must be mostly because of the people on the sides of the screen. Those people know that everything in life takes time. Nature has her natural due dates. She does not operate in scheduled posts and newsletters. She doesn't back date. Or give you a highlight reel. She simply keeps turning in her due time. I fear sometimes in my work, I have fallen out of rhythm with Due Time. 

We live in a culture where everything can be scheduled, planned, factored. We are told we need to be medicated, fixed, treated. We live in a culture with few pauses. We are both implicitly and explicitly told to be "on" all the time. We are so visible. We are so available. If we want it. We want it now. And the options to consume are endless. "At our finger tips" is no considered a positive selling point. 

This past December I reached a breaking point. I had a melt down around much of my online work. Though I knew it was good work, I was spending so much time on the screen I thought I was loosing a grip on reality. I actually couldn't tell what was me, what was you, what was them, what was real and not real. I realized that I had made myself downloadable. Accessible day or night across the globe, my voice, my face, my teaching could be in someones house. On the one hand this is so cool, exciting, exhilarating. And also a great honor that what I have to say and offer is useful across a wide span.

On the other hand, I wonder if this effects what we call the akashic field. I wonder if my etheric body got a run down from being here, there and everywhere. In the swirl of it all I thought perhaps I am not cut out for this. Perhaps I should close up shop and get a job counseling at a clinic if possible and practice and meditate daily. No muss. No fuss. 

See the thing is, I must admit that when I first started all this, not many were talking about topics related to the intersection of Yoga and Psychology.  Sure there were conversations happening. Research was happening and had been. But nowhere near the depth and breadth of conversation and research happening now and happening in a way that is main stream. Never the popular kid, I built an entire identity around being "other", around being "fringe", around being "different". You can imagine my identity crisis now since what was fringe is now popular and center. The intersection is the main drag. As it turns out, I am not so unique after all. 

Everyone wants to talk Shadow. People are waking up to the who notion of projection and counter transference. More and more folks want to discuss power dynamics between the teacher and student. Even in the years I have been going about my business trusting what I see to be relevant and necessary for yogis to understand as products of western culture, more people are using the language of psychology. Sometimes I wonder if its co emergence or if the free market of the internet affords an insidious covert piracy. I'd like to think its the former. But the later also occurs. It is, well, very hard to tell sometimes.

It was just that. THAT terrible madness of keeping up with the intellectual Jones' and the cyber Kardashians that sent me into a tail spin. I was confused, territorial, frustrated, lonely. The absolute hysteria and mania I felt inside as a result of these swirls dropped me into a place that was so far from Kansas. It was not pretty. 

The yellow brick road turned out to be a kind of faith in fortitude. I kept trusting in the things that felt good. The online classes were doing good for people. The one on one work was creating change. I just put one foot in front of the other and sought council from some of my closest confidants. Each was surprised to hear how spun-out and desperate I was. They each told me that from the outside all looked smashingly successful. But thats the thing about social media. We are only one dimensional on the screen although in reality we are multi dimensional beings. Social media is a stream of subjective consciousness masked as objective product. Too much subject is narcissism and too much object is self abandonment. (A notion I first learned sans the psych terminology form my philosophy teacher Douglas Brooks).

Sounds lovely for our mental health does it not? Lets all be narcissistic self abandoning humanoids snapshotting our lives. Lets all turn ourselves into straw and tin men and cowardly lions. Lets all be in black and white. Lets all be only two dimensional. It is nearly impossible to convey the total complexity of a person on a screen. Though I do try. I do my darnedest.

To help me out of my stupor, my husband took me off line for 10 days. We went sailing. And you know what we did? We waited for the wind. There is this sacred alchemy between the sea, the wind and the science and art of setting your sails. Its a dialogue. Literally. Now I am no sailor, but if you set your sails well, you can gain a lot with just a little wind. You cannot control the sea or the wind. You can only have a conversation. Our trip leaders were two of the most patient people I had ever met in my life. I suppose that is what happens when the wind weathers you. You learn to wait. To be patient. That you are not in control. That there is Due Time

Like us, each boat has a heart and soul--it is a living breathing thing conversing with its environment. I have often described my "business" that way. Its a real entity, with personality, with grit, with desire having a conversation with where it came from and where it is and with whom it interacts. It is a sentient expression of something form inside me, that I have birthed into this world  connected to me but existing other than me too. I am not privy to all of its pending unfolding. And I do not know exactly what the wind will be like tomorrow. I can only have conversations. In Due Time.