Mental and Emotional Healing Through Yoga combines key research on the intersection of yoga and mental health with a client-centered, step-by-step framework that can be applied to a range of complex mental and emotional disorders. The book guides readers through the initial intake of the first client session and the development of subsequent sessions, providing case examples from the author’s practice to show how yoga’s mind-body connection facilitates recuperation and healing. While well-grounded in research and case studies, the book is also highly readable, making it accessible to professionals such as psychotherapists and yoga therapists, as well as individuals and families struggling with mental health issues.
Many of us have experienced a traumatic event in our lives, whether in childhood or adulthood. This trauma may be emotional, or it may cause intense physical pain. In some cases, it can cause both. Studies have shown that compassion and mindfulness based interventions can help people suffering from trauma to experience less physical and emotional pain in their daily lives. What’s more, many long-time yoga and meditation teachers have a history of teaching these practices to their clients with successful outcomes. In Yoga for Emotional Trauma, a psychotherapist and a meditation teacher present a yogic approach to emotional trauma by instructing you to apply mindful awareness, breathing, yoga postures, and mantras to their emotional and physical pain. In the book, you’ll learn why yoga is so effective for dealing with emotional trauma. Yoga and mindfulness can transform trauma into joy. It has done so for countless millions. The practices outlined in this book will teach you how to use and adapt the ancient practices and meditations of yoga for your own healing. Drawing upon practices and philosophy from eastern wisdom traditions, and texts such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Bagavad Gita, and the Buddhist Sutras, this book will take you on a journey into wholeness, one that embraces body, mind and spirit. Inside, you will discover the lasting effect that trauma has on physiology and how yoga resets the nervous system. Combining yogic principles, gentle yoga postures, and mindfulness practices, this book filled with sustenance and practical support that will move you along your own healing path.
For anyone who has suffered loss, a collection of meditations and poses for working through grief. So often, we think that grief lives only in our hearts and minds. But what about the emotions that weigh us down and the grief that gets stuck in our body? Our emotions need motion, and Healing Through Yoga is a unique, simple, and powerful way of healing. Grief Yoga founder Paul Denniston takes you through the stages of Awareness, Expression, Connection, Surrender, and Evolution with clear and compassionate instruction, poses, exercises with easy-to-follow photos, and meditations specifically designed to move you through that particular step. Learn how to release pain and suffering without expectation or judgment and reconnect to life, love, and strength. Even if you have never done yoga before, with Healing Through Yoga you can process your grief and use it as fuel for transformative healing. FOR READERS OF: Healing After Loss, On Grief and Grieving, Chair Yoga,The Body Keeps the Score, and Grief Day by Day. EXPERT AUTHOR: Paul Denniston is the founder of Grief Yoga, a program he created with David Kessler (co-author of On Grief and Grieving) and tours worldwide, working with bereavement groups, cancer support centers, addiction and Alzheimer's groups, and people dealing with breakups, divorce, and betrayal. Denniston has a mailing list of 100,000 subscribers, and he teaches a weekly class to the 18,000 members in his public Grief Facebook group. NOT JUST FOR YOGIS: Paul's audience is mostly made up of people who had never thought of yoga as a way to work through grief. This practice is not as much about physical flexibility as it is about emotional liberation. GREAT RESOURCE FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS: Paul has taught this practice to over 10,000 therapists, counselors, and healthcare professionals around the world. A NEW TOOL FOR ALL TYPES OF LOSS: Paul teaches this class to workshops dealing with all kinds of loss, including breakups, divorce and betrayal, bereavement groups, cancer support centers, addiction groups, death by suicide, Alzheimer's support groups, bereaved parents and many more. This book can help with new and old losses and traumatic experiences that often go unattended. Perfect for: 18+, Yoga enthusiasts. grief help, self-help
An integrative approach to healing anxiety, depression, and chronic stress through yoga and breathing exercises Emotional balance is within your reach—when you cultivate the intelligence of both your body and mind. Bo Forbes, a psychologist and yoga teacher, offers some of her most important teachings and practices, including: • Restorative yoga sequences designed to balance anxiety and lift depression • Breath and body-centered exercises to calm your mind and energize your body • Simple ways to understand your emotional patterns • 3 main obstacles to emotional well-being • 5 tools for building emotional balance Rooted in classical yoga yet supported by psychology and science, the techniques in this book will help you create progressive and lasting change.
Survivors of trauma—whether abuse, accidents, or war—can end up profoundly wounded, betrayed by their bodies that failed to get them to safety and that are a source of pain. In order to fully heal from trauma, a connection must be made with oneself, including one’s body. The trauma-sensitive yoga described in this book moves beyond traditional talk therapies that focus on the mind, by bringing the body actively into the healing process. This allows trauma survivors to cultivate a more positive relationship to their body through gentle breath, mindfulness, and movement practices. Overcoming Trauma through Yoga is a book for survivors, clinicians, and yoga instructors who are interested in mind/body healing. It introduces trauma-sensitive yoga, a modified approach to yoga developed in collaboration between yoga teachers and clinicians at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute, led by yoga teacher David Emerson, along with medical doctor Bessel van der Kolk. The book begins with an in-depth description of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including a description of how trauma is held in the body and the need for body-based treatment. It offers a brief history of yoga, describes various styles of yoga commonly found in Western practice, and identifies four key themes of trauma-sensitive yoga. Chair-based exercises are described that can be incorporated into individual or group therapy, targeting specific treatment goals, and modifications are offered for mat-based yoga classes. Each exercise includes trauma-sensitive language to introduce the practice, as well as photographs to illustrate the poses. The practices have been offered to a wide range of individuals and groups, including men and women, teens, returning veterans, and others. Rounded out by valuable quotes and case stories, the book presents mindfulness, breathing, and yoga exercises that can be used by home practitioners, yoga teachers, and therapists as a way to cultivate awareness, tolerance, and an increased acceptance of the self.
“A brilliant illumination of how the ancient wisdom of the yogic tradition can penetrate the often-intractable challenges of depression.”—Phil Catalfo, Yoga Journal Take the natural path to mental wellness. More than twenty-five million Americans are treated with antidepressants each year, at a cost in excess of $50 billion. But the side effects of popular prescription drugs may seem nearly as depressing as the symptoms they’re meant to treat. Veteran yoga instructor Amy Weintraub offers a better solution—one that taps the scientifically proven link between yoga and emotional well-being as well as the beauty of ancient approaches to inner peace. Addressing a range of diagnoses, including dysthymia, anxiety-based depression, and bipolar disorder, Yoga for Depression reveals why specific postures, breathing practices, and meditation techniques can ease suffering and release life’s traumas and losses. Weintraub also reflects on her own experience with severe depression, from which she recovered through immersing herself in a daily yoga routine. Yoga for Depression is the first yoga book devoted exclusively to the treatment of these debilitating conditions. Amy Weintraub will help readers see their suffering and themselves in a vibrant new light.
The Energetic Anatomy of a Yogi is an evolution in yoga, empowering teachers and practitioners while taking their life to a profound new level of healing and understanding. The program teaches students to be aware of their inner state, how they approach their yoga class, to be mindful, centred and honest with themselves. Originally, yoga was designed to discipline the body and still the mind to attain enlightenment. This book re-introduces these ancient precepts, creating a new level of healing. "Working with Paul and Jaylee really opened my eyes and took me and my yoga to a new level of being." - Jonny Mauke, USA, Bikram World Champion 2006 "Every now and then we get an opportunity to take part in something that will uplift and inspire us while enriching our yoga practice. In rare cases these events can even change the directions of our lives. Paul and Jaylee Balch with their knowledge are this rare opportunity!!" - B.K., yoga studio owner "The Energetic Anatomy of a Yogi by Paul & Jaylee Balch was one of the best posture clinics I have ever attended. The information they shared helped me learn a great deal about myself and my students/clients. They have a wealth of knowledge that is best shared. Invite them in!" - T. H. (Kingston Yoga Studio Owner & Teacher)
Trauma Healing in the Yoga Zone describes an original model of "Nervous System Informed, Trauma-Sensitive Yoga," (NITYA), a synthesis of classical yoga, somatic psychotherapy, and neuroscience research. It is organized around the eight branches of Raja Yoga, and includes scripts for administering NITYA chair yoga postures, breathing practices, and yoga nidra (the yogic sleep). These can be used by helping professionals with all levels of familiarity with yoga. The book is needed for several reasons: for mental health professionals, it offers a comprehensive overview of yoga philosophy and practices, as well as yoga-based options for working with the client's embodied experience, a major element in trauma healing. For yoga professionals and practitioners, it provides insight into the natural integration of yoga with polyvagal theory and other current approaches in the field of somatic psychology. Both professions are currently being enriched by data from the field of neuropsychology that describes brain function, in real time, in various mental and emotional states. This data supports yoga's effectiveness in regulating the autonomic nervous system, a key to trauma recovery.
In Western therapies, mind, body, and spirit are separated into three distinct areas, with specialists who deal with each facet of the human being independently. However, in the yogic model of well-being, medical, psychological, and spiritual needs are dealt with synergistically. Elements of yoga practice have become increasingly popular with both medical and mental health professionals, as well as the subject of much empirical research. Meditation, one of yoga's most important practices, has been found effective in the treatment of a wide variety of physical and psychological problems, including coronary artery disease, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. Healing the Whole Person is a guide to help individuals improve bodily and behavioral functions through the integration of holistic yoga, meditation, and ayurveda practices. This book also takes a look into spiritual facets of psychotherapy and the role of a collective consciousness in personal well-being.
A groundbreaking yoga program that takes full advantage of the body-mind connection. Drawing on her extensive training in yoga therapy, dance, and meditation, Bija Bennett has created a groundbreaking yoga program that takes full advantage of the body-mind connection. Based on the classical eightfold path of yoga, Emotional Yoga offers a broad range of simple body-mind techniques that can positively affect our emotional well-being, including the dynamic interplay of movements, breathing exercises, meditations, lifestyle skills, rituals, gestures, and healing sounds. Each technique is presented in a way that is true to Bennett's background in the tradition of Viniyoga, which allows the reader to adapt the program to his or her specific needs.
