Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘psychotherapy’

 

Hello all! 

 

My article “Yoga: A Healing Art in A Psychotherapy Context” has just been published in the Fall 2009 Issue of  THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER MAGAZINE. 

Check it out if you would like!

 

 

Writing is an exploration.  You start from nothing and learn as you go.

E.L. Doctorow

This blog is meant to explore and expound on my somewhat daunting adventure of becoming a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT).  I am currently a psychotherapist working in the field of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  I came upon this personal experiment in stamina, flexibility, and emotional strength through my work in my primary career and my passion; work with acutely traumatized persons. 

I found early on in my work that although “talk therapy” provided the initial breath of relief at expelling my clients’ demons into the air of the therapy room that the effectiveness of this method in isolation soon deflated and was not enough to sustain continued growth and healing.  I began to explore in earnest other methods that might bring another dimension into treatment of people that have experienced and survived trauma.

In my professional quest for the right answers to the issue of healing I began to search through my personal catalog of things that I had always found rejuvinating, soothing, and pacifying: my dogs, a long massage, a good movie, writing and reading in equal measure, meditation, and yoga.  I’d hate to say that I had an “aha!” moment because the phrase is a bit to kitchy for me too utter but I definitely had an epiphany of sorts.  I realized that I was holding back my capacity to help by limiting myself to what I had been taught through conventional methods was the only means to therapy and treatment of my clients.  I decided to explore further and put some of my ideas to action.  What could it hurt, I thought. 

Through the course of the last year I have been able to impliment programs for my clients to include a group combining writing, reading, and film as a means of processing trauma, I began two yoga groups led by Yoga Teachers, created events and outings around all the creative programming and the response has been phenominal.  I even began researching a potential equine-assisted therapy program.  Everything I have learned and absorbed has added a multidimensional element to my study and practice of psychotherapy and social work. 

All that said I still find that what I want to know and apply, actively being participatory in both the mind and body work that my clients do, is just out of my reach.  I lack the technical and applied knowledge to bridge the gap between these two worlds: this bridge is my necessary next step in being the most adept I can to help those I encounter professionally and an experience I believe will be more difficult and profound than most before it.

Beginning on October 18th, 2009 and ending on December 13, 2009 I will be enrolling myself in an intensive two month teacher training program.  In between that time and the present I will be relocating from New Jersey to Florida with two dogs, two cars, a husband and a Uhaul (a modern day country song wagon train), beginning a new job within my same field, and trying to intensify my yoga practice to match my upcoming routine.  The program I am entering is intensive but also part time, meaning that I will be working full time as well as spending essentially the remainder of my free hours in meditation, yoga practice, and intensive educational seminars beginning before work at 6:oo am and concluding after work as late as 10:00pm.  All this is to be combined with a strict diet and lifestyle regimen of vegetarianism and abstinence from alcohol, music, television, and essentially anything not beneficial to the training experience.  It is meant to mimic as strictly as possible, within the confines of a 9-5 life, the “ashram-type” learning environment that was the traditional method of teaching yoga to students. 

I am excited, intimidated, and ready for the challenge….I necessarily must be.  And cataloging and relaying this experience to begin now and continue through the end of this year of 2009 is my self-regulatory way of keeping myself “in the game” as it were.  And hopefully creating some interesting writing on this exploratory adventure in the process. 

The preliminary entries in this blog, leading up to the actual training, will be ponderings on the study, notes on the mayhem of relocation and life alterations in multiple , and just a little bit of me before the intensity of the teacher training begins.  Welcome to my experience…I hope you find some nuggets of interest in my writing and along this journey. 

 Adventures and misadventures to follow.