T.B. Pasquale

Posts Tagged ‘yoga’

Elizabeth Plapinger is the co-director of  Yoga for Mental Wellness (YMW) at The Breathing Project, which has provided low-cost or free therapeutic yoga classes for those living with mental illness in NYC since  2004.  Elizabeth and her colleagues, Bess Abrahams, RYT, IMT and L. Ruth Kalvert, RYT, CMT, MA, administer and teach the YMW program and provide yoga to various hospitals and community mental health programs in and around NYC.  Elizabeth and her colleagues also assist yoga and mental health professionals interested in exploring yoga’s complementary role in mental health and wellness.

Elizabeth is a certified yoga teacher, with a background in vinyasa, restorative, Iyengar, breath-centered and embodied yoga.  A graduate of the Advanced Studies in Yoga Anatomy at The Breathing Project, Elizabeth has studied with master yoga teachers and yoga therapists Jillian Pransky, Leslie Kaminoff, Amy Matthews, Roxlyn Moret, and Bess Abrahams.  She currently studies embodied yoga and Body-Mind Centering with Amy Matthews and Roxlyn Moret, and Iyengar Yoga with Michelle LaRue.

In addition to her yoga teaching and studies, Elizabeth, who is a lawyer, was an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School from 2000-2008, where she taught conflict resolution and problem solving.  Elizabeth is the former director of the Public Policy Projects at the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, a nonprofit research and education organization in New York City.   Elizabeth is the author of numerous policy and research studies, books and articles regarding ethics, mediation and other methods of conflict resolution.  She is a graduate of Carleton College (magna cum laude) and the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (Order of the Coif), and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

What is your yoga background?  Where did you get your yoga teacher training?  What types of yoga do you practice and teach?

I began my yoga studies in 1999, exploring a combination of vinyasa and Iyengar yoga.  I added breath-centered, restorative and embodied yoga and anatomy along the way. I am a graduate of the Bright Spirit Yoga 200-hour Training Program (2004) and the Advanced Studies Training Program in Yoga Anatomy at The Breathing Project (2006), and currently study with Leslie Kaminoff, Amy Matthews, Roxlyn Moret, Jillian Pranksy, and Michelle LaRue.

Integrating alignment, breath, mindfulness, embodiment and delight in movement and self-discovery, I teach yoga to people living with mental illness.  My specific teaching approach, which I call for shorthand, the ABC’s of Yoga for Mental Wellness, is described below.

Q:  What interested you in yoga initially?  How have your impressions of yoga evolved over time?

I came to yoga at a time of great change and disruption in my life.  Some inchoate desire and knowledge seems to have led me to my first yoga class, at age 45, where I met my first and continuing teacher, Jillian Pranksy.  Once on the mat, I had an immediate sensation of ease and discovery.  Coming to yoga and following my strong instincts to explore it deeply was the first time in my life that I had heeded the information my body and heart was giving me, rather than overriding it.

Q:  What work do you do right now?

I am co-director of and primary yoga teacher at Yoga for Mental Wellness (YMW) at The Breathing Project, a nonprofit yoga center in NYC (www.breathingproject.org). YMW provides free and low-cost community yoga classes for people living with mental illness.  Since many of our students are under-employed, jobless or homeless because of their illnesses, we offer our twice-weekly community classes in New York City at no charge or by small donation for those who can contribute. We also regularly teach yoga classes in various NYC hospitals, community mental health centers, and wellness fairs.  In addition, we advise yoga and mental health professionals interested in exploring yoga’s complementary role in mental health and wellness.

In our hospital classes, interested students are referred during out-patient treatment or after hospitalization to the free YMW community classes.  One of my mental health colleagues explains the usefulness of YMW’s hospital-to-community continuum, noting: “The fact that YMW has a role in so many branches of the mental health system promot[es] compliance and follow up with elements of the after-care plan.”

We serve hundreds of people annually and fund our work through individual contributors and foundations.  In 2009-2010, our principal funding came from Corcoran Cares, a local charitable giving program funded by staff and agents from the Soho office of the prominent NYC real estate company, The Corcoran Group. www.corcoran.com.

What is your professional and education background?

I began my career as a lawyer, more interested in resolving disputes and preserving relationships than in filing lawsuits.  For 15 years, I worked at the CPR International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution in NYC, where I conducted research, wrote books and articles, and worked with other lawyers, law professors, public policy makers and consumers of legal services, to integrate mediation and other forms of conflict resolution into the contemporary practice of law. From 2000-2008, I taught conflict resolution and problem-solving at Columbia Law School. I am a graduate of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and Carleton College, and am a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

In many ways, my former work in law—exploring different ways to resolve conflict and encouraging change in contemporary legal institutions—parallels my current work in yoga and mental health, where I am working with mental health workers and clients to integrate yogic tools to contemporary mental health approaches.

You taught Conflict Resolution at Columbia Law School—how did you integrate yoga into your classroom teaching?

I often say that, “I taught yoga to my conflict resolution students and problem-solving to my yoga students.”  Indeed the fundamentals are the same in both classes.  They include coming into the present moment, grounding oneself, and pausing meaningfully before acting.  By centering oneself and then pausing, one begins to understand the current situation more accurately and to make better choices about how to proceed. That is the stance of the problem-solving negotiator as well as the yogi.

As a yogi, I tried to reduce the inherent stress of the classroom at Columbia Law School by encouraging my students to find and remember their inner, intuitive wisdom and move from there.  With my yoga students, many of whom have lost some feeling of their own power, wisdom and autonomy, I also begin from the traditional yogic place that we are all already whole, regardless what illness or dilemmas we currently face.

What is THE BREATHING PROJECT?  How did you get involved with this program?

The Breathing Project is a non-profit therapeutic yoga education center, which provides advanced studies in anatomy, breath-centered, individualized and embodied yoga for teachers of various movement disciplines.  In addition, it offers specialized community yoga classes for under-served groups, such as people with mental illness, MS, and other conditions.  It was founded in 2003 by yoga educator and anatomy teacher, Leslie Kaminoff, and is currently directed by Leslie and Amy Matthews, another extraordinary teacher and anatomist.  For more information about the Breathing Project, see www.breathingproject.org.

I came to the Breathing Project in 2004 to continue my studies in yoga anatomy with Leslie and Amy, after completing my 200-hour yoga teacher training.  Having personally experienced how yoga practice had lifted my moods and enriched my life, I wanted to learn more about Yoga for Depression, a small pilot program at the Breathing Project.  Founded by yoga therapist Bess Abrahams in 2004, the program was designed to explore whether consistent yoga practice would enhance the lives of people living with persistent mental illness.  Bess and I began to co-teach and administer the program, which eventually became Yoga for Mental Wellness (YMW).  I took on the day-to-day teaching and administration of the program in 2005, and I continue that work today with the assistance of my two co-directors, Bess, and L. Ruth Kalvert, a talented yogi and massage therapist, who joined YMW in 2008.

Q:  You co-direct a program at THE BREATHING PROJECT called “Yoga for Mental Wellness (YMW).”  What does this yoga practice entail and what is the philosophy and methodology behind it?

YMW is grounded in the 3-fold philosophy of The Samarya Center’s Integrated Movement Therapy (IMT), where our founder Bess Abrahams trained.  Those concepts are: (1)Each of us is perfect and whole right now; (2) Each of us is unlimited in our potential and abilities to heal; and (3) No part of our body/mind/spirit, and no part of the brain, works alone. www.samaryacenter.org.

Within that framework, I have developed a three-part methodology for teaching how to access the enormous resources we carry with us in our bodies. Sometimes I call my approach the ABCs of YMW:  A for alignment, awareness, acceptance and aliveness; B for breath, balance and being where you are; and C for approaching ourselves with curiosity, compassion, clarity and courage.  (C is also for consistent practice, an essential ingredient to healing and growth, as I often remind my students!)

In Yoga for Mental Wellness classes, the students are repeatedly reminded that we are our own best teachers and our bodies are laboratories for us to explore and discover wisdom and information for healing and living fully. A typical class involves the slow, careful movement
of yoga postures, focused breathing coordinated with movement, attention to the present moment, exploration of the body and embodiment, compassionate self-care and deep relaxation.  Class size is limited to 10 students to allow individualized teaching, connections between student, teacher and classmates, and the growth of a healing community.

What are your hopes for YOGA FOR MENTAL WELLNESS?  What are the broader applications you see for this practice and where would you like the program to go?

I look forward to continuing to fund, direct and teach YMW with my colleagues and students. Our mission is to assist people in crisis, their families and the mental health community in discovering the vast resources of the body and mind through yoga.  Our ongoing work is to provide broader access to yoga practice for those living with mental health challenges. Today, too many of us are excluded because appropriate yoga classes are not readily available or cost too much.

Several of our students have spoken eloquently of their need for this program and their wishes for more classes.  One wrote: “As a survivor of physical and sexual abuse, I am very sensitive regarding my body. Therapy is great and helps but does not encompass the physical aspects of my being.  In the yoga class, the teachers reached my soul through my body.” Another explained:  “Yoga has allowed me to better respect my body and the information it is giving me.  I am someone who suffers from both psychiatric and physical illnesses so this attitude is important to . . . the quality of my life. A third student adds:   “This class is an oasis that keeps me going through the week. … I wish the class was offered more often and that such classes were made available to all survivors of trauma.” And a fourth summed up hopes for the future: “I hope in my heart that [this kind of yoga class] will become more and more available and spread through the mental health community like wild fire.”

What would you like to see happen in the future of the field of complementary/integrative mental health and the infusion of yoga into the mental health and general health fields?

I would like to see yoga and other somatic practices integrated in our society’s approach to education and wellness.  How does that happen today and tomorrow?  In my experience, one way is when innovative and courageous folks inside the mental health system reach out to bring complementary strategies into their workplaces. This process of change takes time, leadership, patience and persistence.  At several hospitals where YMW is offered, gentle persistence on the part of the courageous insiders, along with equanimity and understanding on the part of the yoga teachers was necessary to clear hurdles and overcome resistance.

Secondly, when I work in the mental health system, I consider my co-workers in the mental health professions to be part of my mandate.  They do the intense daily work in an over-loaded and understaffed health system.  Not only is regular self-care essential to the health of the mental health providers, it also translates into better care. For example, one of my mental health co-workers recently commented about the effect of a yoga session I conducted for staff,  “[one therapist said] that she was more open emotionally with her client right after your class.  [This] comment captures the immediate benefit of mindful yoga practice:  when we are centered in mind and body, we can be more available for our clients and help them more.”

Q:  What are some of the most important resources, references, books, articles, teachers you have come across on your path as a yoga teacher & a person integrating yoga for mental health?

My most influential yoga teachers are Jillian Pransky, Bess Abrahams, L. Ruth Kalvert, Leslie Kaminoff, Amy Matthews, Roxlyn Moret and Michelle LaRue.  My other essential guide and teacher in this work is NYC psychologist Dr. Dorothy L. Griffiths.

As a reader, many books have accompanied me on this journey.  Several books and authors of particular importance have been: Health, Healing and Beyond, by T.K.V. Desikachar (Apperature Foundation 1998); Healing into Life and Death, by Stephen Levine (Anchor Books, 1987); Where the Roots Reach for Water:  A Natural and Personal History of Melancholia, by Jeffrey Smith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1999); Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, by Pema Chodren (Shambhala Library 2004); and Faith: Trusting Your Deepest Experience, by Sharon Salzburg (Riverhead Books, 2002).

A number of books have been published recently that explore mindfulness and somatic or body approaches to mental illness.  Several of my favorites are: The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense by Alan Fogel  (Norton, 2009); Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach for Preventing Relapse by Zindel V. Segal et al (The Guilford Press 2002); and Healing the Whole Person: Applications of Yoga Psychotherapy by Swami Ajaya (Himalayan Institute Press, 2008).

Any advice for mental health professionals, bodyworkers interested in learning more about the intersection of yoga and mental health?

My colleagues and I at YMW are always happy to field questions and direct interested folks to resources.  We are also honored to assist people in crisis, their families and the mental health community in discovering the vast resources of the body and mind through yoga.  We can be reached at Elizabeth@breathingproject.org and www.breathingproject.org.

Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame.

B.K.S. Iyengar

So, given the challenge to yoga-up my life again after a month of incessant day-job that leaves me home late every night and stressed all weekend long I realized that the yoga with a capital “Y” has been missing from my life altogether.  By that I mean the yoga in the essence of how I live my life and bring room to breathe, pause, and reboot.  To be frank–I have had none.  So taking Bindu Wiles 21.5.800 Challenge (21 days, 5 days a week yoga, 800 words written per day) I realized how much I have sucked the yoga joy out of my life since yoga school ended and my new job began.  Yoga back in my life really meant a total overhaul.

So my yoga for yesterday was Savasana on a floatie raft in my grandparents-in-law’s pool.  It was divinity–really.  I have taking the yoga less literal in terms of postures and more to a state of mind–and that I am trying to do 7 days a week.  I am dedicating 40minutes-1 hour a day where I give me a moment to breath and pause and reboot.  I am expanding my Savasana to be more encompassing.  I am thinking the next extension of that is to take up on of my Massage Envy massages (which have been back-logging without use) and Savasana my way into a deep tissue state of the Swedish variety.  Yes, I think so.

That said, today’s yoga will be literal.  I am vacillating between power flow and restorative for my home practice–we will see what the day brings.  The joy of home practice is that I can morph it to whatever I feel the need for.  Although, another aspiration of my next few weeks of the challenge is to add a studio practice one day a week–something I have been missing in the last couple of months.  Communal environment is a great invigorator for a home-study practice that has lapsed.

5 Ways You Can Bring Savasana Into Your Life & Some Room to Breathe:

1. Get a massage.  I love Massage Envy because for a reasonable monthly rate  (about $50-$60 per month; half a usual spa massage rate) it commits you to give yourself a moment to take care of yourself–body and mind.  Also, if you are like me and you lapse for a few months your massages stay in a reserve for you to use when you have the time.

2. Go to the beach or get yourself a floatie and head to your local pool. It’s summer!  So, you can take full advantage of nature’s therapeutic qualities such as vitamin D and head to the beach, pool, or even your backyard and get in a retreat-state-of-mind.  Put on some SPF, sunglasses, and just lounge like (even if it is only for an hour or an afternoon) you are on vacation.

3. Create some sacred space in your home & spend some time there in silence. What we create in our home space says  a lot about our personality and our motivations at home.  If you take just a small corner of a room or room in your house and create a space for meditation, silence, or prayer you give yourself the incentive to spend some time at home in silence, meditation, or prayer.

4.  Follow your bliss. We each have things we love and things that bring us into a state of bliss, peace, and calm.  What is that thing for you?  Art, writing, yoga postures, dance, horseback riding, motorcycle riding–the sky is limit (literally, cause’ it could be airplane flying).  When I ask clients what brings them calm they have named all of the above and more.  Whatever your bliss is can be the yoga in your life.  Do something you love–find your bliss and follow it to a state of calm.

5.  Shut down your devices. Live a day unplugged. Yeah, this is a hard one!  As I write this on a blog I realize the hypocrisy in this moment .  But not indefinitely, not forever, just for an hour or a day log off, sign off, and shut off!  It is so crucial and I do it far to infrequently.  Turn off the phone, shut off the computer, unplug the T.V. and just be in the silence.  It can be very uncomfortable and the more discomfort you feel the more it is a warning sign that you need to do it more often.  The white noise takes us over and we have to remember to get back to ourselves, unplugged.

Have you neglected your own self-care and room to breathe in your life?  Any ways you can think of infusing your summer with some non-literal or literal yoga?  Below are a few I have been salivating over.  If you are interested in investing in some self-care you can also still sign up for my “Room to Breathe: Summer Soulstice Soul Care” Virtual Workshop starting June 20, 2010!  However you do it, summer is a great time to take some time and focus on taking care of you!

“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.”
German Proverb

Bindu Wiles post yesterday was about fear.  Bindu has been a breath of complicity in my blogosphere and I am very glad to have stumbled upon her writing, her story, and her 21.5.800 Challenge of which I am partaking.  Bindu’s story is one of trauma, survival and a renewal of self through therapy, yoga, buddhism, writing and breath.  Her story is emblematic of what I spoke about yesterday at the National Association of Social Worker’s Florida Conference and what has resonated in my own life story and recovery from trauma and PTSD–a restoration of breath and renewal of self by way of writing, yoga, and contemplative practices (buddhist, christian and yogic alike).  The passion I bring to my work, my speaking about the work, and into my life is one of feeling dedication and onus to perpetuate the discourse on what, for me, has been profound healing in my own life story and the stories of the patients/clients I have treated implementing the very things that brought about change for myself and my life.

“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is,” or so goes the German proverb above.  I think this statement gets to the hear of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  A primal fear, animal in nature, overcomes us when in a dangerous situation–our survival mechanism kicks in and tells us one of the following,  ”Run, hide, fight, stop where you are” which translates to the built in mechanisms for fight, flight, freeze, submit.  In danger we become like the deer in the wild, doing everything we can to survive.  When PTSD is activated that survival response is locked in, “stuck” inside our body and brain and is not let go of when danger disappears.  We are left a constant state of “danger” or “I am going to die.”  Fear.  We are in a constant state of danger/fear.  Bindu’s post resonates with me because the pervasive fear of PTSD is so overwhelming and all-encompassing; something that logic cannot dissolve easily.  The hair-trigger response to anything that resembles danger (often distorted by a high-alert PTSD brain) takes the traumatized person all the way to the feelings of “I am going to die” before the non-trauma brain could even assess the situation.  PTSD brain doesn’t go from 0-100 in one second because in that “stuck” place it is already starting at 50 before even getting out of bed in the morning–high-alert is status-quo.  And it is exhausting.  I can tell you that from experience.  Asleep is exhausting.  Awake is exhausting.  And every moment is living on the precipice of erupting with fear.

This is much of what I talked about yesterday at the conference as well as how yoga, creative arts, and animal-assisted therapies (equine, canine, and even dolphin) can have such profound healing properties for the PTSD brain and living experience.  To me the combination of these elements combines the essential ingredients for the neurobiological issues of trauma and general brain “stuckness”.  Yoga, mind/body practices, and breathwork help restore our self-regulating and self-soothing capacities, creative arts help to find an outlet for expression outside of talk, give empowerment, purpose, and competency in action to people often very broken by trauma, and animals, with their ability to be both intuitive and non-judgmental relationships for a trauma survivor who may not be able to bring themselves into interpersonal relationships due to trust, shame and fear.  It was so interesting to me, as as I am always intrigued by the synchronicity of writing and happenstance, that while I was speaking about trauma and healing, Bindu was writing about her own plight in the fear of post-trauma, her intimate connection with her dog (an innately therapeutic relationship), and breath as restoration from out of a fear-infused moment.  In two different contexts, but from the same origin, we were talking about the same things.

I thank Bindu, and other trauma survivors I have met, for her eloquent and open vocalization of her experience and her ability to bring her insight and her life practices in to play to combat trauma and PTSD.  I continue to believe in the neuroplasticity of our brains–the ability of our brains to CHANGE.  I believe in trauma survivors ability to heal.  I believe in yoga, creative arts, and animals as amazing conduits to that healing.  I believe in the power of speaking our own truths and how much vocalization can be a catalyst for change.  I thank Bindu for her story and her post.  As well as for her 21.5.800 Challenge which I think is an inspiration and a call for self-care and healing in itself.    I thank all the wonderful participants at my workshop yesterday for their passions, enthusiasm, and the inspiration they brought me in the work they are doing, the dedication to their clients, and their openness to the creative explorations in therapy I was presenting to them.

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