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In this episode, we discuss how to help clients who overthink by bringing them back into their bodies through yoga and holistic practices. Kimberleigh shares her yoga journey, her weekly routines, and how she integrates yoga, Reiki, and other holistic tools into her therapy sessions. Listeners are guided through practical exercises to help reconnect the mind and body, and Kimberleigh offers insights into the benefits of combining these practices for overall mental well-being. 

MEET Kimberleigh Hagar 

Kimberleigh Hagar, LCSW ​, is a mental health therapist​, yoga teacher, and Reiki Master. She provides individual holistic therapy online, specializing in women experiencing overthinking, perfectionism, imposter syndrome and struggling with self-compassion. In therapy, she incorporates​ holistic practices including: yoga, EFT Tapping (acupressure), tarot/oracle cards as a self-reflective tool, ​mindfulness, and ​R​eiki-assisted therapy.

Find out more at Mindfully Balanced Therapy and connect with Kimberleigh on Instagram

• Understanding overthinking and its challenges
• The connection between overthinking and anxiety
• Reconnecting with the body through yoga
• Practical yoga techniques for therapists
• Guided grounding exercise

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Why that reconnection is essential for healing. Stay tuned for simple and body tools you can use in your sessions. Plus a bonus yoga practice you can experience and use with your clients who tend to overthink on today's episode of Yoga in the Therapy Room Podcast. Let's get started. Welcome to Yoga in the therapy room, the non-traditional therapist guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice.

Join me on this journey to help you be one step closer to bringing yoga into your therapy room.

Welcome to the Yoga In the Therapy Room Podcast. A non-traditional. Therapist Guide to Integrating Yoga into your therapy practice. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. Many clients and therapists can struggle with overthinking. It's easy to become stuck in your head thinking, planning, overanalyzing while losing touch with the body's internal wisdom.

Joining me today is Kimberly Hagar, a mental health therapist, yoga teacher, and reiki master. She incorporates holistic practices including yoga, EFT, tapping tarot, Oracle cards as a self-reflective tool, mindfulness and Reiki assisted therapy. She is also a graduate from my Yoga Basics course. Welcome to the Yoga in the Therapy Room podcast, Kimberly.

Thank you. I. Yeah. Can we start

Kimberleigh Hagar: with how did you discover yoga? Oh gosh. Discovering yoga. I think I took it in a gym class when I was in high school and liked it. Cool. Gym lot better. Wow. Liked it a whole lot better than going and running around the baseball fields or playing basketball like.

So how often are

Chris McDonald: you doing yoga now?

Excellent. So you teach in the community too? I do. I just finished my 200 hour training. Congratulations. Literally last weekend. That's amazing. So we're jumping right into teaching and yeah, just continuing that journey.

Chris McDonald: Well, let's jump into our topic today. I know that you mentioned you work with a lot of clients with issues with overthinking perfectionism, so what causes this?

Where does this come from with so many people?

They, a lot of them use that word. Oh. But the thought of not doing that is equally as terrifying for them because it does serve a purpose, and that overthinking really helps them to be the planner, to be the one coordinating things, to make sure that all of their family has everything that they need. All the kids are where they gotta go.

All the summer camps are up for everything. Work is. Managed and so that overthinking sometimes can be a gift and, and the curse. So yeah, it can be such a challenge to navigate with, um, just kind of navigating all of these different, all of the different parts of life and kind of keeping it running. And so many of my women are really feeling that internal.

And it helpful and it has in the past sometimes. So that's why it's really to, if I don't do that, everything's gonna fall apart.

Chris McDonald: I know exactly.

It's just hard to keep up with life sometimes, isn't it? But is this anxiety based, do you find A lot of times, yes. '

Kimberleigh Hagar: cause there is that worry, that fear, that concern about what if. Things don't work out. What if worst case scenario happens? That catastrophizing thought can come up a lot around worst case scenario coming to light.

And unfortunately sometimes that does happen. But then it happens and then that part of our brain goes, oh, see, see there, it's, that's why we gotta do it. That's why we gotta put in all this work. But happens is. Overthinking things

Are the kids even gonna like it anyway? Should we get chicken nuggets? Because I can't remember if there's enough for one or all of them in the fridge or freezer, I should say. We miss some of the, those moments. We miss some of the laughter, we miss the jokes. We miss kind of those

Chris McDonald: moments where we can kind

Kimberleigh Hagar: of just enjoy

Chris McDonald: life.

So I wonder too, with part of this, I know you mentioned that disconnection. So are people aware what's happening in the body when they're in their head too much?

Kimberleigh Hagar: You know, so often when I talk about overthinking and perfect being a lot of energy up in. Right up in their thinking brains. So many of them talk about kind of like, almost like a disconnect happening with the rest of their body.

Yes. To market maybe something new that I'm offering and I've got maybe a couple hours I'm gonna get

at the clock. Holy cow. I've got five minutes before my next appointment because I just was so trying to get it just right that I missed everything else. I know I'm hungry and the dog's gotta get out. Exactly. Even in my head.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And I, I feel like sometimes, and I do this as well, it's like, what is realistic?

Kimberleigh Hagar: tell you, I. Started several years ago writing out my daily to-do list on a post-it note, and this is the only space that I have for that day's list.

If it doesn't fit on my one, so you can't fit it in the margin or doesn't fit in the little square, then it's not happening. I love that. Yeah. I've got my, you know, my list for the week and today if.

It's not gonna happen today, but sometimes we can get pulled into that to-do list. We get pulled into trying to get things just right that we can miss out on our body's cues to eat lunch, to refill our water. Gosh. To even use the restroom sometimes, like but to take rest during the day too. Yeah. Yeah. We need those.

They're, the mind and the body are in constant communication all day, every day. But when we are so focused on what's going on in our thinking brain, we're missing out on a lot of those really important messages. And I just had the question come to me, but are you listening to Right.

Ooh, maybe I have been sitting a lot this morning and maybe I might need to do my next appointment with my little standing riser so that I can my legs to move in a different way.

Chris McDonald: So that helps with taking care of you. So once we pause. And can really listen to our bodies.

It's picking one of those things that we might just start, bring some attention to and notice how do we notice when we're feeling thirsty? How do we notice when our body. To move hip flexors or need to stretch out, stand up

than

Chris McDonald: interception. What's happening and what do we need, right? Right in this moment. But we have to stop. In that moment too, to reflect, because if we keep going to the task, task, task, Energizer Bunny, then we're overwhelmed. And I think therapists are guilty of this a lot too, and not having scheduling back to back, not having breaks.

And it's always amazing to me when I hear people that don't eat lunch, I'm like, I couldn't function. Oh my gosh, no. Ah, yeah. But just those basic things that we neglect,

And you know, there's something about being busy, that hustle culture.

I feel that in D ways and whenever something is off with our body, it just makes us more vulnerable to negative emotions, but it makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and overthinking because we're not as able to check it and be like, oh. Is that actually a possibility? Is that actually real or have I just gone really far into that spiral?

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And how can practices with yoga help with this? Yeah,

And so putting a little bit of that space there is helpful. And then number two, it's coming into the body. And again, like when we've got all that energy happening in our overthinking brain. It's like almost disconnected from our feeling body yoga is a way to come back into the feeling body and reconnect those.

And it doesn't mean we're switching from one to the other, we're just plugging them back into each other so they can connect plugging them. I like that.

Chris McDonald: Yes. Yeah. Hey, therapist, do you have a client who gets stuck in their head and struggle to drop. Into their body. Are you recognizing the limits of talk therapy but are unaware about the how and when to bring body-based practices in the therapy sessions?

Science and polyvagal theory. Practical tools to bring into sessions and ways to build your confidence with teaching yoga practices. Enroll by May 31st and you get two free 30 minute individual yoga consultations with me when you enroll. This is a great time that you'll be able to refine your teaching and I can help you with a client case.

Get your individual guidance and support to learn more and start feeling confident bringing yoga into your therapy room. Head to yoga in the therapy room.com/yoga. Yoga Basics. That's yoga in the therapy room.com/yoga basics. How do you

Kimberleigh Hagar: bring yoga in your therapy room? Yeah, so it looks a lot of different ways.

Where do we feel that? Does it feel different? Or the belly, maybe purposely taking some breaths with either space in mind and just kind of bringing the focus kind of back down. You know, we certainly can bring in some gentle movements. You know, Chris, I think about sometimes the exercises that we did in yoga, yoga therapy room class.

She's a graduate

Chris McDonald: from Yoga Basics. Yes.

Kimberleigh Hagar: Yes. Um, but even some of those ones that just take 60 seconds, right where we can just bring a little bit. I do like where we

We've been sitting this morning. We're gonna need to move

Chris McDonald: later. And I think that's important for therapists listening to consider that we're not talking about, you have to get your mat out and go through an hour flow. So these are just very simple, effective practices that you can bring in for yourself and for your client.

Yeah.

Kimberleigh Hagar: Yeah. But even there, right? Even that one inact. Even me tune in, even like live on the spot here of I can feel that in my shoulders. That means that I've been sitting hunching over my desk longer than I thought today. Exactly.

Hello

Chris McDonald: movement that way. That's why it's so important to do these practices of awareness, isn't it? So what other modalities do you integrate with yoga? That's a good question.

Kimberleigh Hagar: I, um, also bring in reiki into my personal yoga practice, into certainly the make yoga classes that I'm teaching and use it with.

Yoga, yoga space. And so with doing reiki and doing reiki assisted therapy looks a little bit different than spa reiki. You're not laying on a table in silence, not talking for 40 minutes. There's a time and a place for that. It's wonderful. If that's your jam, please keep doing that. And when I use it in the therapy space, it just looks different.

Do is I, I sometimes will use reiki, almost kind of like a flashlight if you will, or like a little, sometimes I picture it like one of those like old tiny lanterns that you kind of carry with one hand and it kind of hangs from your hand. Kind of picturing kind of one of those kind of floating around.

Or is that light maybe kind of showing that we've got some bricks that have kind of made that that channel maybe a little bit more narrow and maybe it's now a really like skinny little, well that's going down that maybe is dark when you look down it. And so kind of using that and then bringing it back into the yoga, right?

Where we maybe might notice a sensation feeling, you know, let's say if. With Reiki, we've noticed that there is some stuckness, maybe some tightness, maybe almost like a frozen sense kind of in that solar plexus, right? We might then use yoga to bring some, like twisting into that torso and just kind of maybe starting to bring some of that movement that maybe even.

Does it feel the same? Do we notice any shifts or changes or is that body part of our body maybe communicating to us that it needs something? Or something. Something.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. That's so powerful. Think of the integration with the subtle body and integration with the chakras. You know, I had a friend who was very intuitive.

She reflected on me once when I stopped doing yoga, 'cause I had surgery. She's like, your chakras are all messed up. But I just think of the practices themselves. Right? Does it make things more clear and open? And

Kimberleigh Hagar: it can

Chris McDonald: be really

You know, whether it's maybe focusing on one in particular or kind of weaving them together about how are we maybe finding a balance between those things. So we have this movement of energy in our feeling body and our thinking brain. So that way that connection can be strong and secure. And it maybe doesn't, our overthinking brain doesn't detach and start floating above us.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, yeah. Floating. I have had clients before say, tell me how you're feeling today. I'm floating. So not really feeling grounded right. In their bodies, which is a perfect time that to bring in some yoga when they say something like that. Right. As a good how and when. That people are always asking me, yes.

It's those moments I think that, I don't know. Have you found moments like that with your practice of when to bring it in sessions?

Certainly has a little bit of yoga, little bit of breath work, little bit of reikis, got a little bit of everything kind of in there together, but it can also be modified to whatever it is you need in the moment. So if you'd like, we can kind of go through, yeah, let's do it a mini version and then afterwards maybe we talk about what does it look like to modify it.

And either out through the nose or out through the mouth, whatever's comfortable for you. Just notice your, as you inhale, notice how your chest presses into your hands. Maybe your belly expands out, and then as you exhale, notice how your belly, your chest relax, and your hands continue to just fall into your heart.

And imagine that the floor is pressing back up into your feet, kind of like your hands are pressing into each other. Your feet and the floor are also pressing into each other. So we've got this activation going in our lower body and in our heart space. And imagine from your feet that are pressed into the floor.

And now as you breathe in, imagine a light starting to come up through those roots and into your feet, still pressing your feet into the floor. Maybe you might even feel a warmth in your feet where that light is collecting. And imagine that light starts to travel up your legs. It gets to the base of your spine, where your body is meeting your chair, where your seat and that.

Around your left elbow, through your left forearm, and through your left hand into your right hand, feeling those hands pressing together as that light moves up your right forearm, up your right arm, and back through the heart, and taking a moment here to just breathe as that little light travels in that circuit.

Next time that light comes back to your heart, take a moment here and let a pause there for one breath, and then imagine that little light floating up through your throat into your thinking brain. If you are one of those people who are an overthinker, blows up into that overthinking brain and allow it to just move around in there.

Shining into some of those don't see light very,

And back down into the roots where they came again. Feet are still pressing into the floor. Hands are pressing together at the, one more breath here with this grounded, connected energy starting to kind of of bend.

From side to.

So this is a little mix of everything. Chris, how did it feel? It was

Chris McDonald: lovely. Oh, I dropped in. I was watching my little light shining.

The third eye, and really in that space, I'm probably have even more like around maybe the light opening some doors or. There's so much you can do with that,

Chris McDonald: the doors and windows. I like it.

Kimberleigh Hagar: If we've got, we had been talking about maybe some challenges with communication and fear of vulnerability with expressing our truth to people.

With other things that we're working on, we might even for a moment, just imagine that light going up to like where their migraine pain is and just having it for a moment, kind of giving some loving light to that space in their head. And if they're maybe having some cramping, we might kind of send on its way back down or on its way up, we might kind of let that light just hover in that space as bring some like kindness and love.

Hey, I see you. Thank you for letting me know that something's going on here. And yeah, you can go any kind of direction with it, depending on what that particular client means.

I think that can be so. Transformational for clients.

Kimberleigh Hagar: Yeah, and the, I mean, certainly you know, the yoga pieces in there around certainly with the breath and kind of that activation of the hands pressing and the feet pressing and noticing some different kind of body to just a way of connecting with that feeling body and bringing the focus and the energy from our brain back down into our body.

It's a way of, like I said before, kind of plugging those two things back in together.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So what about for you personally? How do you know if you're more in your head about things and are disconnected from your body? If I can recognize

Kimberleigh Hagar: it before my body starts yelling at me that. I had couple hours, like I, I think I mentioned at the very beginning, you know, I have gotten into a pretty good practice of just doing kind of that, like that basic six movements of the spine.

And certainly when I do sessions where I do put my little riser up and I do them standing because my body tells me that I've been sitting too long, it's just, it's a way for to check in with how does my body supported in.

My heels are supporting me. The arches of my feet, the balls of my feet, maybe my alles, what are they feeling like here, versus when I'm seated and I'm sitting right, how the earth is supporting me in a seated spot just looks and feels different. So it's like

Chris McDonald: yoga practice even with your standing desk.

Chris McDonald: I never thought of it that way. That's wonderful. So what's a piece of advice you'd give for our listeners who may be wanting to bring yoga in their therapy room, but they're hesitant to start?

Kimberleigh Hagar: I think my biggest piece of advice would be to think about opportunities to bring in little short bits, because really, honestly, even if you're doing breathing exercises with your clients now, doing a big part of yoga already, yes.

Like you said, it doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to be an hour long flow. Sometimes I have done 15, 20 minute kind of like little mini flows with clients, but also sometimes it just is that grounding exercise that we did, and that's it. And it's enough. It's enough. That's right. That's right.

What's the best way for listeners to find you to learn more about you? They can check me out at um, mindfully balanced therapy com. I have all kinds of information on there on how I do holistic therapy for overthinkers perfectionist imposter syndrome with yoga reiki. I also use tarot and Oracle in the.

I, and really listening to the mind, the body, and the soul, and what it all needs to just feel the most aligned.

Chris McDonald: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Kimberly. This has been great. Thanks for having me. Thank you. That brings us to the end of another episode. Be sure to tune in next Wednesday when another episode drops.

This self-paced course is designed specifically for mental health professionals who wanna integrate yoga informed practices in the clinical work with confidence. We cover the foundational concepts you need to know, like nervous system science, trauma-informed language, ethical considerations, as well as the when and how to introduce yoga into sessions.

As an added bonus, you get two 30 minute individual consultations with me to tailor what you learn to your unique practice. This course will give you the tools and the confidence to integrate yoga in a way that's safe, grounded, and aligned with your values. Enrollment's open for a limited time. Go to HC podcast.org/spring launch.

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