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In this episode, I address the hesitation many therapists feel about incorporating yoga into their practice. I will provide five foundational steps to help therapists confidently and ethically integrate yoga into their sessions. This episode covers the importance of understanding your why, ensuring practices are within the scope of practice, starting small, building confidence through practice, and investing in ongoing education and support. I will also share personal experiences and demonstrate simple yoga practices for therapists to try. The episode aims to empower therapists with the tools and knowledge needed to incorporate yoga into their therapy sessions safely and effectively.

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Stay stuck on the sidelines. In this episode, I'm talking directly to you, the thoughtful, heart-centered therapist, who's thinking about using yoga but hasn't taken that first step yet. I'll walk you through five foundational steps that will help you begin this journey with confidence and clarity. No overwhelming to-do list, no pressure to be a yoga master.

Welcome to Yoga in the Therapy Room, the non-traditional therapist guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice. I'm Chris McDonald, licensed therapist and registered yoga teacher. This podcast is here to empower therapists like you with the knowledge and confidence to bring yoga into their practice safely and ethically.

So whether you're here to expand your skills, enhance your self care. Or both, you are in the right place. Join me on this journey to help you be one step closer to bringing yoga into your therapy room.

I feel like as therapist, we need to take more of these opportunities to disconnect from our roles. Allow ourselves to take these breaks for our own mental health. I feel much more rested. Ready to jump back in with today's episode? You are gonna love what I have in store for you. So many therapists are sitting on the sidelines.

Many are drawn to the idea of integrating yoga into their clinical work, but are unsure how to take that first step. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're afraid of doing it, unethically, doing it wrong, or feel like you need to be the yoga expert first. First off. You are not alone in that hesitation. And the truth is though, you don't have to have it all figured out before you begin.

Why do you wanna bring mind-body practices, yoga practices, into your therapy room? Why not keep things the way they are? There must be a reason, and this is more about building that clarity, being aligned with your purpose and in your clinical work with what you wanna do. So I highly recommend that you get a pen and paper.

If you are driving or maybe going for a walk listening to this, maybe do this later. We're gonna have these questions in the show notes. I have some questions for you to reflect on in journal. If you've listened to the podcast before, you know I love some journaling. I feel it can really help us get more clarity, understand ourselves better, understand our intentions better, and maybe bring you in a positive direction towards bringing more yoga into your therapy room.

Maybe anxiety or grief, maybe trauma. Really get clear on that. Number three, are you noticing a MINDBODY disconnect in your clients that talk therapy alone can't reach? What have you noticed? Is there limits that you've seen with the progress that some clients are not making in therapy? And then number four, do you see how a nervous system regulation could enhance outcomes?

And before we move on, I wanted to share a little bit about my journey with yoga in the therapy room. Many moons ago when I was in the school system, I had started with talk therapy and basic counseling with, with students in school. We can't even call it therapy then. It was more school counseling, but I noticed the limits.

Pretty soon actually, we could only go so far. I would have repeat offenders of kids that would come. They're not offenders, you know what I mean? They would come regularly. I called the Lonely Hearts Club in school 'cause they would come every day to come see me. Even just to say hi. And I noticed a lot of them just, they couldn't make progress with moving forward with whatever issues they were facing.

With most amazing results, the best benefits I saw was kids who had test anxiety. Now as school counselors, we do a lot of academic counseling as well as personal social, and I found that that was the most ease, useful way to help students in the school system with their test anxiety and then also help those kids that have separation anxiety.

I would also teach. The parents how to do the breathing with the kids. So it was a double bonus and the kids got the benefit, the parents got the benefit 'cause they were often dysregulated 'cause their kids were dysregulated. Just witnessing how well these, the, this happened for these two instances with separation anxiety and test anxiety.

Went to some Buddhist classes, took some mindful yoga. So that was how I brought the meditation piece into it and began to teach meditation and session to clients. Also assigning it as homework. And I noticed another thing. Clients would make more progress in therapy. So when we added breath work and meditation, clients were amazed too.

They're like, I can't believe this. I think of this trigger situation, whatever it might be. Like an example like my husband. Nag me about doing something and it used to trigger me and now it doesn't. Amazing, right? But then I notice sometimes breath work, meditation even is not enough. And clients needed more.

I was on the sidelines, wait, this is cool, and it felt great, but wait, what do I do now? I was very confused. Didn't really use anything from that training because I was felt like that when and how was my whole point, like, what? What do I do? Then I took another training online. This was all cherry yoga, by the way.

But just know that there's a lot involved with the yoga practices too. It takes a lot of commitment and time to do the practices yourself, as well as teach them a lot of learning. So you really have to know your why and want this and be motivated to work towards it. And number two is understand what's in your scope of practice as a clinician.

I'm not gonna go too far deep into the ethics 'cause that's a whole other episode and part of my trauma-informed Yoga basics training, which we'll have in the show notes as well, if you wanna look at that and get more training with me. But episode 2 0 6, I do talk about the ethics of scope of practice and scope of competence with yoga and therapy.

I don't have the number in front of me, but just know that that is another option to look at the misconceptions in myths. 'cause there are a lot. What does it mean? To have yoga in the therapy room. It does not mean a yoga class. I will tell you that. 'cause then if we're doing a yoga class, then what are, we're just yoga teachers.

We're not therapists. So it's an integrated part of a therapy session. And often I teach, especially my class, my yoga basics class, that you start in your chair 'cause that's where you are. That's where your client is. That's where most people feel most comfortable. Start with chair yoga. It is accessible.

Most people can do. Not, maybe not all of it, but there can be some. They most people can do most of it. You don't have to be fit either. I also hear that, oh, I'm not, I don't exercise, I'm outta shape. You don't have to be. These are simple, easy, effective practices that anyone can do. Do you have to modify for your own physical issues?

It is practicing within the areas you have the education, training, supervision, and ongoing professional development. So making sure to keep up with your studies with this. 'cause once you get too far away from continuing to learn, then you may not be competent anymore. That's something to think about. But it is within your scope of practice.

Of course, always check with your state regulations, licensing boards, but they probably will give you a very vague answer. So just be aware. So just know that it can be one practice. It does not have to be a class. It does not even have to be a sequence. So keep that in mind that it is in your scope to do this as part of a therapy session.

You can also do DBT. There's a lot of different ways you can do them. So figure out what is your primary theories you use. It may take some research and maybe some training on your part too, but there are some ways to do this. You can also get creative to figure out what could work for you and what you feel aligned with.

And just remember, yoga is a set of tools. It's not all asanas, which are the postures or poses there. It includes breath work, mindfulness, nervous system regulation, soothing practices, meditation as well. There's so many different ways to bring yoga in the therapy room, so just just be aware. It's not always just movement.

And let clients know they have the choice to engage or not respecting client autonomy as part of our ethical practices as well. So know this is within your scope, but the good news is you can build your scope of competence. So what do we do? How do we get started? Number three is start small and simple.

I recommend learning three different practices, one breath work practice, one grounding practice, and one very simple movement practice to get started. So here's an example. Maybe you could start with a grounding and if you always use the same one, let's say 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Where you notice five things you see in the room, five thing, four things you hear, three things that you can feel, taste, and smell.

So let me demo for, for you, full body breath. And this could be a practice. You could start, you could jump in with this. Go ahead and get your feet on the floor. If you are driving or doing something else, you can try this later or pause it and come back to it. So if your feet are on the floor, spine straight, you can do the seated or standing actually.

So notice your breath before we start. And with this breath, on the inhale, you're going to use visualization. So you're welcome to close your eyes or keep them open, whatever feels good. And imagine the breath coming from your feet all the way up your legs to your torso, all the way up to the top of your head.

Now, let's imagine a white light on the inhale, breathing in from the feet, coming through the whole body, filling you up from feet to head. Pause, and then exhale what you don't want. Breathing out, pushing that all the way to the feet. And again, inhale, the white light coming up from the feet, the legs all the way up, the hips, the spine, all the way to the top of the head.

Good. And then we can do some sun breaths, which basically are arm raises. So bring your arms out to the side, palms facing your legs. When you're ready, inhale, imagine the breath is lifting the arms up towards the sky. Palms facing together, fingertips pointing towards the sky. Exhale, palms facing the earth.

Check in, notice emotion. Anything come up with this? Anything released? 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?

My trauma-informed yoga basics course for therapists is ready and available. It is a digital version that is self-paced and designed just for clinicians like you. You no yoga training or experience is required. It's packed with practical tools to help you safely integrate yoga into your sessions.

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-basics. That's yoga in the therapy room.com/yoga basics. So with this starting small and simple, you saw how simple and how short of a time that was to teach even this full body breath and the sun breaths.

That's a good way to start. So think as simple as possible. If you wanna start with movement. And you don't have to do all three. You could pick just one. And I know I hear a lot that people learn these yoga practices. They even go to yoga studios for trainings, but yoga studios, they teach for yoga teachers, not for therapists.

So my question for you is, when and how do you introduce other interventions with your clients? Think about that. What feels good for you? What is the flow of your sessions like? Are you more structured? Or are you more loosey goosey? Just go with the flow. There's no wrong answer to that. What aligns with you and your pacing as a therapist?

Would it feel good to start a session before you get rolling and just say, Hey, what would it feel like to start with some breathing today or grounding? Or does it feel better when a client's getting dysregulated, they're having a difficult time with some strong emotion to pause, say, Hey, I notice your shoulders are rising up to your ears.

There's a lot of ways you can look at this and just experiment and maybe you'll find that, no, this doesn't align to do it this way. And just remember, you can always start in the chair so you don't even have to, you have a mat at all. To me, that that feels a lot more open and easy to access for people.

You also don't need workout clothes. That's another question I get. I have right now, it's like a dressy tank top for work. This works fine, and I often wear like capris in the summer or dress pants. You can do it in those. You don't have to have workout clothes, although that would be pretty comfortable as a therapist.

Period. There is no wiggle room there. You must embody these practices in order to be effective. Your clients will know if you aren't doing these practices regularly. 'cause it does take some time, some commitment to really feel what it's like in your body to do these practices. So how do we do this? How do we really embody these practices?

You can integrate it. With a friend or colleague, ask someone to help you. Maybe you both can practice on each other. You could also, once you get more comfortable with a friend or colleague, you could figure out your client. So who is someone that you have a really good rapport with and would be more open and willing to try something new.

You could just make that video of yourself as a teacher, and that could be very scary and uncomfortable. I get it. But that could be a way that you could evaluate yourself first. Maybe even send it to family and friends for feedback. It'd be a very brave step. But that's a, that's how we get better is by putting ourselves out there with yoga practices.

And again, just remind yourself through this process. This is not traditional therapy. This is going out of the box. And that can be scary. So you do have to pace yourself, and that's why starting small in number three is a good place to be because you do have to pace yourself with this. I don't recommend going from zero to I'm gonna teach a whole yoga class.

Everybody cues differently. No one cues the same way. Notice how it feels when you go to your next yoga class. Use it. Use what works and then refine it. Find your own yoga voice. You can also, of course, Google different scripts online, different ways to teach yoga practices, even Google images. I noticed that there's some that have some scripts on there.

Just see what's out there. You can also go to to me.com is tu UMME e.com, and we can have that in the show notes too. They have 7,000 yoga poses and 1.2 million cues. What isn't that crazy? So that that can be another way to get started. If you have no idea what I'm talking about with cues of how to cue something like we did with the full body breath and with the arms up, arms down, practice queuing out loud.

But just normalize, imposter syndrome will come up anytime we start something new. It takes time to get used to it. Just know it'll be there. But feeling unsure. It means you care that your heart's in the right place. You wanna do the right thing as a therapist. And trust me, that's a good thing. And I will share a brief story.

When I first started and I was learning, I had learned some different yoga practices. I thought, oh wow. I love how this feels in my body. This is awesome. But the problem was I hadn't fully embodied them, hadn't really learned the cues properly. And I was like, yeah, let me see what their, what client would like this practice.

So we ended up shifting to something he. He knew more of different practice we did. So just know there can be, I don't wanna say yoga fail 'cause it's not a fail, but it's again, times it doesn't go so well. But that's okay. That's part of the learning process. We have to make mistakes and learn from them.

But yeah, just make sure you practice first before bringing in with a client. Practice those cues. And lastly, number five, invest in your education and support. So to properly build confidence and confidence once you get started, you do wanna get some training and support. You don't have to figure this out by yourself, so seek out trainings like my Yoga Basics course, which is digital, so you can go at your own pace.

Find people, see if you can find the people that are also offering this. If not, then look at somatic practices. Maybe start there. There are more people who offer somatic than yoga practices. You can also join my Facebook group bringing yoga in the therapy room. Lots of cool people in there. Very supportive environment to ask any questions and just connect with others who are like-minded.

You can also join some consultation groups and make sure you are learning. Outside of trainings. One thing that I do, I listen to different podcasts. I read books weekly. I have different books that I'm reading, and even YouTube, we can learn some different ways to bring yoga. Yoga in and just know that support is key to make this a sustainable practice for you, and ethical and ongoing learning I think is so important.

Into your therapy room, especially something like yoga. 'cause it can feel so personal, so different than traditional talk therapy. And I know you have those questions about doing it wrong or worrying what clients will think and what we're even allowed to do. But here's the truth. Bringing yoga into the therapy room is an act of courage.

Sometimes the most powerful healing happens when we allow ourselves to be a little vulnerable too. When we model what it looks like to take that mindful risk, it is challenging. But if you're feeling that pull, I encourage you to follow it. You don't have to leap. You can take one small, one little brief step.

You don't have to do it alone. Just know there's lots of us out there who are also integrating yoga practices, and I hope these five steps help you see that. Wow. Yes. I can bring yoga in my therapy room too. It doesn't have to be perfect. I don't have to know everything to begin. It's okay to start small.

What matters is coming from that place of intention. Ethics and care. If this episode sparks something in you and you're ready for more education and support. My self-paced trauma-informed yoga Basics for Therapists course was created exactly for you. Whether you're unsure where to start, want practical tools, scripts, and the guidance to feel more confident.

With bringing yoga into your therapy room, head on over to my website, yoga the therapy room.com/yoga basics. That's yoga in the therapy room.com/yoga-basics. That brings us to the end of today's episode. I thank you so much for joining me today. And I really appreciate you being here. Until next time, this is Chris McDonald setting each one of you much light in love.

Take care. Thanks for listening to today's episode. The information in this podcast is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal, medical, psychological, or any other kind of professional advice.