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Chris McDonald: [00:00:00] Have you been quietly wondering how to bring yoga into your therapy sessions, but something keeps holding you back? Maybe it's the fear of doing it wrong. Concerns about ethics are simply not knowing where to start. You're not alone. So many therapists are feeling that same pull towards integrating MINDBODY healing practices.

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.

Just simple supportive guidance to help you bring yoga to your therapy room in a way that feels aligned and authentic. I also bring in two yoga practices for you to experience and that you can use in your sessions on today's episode of Yoga, the Therapy Room Podcast. Let's jump in.[00:01:00]

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.

Welcome back to the Yoga in the Therapy Room Podcast. I'm happy to be with you here today. I'm Chris McDonald, your host yoga teacher and licensed therapist. I just got back from my beach trip with my best friend from high school and her husband. We had such a blast. There's nothing more soothing for the soul than reconnecting with an old friend.[00:02:00]

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.

In this episode, I'm walking you through five simple and empowering steps to help you move from uncertainty into aligned action because you can bring yoga into your therapy room ethically, safely, and authentically. And I'm here to get you started. So let's explore this path together. First step, get [00:03:00] clear on your why.

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.

So get your pen and paper. First question, what is your why? Why do you wanna bring yoga into your therapy practice? Really think about that. [00:04:00] Number two, reflect on how yoga has impacted you personally, as well as professionally. If you've already started to bring it in. Is it because personally it's helped you with burnout?

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?

But you're not sure where to start? So think about that. Maybe you're considered, could yoga be helpful for depression too? Not just anxiety. Could it help people manage moods like with bipolar? So maybe you're just not sure exactly what that could be, and that's okay. So really get crystal clear with these [00:05:00] questions and reflections.

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.

And it had me thinking, there's gotta be more to this. And I learned some breath work practices. I went on a retreat that was more for teachers, but I was able to go and learned, oh, this could be a way in through the body. [00:06:00] And I noticed the impact it had on me. I also began to study it and some books, and I taught some teachers, once I started to really feel more skilled in it and then start to use it on students.

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.

It became a normal part of my counseling practice. I then moved on to meditation, and back then [00:07:00] I'm aging myself. We didn't have a lot of pod. We didn't have podcasts. We didn't have as much out there as far as trainings for therapists, so I was kind of on my own to figure this out. I did find one training on meditation I had taken and then read some books and did my own personal practice and studied Buddhism as well.

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.

Many clients do hit what's called the CBT [00:08:00] wall that I've made up. 'cause I think that talk therapy can only go so far and that is not a holistic perspective. I realized actually in grad school, I was more holistic. I believe that made total sense to bring the whole body into. The therapy process in order for best result.

It makes sense, right? We're whole beings. We're not just our thoughts and we're not just there to work on ourselves with our mind only. We are body, mind, and spirit. So then I moved on to 2015 and found an online yoga class. That was for therapists on how to use it with clients. I got a script and it actually wasn't too long, but then I felt stuck.

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.

This was not. [00:09:00] Mat yoga or teaching a yoga class. This was for therapists and found some amazing practices that eventually I started to try with some clients who had a yoga practice. So they were familiar with yoga. They felt more comfortable with body base, and that was where my in was. And then I became more comfortable myself as I started to do weekly yoga more often and then move to daily yoga practices by 2016.

The more that I did the yoga practices myself, the more comfortable I was to bring them in session. And then I found Subtle Yoga and became certified in 2019, and the rest is history. So I realized, you know what? I cannot do traditional therapy alone anymore. I mean, I can, but I don't want to. This is.

Where the power is at when we can integrate yoga into sessions and it just becomes such an essential part of your professional and also personal identity. 'cause I do yoga for myself personally as well. So that's number one. So getting clear on your why, what brings you here and [00:10:00] why, maybe you just want something more that could be enough.

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.

So if you haven't listened to that, highly recommend it. I'll go a little deeper. I'm just gonna touch a little bit on the surface of this. I think let's start with reframing what yoga and therapy means. 'cause I think there are misconceptions. And again, that's another episode to go too deep on the misconceptions and [00:11:00] that's the beginning of yoga in the therapy room podcast.

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?

Of course. Be mindful and there's some practices I don't teach 'cause it hurts my back. I have back issues, so just know yourself first and [00:12:00] also I'm just gonna bust the miss that you have to be certified yoga teacher. No, you do not. You just have to make sure it's within your scope of competence. What is scope of competence?

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.

Now, the key is, since we are not yoga teachers, we need to align this with counseling theory. I like to integrate with polyvagal 'cause that's what I use in my sessions with clients and I teach them some of the, the [00:13:00] key points of it and have also integrated, guess what? You can integrate it with CBT practices.

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.

It can be grounding practices too. And the key is to keep it trauma informed as therapists that makes, is what makes us different than yoga teachers alone, because we never know who has trauma and we wanna make a safe, comfortable environment for our clients. So we wanna do what we can to [00:14:00] minimize triggers.

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.

Maybe try a different kind of grounding. 'cause there's different kinds, like soothing practices we can do for grounding. We can do visualization. Try something different to kind help yourself step out. Of what you're [00:15:00] used to. We can also do a breath work called full body breath, and then move on to some gentle movements like sun breath.

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.

And then the exhale will be the reverse from the top of the head. All the way down the spine, the torso, down the hips, down the legs to the feet. So let's give it a go when you're ready. [00:16:00] Inhale. So imagine the breath coming up from the feets, from the legs, torso, spine, up to the head. Pause. Exhale, top of the head, down the neck, torso, legs, down to the feet.

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.

Pause and exhale. A gray energy, what you wanna release, letting go, whatever that may be, all the way down to your feet. And one [00:17:00] more time. Inhale the white light. All the way to the top of the head and exhale all the way to the feet. Release. Let go. Let that breath go. Come back to your natural pace of breathing.

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.

Coming down back to start, and just do this slowly. Mindfully. If you notice yourself rushing, catch yourself. Don't beat yourself up. Just slow it down and do two more. Just go at your pace. That feels good. Again, we don't wanna bring too much rushing energy. [00:18:00] Notice how your arms feel in this movement and pace yourself with this, and then just notice how you feel after.

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.

You'll gain trauma-informed practices rooted in neuroscience and polyvagal theory, practical tools to bring into sessions and ways to build your confidence with teaching yoga practices and roll by May 31st and you get two free 30 minute individual yoga [00:19:00] 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 to 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-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 many come out of those trainings. Yeah, I have 200 hours, but I don't know how to bring it in session. What is the When in half that's very common too. And another reason I created my [00:20:00] Yoga Basics scores, 'cause it's geared towards therapists, but the when and how. So if you wanna get started, how do you do this?

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.

I notice you're getting more tense. What would it feel like to do some gentle movement right now? Would you be open to that? That could be another way, but you may need to experiment to find how you can bring yoga in your therapy room in a [00:21:00] way that matches your therapeutic style. Your counseling theory.

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.

But just know, let clients know too that they don't have to come dress in their yoga clothes. So that's number three. Start small, start simple. Number four, build confidence through practice. The number one thing. That you can do to start is to develop your own yoga practice, your own personal practice. And I'm just gonna [00:22:00] say this, you cannot teach other people yoga if you haven't done yoga at all, or if you don't embody these practices.

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.

I also find, like I mentioned, I found clients that already had a yoga practice, so they were comfortable doing these practices and they were more willing to try it, especially if it aligns with [00:23:00] their therapy goals and their needs. If you're really super motivated, you could make a video of yourself teaching someone even, you don't even need a person there.

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.

60 minutes, I, no. That would be too overwhelming. Now when we teach yoga, we have to have our cues. So write down cues maybe that you've learned from other yoga teachers. I do that all the time. I'd be like, [00:24:00] oh, I like how she queued that. That really made sense to me. I was able to really understand it better.

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.

Don't just do it in your mind if you wanna practice by yourself. I did that when I was doing my [00:25:00] grief yoga training 'cause. There were certain ways that we were supposed things we're supposed to say and additional, uh, purposes of poses. So I practice out loud by myself with my cat, so it's okay. Cue it with your dog, your cat, until you get more comfortable.

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 I go in with this one client. We had a good rapport, thank God. And he's like, I don't get what you're saying. And so we're kind of fumbling around. He's doing something totally [00:26:00] different than what the practice, it's kind of funny. And we ended up laughing. I was like, okay, do you wanna do something else?

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.

Get more familiar with trauma-informed yoga skills. Also find others out there who are offering yoga practices in session. Now, I will be honest with you, we [00:27:00] are more of a minority, so it can be a little trickier, but put it on some Facebook groups for therapists. Go to local networking. Just start to ask questions.

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.

Whew, that was a lot. So just to summarize the five steps again, [00:28:00] number one, get clear on your why. Two, understand what's in in your scope of practice. Three, start small and simple. Four, build confidence through practice, and five, invest in education and support. I know it can feel scary to bring something new.

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.

It takes bravery to step outside the box and outside your comfort zone, but offer something that feels meaningful, especially when it's not the norm in our field. So just know you don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to be willing to take the first step. That's how growth [00:29:00] happens for us as clinicians and for our clients.

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.

This course, what can help you Take [00:30:00] the next aligned step? The best news, you don't need any yoga experience, you'll gain trauma-informed practices rooted in neuroscience, polyvagal theory, practical tools to bring into sessions and ways to build your confidence with teaching yoga practices to learn more and to start feeling 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.

We are not responsible for any [00:31:00] losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the. Use of this podcast. Yoga is not recommended for everyone and is not safe under certain medical conditions. Always check with your doctor to see if it's safe for you. If you need a professional, please find the right one for you.