Evolution of a Yoga Teacher

Scene: January 2017. Sitting in my dining room with members of my church small group talking about life, as we tend to do when we’re together. The topic then somehow lands on yoga.

Actual words out of my mouth: “Yoga is stupid. When I exercise, I need to feel like my lungs are going to explode. Stretching is something I do for 2 minutes after I run and that’s it.”

This was 3 years after completing 2 half marathons and Shaun T’s Insanity workout. I am a glutton for punishment and have always thrived off cardio. It was the main tool I had at that time to relieve the stress that came along with life of being a mom who works outside the home.

Now, to take history back a little further. I am a dancer. I’ve danced since I was 7 years old and even into my 40’s, danced at a studio. So, I love movement. I even considered getting an additional Master’s degree in dance therapy. But, life happened and I was never able to get that second degree. So, the idea of movement in therapy has always appealed to me but I never found a way to make that happen so I stuck with traditional talk therapy that I learned in graduate school. 

Flashing forward to February 2017. I was at work when an email came in about a training at our local continuing education center. The training was called Subtle Yoga for Trauma Recovery: A One-Day Introduction. I was in the middle of renewing my counseling license and needed CEUs so I signed up, not really anticipating to learn more than a few bendy stretches. But, a day off work and CEUs sounded like a plan, so I registered.

Before training, I did some research into this Subtle Yoga place. I was very surprised to learn that people were using yoga in the treatment of mental health. I started looking more into how yoga can help mental health symptoms and became kind of excited about the possibility of adding movement into therapy. I learned there was a whole yoga teacher training program for mental health professionals but I did not think I really needed to go that far. Maybe just learn a few moves to use in our group therapy sessions and call it a day.

Around this time, I also started reading this little book called The Body Keeps The Score (I will totally fan girl over this book in a later post). But, briefly, this book is written by a psychiatrist named Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and in the book he describes how trauma impacts the brain and various modalities that are being used to treat trauma. I was just starting to learn about neuroscience and mental health then, so this book was really (REALLY)  hard to read, but I was excited to be learning some good information. Dr. van der Kolk dedicated a whole chapter of his book to yoga and it inspired me to learn more.

When the day of training arrived, I dressed in some comfy clothes and took my husband’s mat that he used for exercising because this cardio bunny certainly didn’t own a yoga mat. This was that day that I first met the amazing Kristine Kaoverii Weber and Ashley Lester and they unknowingly changed my world. Kaoverii and Ashely led the training and I was hooked from almost the minute they opened their mouths. They talked about some of the neuroscience of trauma, which reinforced what I was reading in The Body Keeps the Score. Then, they taught us about how slow, gentle yoga can assist in the treatment of trauma by influencing neuroscience and I was fascinated. I’m a huge science nerd and really wanted to go to medical school in college, so hearing that moving the body could actually change the science of the body made my heart do a happy dance. They led us through several yoga practices that day, but it was the practice of yoga nidra (a guided meditation that puts you in a sleep-like state and feels AMAZING) that rocked my world and made me want to learn more about yoga. I spoke with Kaoverii and Ashely that day and asked what I needed to do to start teaching training. I was a little late into the training sequence, but they gave me some options that would let me join in the training class that started in the fall of 2017. 

I did 2 more weekend intensive trainings in yoga for the treatment of depression, anxiety, and trauma and also a weekend training just in the neuroscience of yoga over the spring and I soaked up every little thing I could get. These training sessions were held 2 hours from home in the beautiful city of Asheville, North Carolina so I spent a lot of time there exploring and enjoying a break from Charlotte. 

By the fall, I was so excited to start my teacher training. I was doing yoga several days per week at home by then using my favorite online yogi Adriene and loving the experience. Teacher training involved being gone Thursday through Sunday once a month and if this had been any other intensive training, I probably would have been a lot more stressed and overwhelmed because of the juggling we did to make this work for our family. But, doing yoga 4 days a week in training and then even more outside of training influenced my own mental health in ways I never expected. I noticed my own anxiety decreasing. My blood pressure was improving. My running was improving. I relished learning again and was excited about my work for the first time in many years. I made some great friends in my teaching training class and soaked up the experience. I learned so much about how to use different asanas (poses), pranayama (the breath), and meditation to influence the nervous system and mental health. Yoga felt so natural to me because it was like dance and I felt like I had found a home in the treatment world.

On December 10, 2017, approximately 11 months after I shared my uneducated opinion on yoga, I completed my yoga teacher training program. I was so proud to have this intervention to share with my clients. I almost immediately began teaching yoga to our clients in IOP and even started teaching the adolescents in our PHP program. The yoga days in the group were some of my favorites. 

My own yoga practice has ebbed and flowed over the past 3 years as I returned to work full-time. But every time I get back on mat, I get that feeling that I’m home again. I incorporate something yoga-related into my daily routine, even if its just a simple pranayama practice and find that it centers me and prepares me for what is next in my day. 

When I left the IOP program in 2019 to begin working in individual therapy, I was most sad about leaving yoga teaching. So, when I decided to open my private practice in 2020, I knew I had to integrate yoga into my practice. I am so, so excited to be offering yoga for mental health in my practice. I love teaching yoga and am excited to design yoga sessions for my future clients.

If you are interested in adding yoga to your mental health treatment, you can contact me to learn more. I offer in-person individual yoga sessions in my office not only for my clients, but outside clients as well. Please don’t worry if you are a yoga newbie. I work with yogis of all levels and will assess your physical and mental limitations to design a yoga program tailored just for your needs. I can also incorporate yoga into individual therapy sessions with your permission. 

If you are a mental health professional and interested in learning more about yoga for mental health, I highly encourage it. There are several programs out there now, but I’m a little partial to Subtle Yoga. This is not a sponsored post, by the way. Just sharing a program that is near and dear to my heart:-) 

Until next time,

Amber