A Call to Wholeness: Exploring the Contributions of Yoga to Counsellor Education
by Sarah Ruth Pittoello
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Education (Counselling)
Acadia University Spring Convocation, 2011
© by Sarah Ruth Pittoello, 2011
i The thesis by Sarah Ruth Pittoello was defended successfully in an oral examination on March 15, 2011.
The examining committee for the thesis was:
______Dr. Peter MacLeod, Chair
______Dr. Michelle Forrest, External Reader
______Prof. Linda Wheeldon, Internal Reader
______Dr. John Sumarah, Supervisor
______Dr. Beth Robinson, Acting Director
This thesis is accepted in its present form by the Division of Research and Graduate Studies as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree Masters of Education (Counselling).
ii I, Sarah Ruth Pittoello, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper, or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright of my thesis.
______Author
______Supervisor
______Date
iii Table of Contents
Abstract ...... ix
Acknowledgements ...... x
The Living Nature of a Question ...... xi
Beginnings ...... xiv
Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 1
A. Thesis Overview ...... 1
B. Purpose ...... 1
C. Experience of the Researcher ...... 3
D. Value of this Research ...... 7
E. Conclusion ...... 9
Chapter 2. Literature Review ...... 10
A. Procedure for Selecting Studies ...... 10
B. Review of the Literature ...... 10
C. Four Questions ...... 20
D. Conclusion ...... 21
Chapter 3. Methodology ...... 22
A. Exploring Epistemological Questions ...... 22
B. Phenomenology ...... 26
C. Conclusion ...... 33
Chapter 4. Methods ...... 34
A. Overview ...... 34
iv B. Preparation for Data Collection ...... 35
C. Research Methods ...... 35
D. Data Recording and Organization ...... 45
E. Data Preparation ...... 45
F. Data Analysis Process ...... 46
G. Ethical Considerations ...... 49
H. Conclusion ...... 52
Chapter 5. Data Analysis ...... 53
A. Overview ...... 53
B. Meeting the Participants ...... 53
C. Textural Descriptions ...... 59
D. Structural Descriptions ...... 81
E. Essence of the Phenomenon ...... 95
F. Further Explorations of the Data ...... 98
G. Conclusion ...... 106
Chapter 6. Discussion ...... 107
A. The Contribution of Yoga to Counselling Education ...... 107
B. A Contribution to the Literature ...... 114
C. The Role of the Teacher ...... 118
Chapter 7. My Personal Process and Reflections ...... 120
Chapter 8. Conclusions ...... 156
A. Returning to the Four Questions ...... 156
B. Considerations for Future Yoga Courses ...... 166
v C. Limitations of the Research ...... 168
D. Implications and Recommendations ...... 170
Afterward ...... 175
References ...... 177
Appendix A. Yoga Philosophy and Reflections ...... 184
A1. Introduction ...... 184
A2. A Return to the Beginning ...... 186
A3. Seeking ...... 190
A4. Getting to Know the Kleshas ...... 193
A5. Breaking the Habit ...... 198
A6. A Little Journey ...... 205
A7. Exploring the Body and the Mind ...... 214
A8. Impermanence, Emptiness and Interconnection ...... 220
A9. An Eight-limbed Path ...... 225
Appendix B. General Consent Form ...... 231
Appendix C. Specific Consent Forms ...... 235
C1. Pre-Study Consent Form ...... 235
C2. Journal Consent Form ...... 237
C3. Interview Consent Form ...... 239
C4. Post-Study Consent Form ...... 241
Appendix D. Recruitment Script ...... 243
Appendix E. Pre-Study Survey Questions ...... 244
Appendix F. Focus Group Protocols ...... 245
vi Appendix G. Post-Study Survey & Interview Questions ...... 247
Appendix H. Debriefing Form ...... 248
vii List of Figures
i. Figure 1. A holistic practice in counsellor education...... p. 96
ii. Figure 2. An integrated practice: an alternative model of
holistic practice in counsellor education...... p. 114
viii Abstract
The contributions of yoga to counsellor practice and development were explored through an eight-week yoga course with students in Acadia University’s Master of Education,
Counselling program. Within a phenomenological framework, data was collected from a series of surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews, and the personal reflections of the researcher. This exploration of the contribution of yoga to counselling education revealed a call to holistic practice characterized by three interrelated aspects: the form and structure of practice, present-centered experience, and the fruits of the practice experienced by the participants, both personally and in their work as counsellors. The personal reflections of the researcher were shared to complement those of the participants and further explore the phenomenon. This study was concluded by a discussion of the phenomenon and the implications of this research to counselling practice, counselling education and other health-related and helping professions.
ix Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor John Sumarah for his sincere interest, enthusiasm and support throughout this process, and the countless times he generously welcomed me when I was stuck and not quite able to put my finger on what I was missing. We should all be so fortunate as to have such a wonderful experience writing a thesis. I would also like to thank Linda Wheeldon for her support, time and much-needed perspective. Both of these supervisors have continued to show me what it feels like to be with someone who is completely present. I am so grateful to those who supported my learning in yoga, including Dr. Ellen Goldberg, Michael Stone, Shahar Rabi and Saskia Tait, who continued to help me to see where I was getting caught and provided love, support, and encouraged me in my exploration of yoga and its relationship to counselling. Of course, I couldn’t have done this work without my wonderful participants. I thank you for your time, energy, openness, and willingness to engage. I have the most wonderful “editing team”, who provide far more than this title might suggest. Thank you to Paul Smolkin for once again joining me on such an adventure, it’s such a treat to work together. And much thanks to Jessica Davis for editing the pieces on yoga philosophy, bringing her own insight and writing talent to these pieces of work. I would like to give thanks to everyone who has been supportive in countless ways and so generous to listen to me speak of little else for the past six months: Nancy Smolkin, Vicky Smolkin, Mike and Mary Ellen Pittoello, Elsa Koutsavakis, Jessy Cowan-Sharp, Wendy Luella Perkins, Mo Balcom, and Al and Jan Stewart. Many faculty members in the Department of Education have also been supportive in this research: David Piper for his interest and many thought-provoking conversations, Deborah Day for her company and listening, Ron Lehr for welcoming me into his classroom, and Ann Vibert and Mary Green for supporting the beginnings of this process. Outside of Acadia, I would like to thank Dr. John Chambers Christopher and Dr. Cheryl Pence-Wolf for their experience and insight into this area of research. And finally, I would like to thank Joey, as always, for everything.
x The Living Nature of a Question
How to capture the living nature of asking a question? Evolving, creating, emerging, blossoming. Offering nothing less than ourselves (and leaving ourselves behind) to encounter the unknown and learn. In asking a question our assumptions our understanding both safe and shackling are uprooted, lifted gently from the ground to preserve their integrity; honouring this unique view while creating space to look again.
How to capture unexpected insights? Not answers, but knowing. How to capture the emptiness of the question, fighting the urge to create beings of yoga and counselling external to us. Both paths to being with oneself, travelled with the courage, to look deeply and honestly and ask a question.
How to describe those subtle aspects of experience? The flapping and weaving of butterfly wings.
xi The resonance and revelation of patiently listening and tending to a vague feeling. And the movement, the movement of an unknown story as a knot releases, not like a shoelace that has become undone but as a star bursts from its core the jewels of its centre forming the universe. Knowing that these times of incubation, of concentration in one place, (commonly disguised as “stuck”) only create more substance to contribute to the whole.
In comparison to the quality of experience of wholeness and delight, the debate of whether these are processes of yoga or counselling, seems irrelevant at best.
In our exploration of these two practices, in allowing them to become personal, each of us has changed. Regardless of the label researcher or participant, counsellor or client, teacher or student. This change is seen in our reflection of the mirror of relationship (at times clouded by resistance, distraction and our mind demanding to know) with ourselves and with others, and in opening our eyes
xii to see what it is we are now seeing.
Perhaps more integrated, perhaps more whole, perhaps not. Knowing that we can at any time stop the wheel of samsara, creatively engaging and responding. And choose not to. Knowing and awakening to the potential of both.
Even engaging in this writing continues this exploration. Learning doesn’t end when the data is collected. In continuing to ask the question, insight and understanding continue to bubble forth from my heart. It is this process itself of encountering mystery with open eyes and curiosity that describes the living nature of a question. For all of what we learn, all that we harvest from the experience, eventually evolves into a fall garden, a season’s effort withered and lifeless, creating space to ask another question.
xiii Beginnings
Oh Servant of the healing arts... Aren’t you searching for the cure too? Aren’t you curled up close, protecting that old interior soreness, that longing for remedy you secretly hope for but hardly dare to admit? Let’s talk about this! How could we possibly be of help to another? What could have drawn you to this calling if not this reference point, this open, inside wound that needs tending? Look, my friend, we are all wounded. Welcome home! No more hiding! Fragmented and longing, aren’t we all searching for the cure that will restore us to wholeness? Isn’t helping simply an expression of our longing to recover this completeness? At its centre, the profession of healing is the fulfillment of our wish to serve, to give—and to be restored. Outwardly, we direct our efforts toward restoring others, but somewhere maybe we know there really is no other. (Santorelli, 1999, p. 17)
When I first read this quotation, shortly after the beginning of my own counselling practicum, an ever-so-slight smile appeared on my face and my entire body softened in my chair. It was as though the rigidness in my body was guarding my new identity as a counsellor from those aspects of myself I had deemed undesirable and banished, and the softening allowed them back in. As they returned, I was reminded of the elusive, creative and mutual nature of healing and that wholeness, often marketed as
“the new happy”, is not a desired emotion, but an emergent property of leaving nothing out.
These moments of softening and this familiar, remembering smile, as though I have finally gotten the punch-line of a joke, have been cultivated in a daily yoga practice, and more recently meditation practice, over the last eight years. This quotation from
Santorelli’s reflections on his experiences of teaching mindfulness in clinical settings
xiv speaks to many of the lessons and teachings of contemplative practice: our protection of our wounds, our longing for wholeness, and the ways in which we are more the same than different. It speaks to the mutuality of relationship: dissolving the boundaries between counsellor and client, and for the purpose of this study, researcher and participant, teacher and practitioner. It speaks to the primacy of experience. But perhaps what put me most at ease is the acknowledgement and value he gives our vulnerability and so-called “limitations” as helpers; he believes it to be a conversation worth having.
His honesty and courage inspire me. What if this softening could be offered to other counselling students? What if this opportunity to remember could be an aspect of counselling education? Could yoga, which has been my own personal path, be a means by which this could be offered to other beginning counsellors?
I decided to try and see.
xv Chapter 1. Introduction
A. Thesis Overview
The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate scholarly work as required by the
Master of Education, Counselling program at Acadia University. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the study, describing the purpose of the study and situating myself as the researcher. Chapter 2 positions this study through a review of the literature and poses four questions to support its exploration. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology and
Chapter 4 describes the methods and ethical considerations. Chapter 5 offers a phenomenological analysis of the collected data, as well as two complementary analyses and Chapter 6 provides a discussion of these analyses. Chapter 7 is series of personal reflections on my experiences of this process as a practitioner, counsellor, teacher and researcher. Chapter 8 concludes this study, addressing the four questions of Chapter 2 and discussing considerations for future courses, the limitations of this study, and implications for further research and practice.
B. Purpose
The purpose of this research was to explore and describe the contribution of yoga to counsellor education. Drawing on the research traditions of phenomenology to guide the process, I offered an eight-week yoga course to graduate students in the Master of
Education (MEd.) Counselling program at Acadia University. My personal reflections on the process and the phenomenon complimented a series of surveys, focus groups, and interviews with the participants to explore the contribution of yoga to counsellor development and practice.
1 My understanding and thus ways of defining yoga have been influenced equally by my experience as a practitioner, my relationships with teachers and other practitioners, and endless time spent reading on the subject. Attempting to define yoga is like taking a photograph of a flowing river: a brief glimpse of a continuous and evolving process, limited by both the photograph to reveal its movement and the camera to capture its beauty. Yet, we continue to cultivate our ability to capture it more and more accurately, all the while knowing that the photograph will never replace swimming in the river.
In capturing a few pictures we can intuit a more complete picture of the whole.
Thus, as a place to begin, I might describe yoga as both wholeness and a practice of cultivating wholeness. I might describe it as a recognition of the intimacy we have within our present experience—whether it is physical, cognitive, or emotional patterns in a yoga posture, or in our relationships with others—and the practice of cultivating this intimacy.
I might describe yoga as a freedom that comes with being with our present experience, leading to the cultivation of both wisdom and compassion, and also a path leading to this freedom. Yoga encompasses both the path and the goal to keep us from looking for it anywhere else but here and now.
The rationale for this research was that skillfully and safely practicing yoga techniques—including postures (asana), breathing techniques (pranayama), and mindfulness—in a formal, structured practice, provides an opportunity to recognize and be with our own habitual patterns, vulnerability, and the feelings of discontent. When we can meet these patterns as they appear in our present experience, while cultivating an attitude of friendliness, curiosity and love, there is an opportunity for wholeness and self-
2 knowledge1. Cultivating our ability to meet these patterns through a dedicated practice, may allow us to develop humility, compassion, wisdom, discernment and a sense of humour, holding the potential to significantly affect our attitude toward others. Thus, for counsellors, this practice may increase our capacity to bring this loving and curious attitude and an embodied understanding of the nature of suffering and healing into the therapeutic relationship with our clients.
Furthermore, as contemplative practices are being widely explored in the popular and academic psychotherapeutic literature—mindfulness being the most common—it may be beneficial for counselling students to gain familiarity and understanding of these practices through first-hand experience. An exploration of the contributions of a yoga practice on counsellor practice and development has the potential to contribute to a number of areas in the counselling literature, including: counsellor self-care, building therapeutic relationships, counsellor self-awareness, ethics in counselling, and counselling and social justice. In addition to the relevance of yoga to counsellor education, the intention of this study was also to consider the broader implications of yoga to other health-related and helping professions.
C. Experience of the Researcher
In phenomenological research, a study is initiated by a curious incident that draws the researcher’s attention to a particular phenomenon (Creswell, 1998, p. 176).
According to Moustakas (1994b), these incidents motivate the researcher to formulate a
1By self-knowledge, I am referring to a knowledge of the process of our being, rather than specific narratives of who we are.
3 problem and questions that reflect the researcher’s personal interests, involvements and commitments. The following sections describe my position as the researcher, my personal experiences of this phenomenon and particular incidents that evoked these questions, all of which have been essential to my motivation for this research.
a. My Position as the Researcher
From a phenomenological perspective, the researcher is to be intimately embedded in the research question and process. Thus, to this study, I brought my experience and understanding of the practice of counselling and yoga. With two and half years of counselling experience, I am also a beginner counsellor, and with this research I am completing my graduate counselling education at Acadia University. As a yoga practitioner and teacher, with a specific interest in yoga philosophy and some academic training in this field, I have personal experience of: a deeply engaged practice; sharing it with others (in both counselling sessions and yoga classes); the physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual changes that may occur along this path; its influence on my work as a counsellor; and, a philosophical and experiential sense of the process.
b. Initiating Encounters
Yoga has been the main tool with which I addressed the many challenges of my first two and a half years of counselling and my counselling education. Prior to beginning the counselling program at Acadia University, I was generously offered the opportunity to begin working as a personal counsellor at a university counselling centre.
And although this career path was unexpected, it was a position in which I thrived. In
4 addition to ample support and supervision, yoga—both my personal practice and the philosophy—provided the foundation for my work. A daily practice supported me in feeling grounded in my work and cultivating self-awareness with acceptance and equanimity. My practice provided an opportunity and structure for reflection, and became the compass by which I established professional boundaries and worked through ethical decision-making processes. The practice and philosophy of yoga also provided the theoretical foundation for my work with students, both implicitly and explicitly.
Thus, the value and effectiveness of yoga in counsellor practice and development is a phenomenon I have directly experienced and this research is an opportunity to explore my curiosity of how it may serve others.
My curiosity has been enhanced within my counselling education, as the contribution of yoga broadened beyond enhancing to the program to providing an important perspective. I have been struck on a number of occasions by the dualistic manner in which the essential qualities of a counsellor—such as being present, empathic, non-judgmental and focused—are presented. For example, teaching counselling students that “present-moment awareness” is essential to a therapeutic relationship, without providing a means of cultivating this quality implies that it is possible to choose whether or not to be fully present with our clients. As Jon Kabat-Zinn (2003) reminded us,
...it is not enough as a rule to remind oneself to “just let go,” especially when one is little aware of how attached one may be and, also, how blind to being caught up in habitual patterns of thinking and emotional expression. (p. 148)
5 Thus, exclusively presenting these qualities in an intellectual, academic manner may not support counselling students in developing self-awareness and self-understanding to the fullest possible extent.
Due to the intimate and vulnerable nature of counselling, it is inevitable that we find ourselves distracted in moments where our own emotional responses are evoked.
From my personal experience of practicing yoga and meditation, as stated in Kabat-
Zinn’s reminder, my recognition of being “caught-up in thoughts”, not to mention my recognition of judgment, anger, and dishonesty, deepens with my practice. These qualities are not black and white, but exist in a continuum of deeper and more subtle layers. Without a practice in which we come to experientially know the tendencies of the mind and develop the skills to return to our present experience, we are likely to get caught up in judgment when we become distracted, reinforcing the feelings of incompetency that often characterize the experience of beginning counsellors. Therefore, the presentation of these qualities in an intellectual way reminded me of how valuable contemplative practices have been to my ability to work with my habitual tendencies in counselling situations and cultivate these qualities in formal practices.
Mindfulness has been recognized in the literature as a tool to address this limitation in counsellor education:
In the past, few techniques have been available or offered to counselors in training to increase here-and-now awareness...Mindfulness practice provides counselors and psychotherapists with a tangible set of tools to brush away the distractions of everyday concerns and refocus on the ground beneath one’s feet, and furthermore, be able to attend to clients more fully. (Stauffer, 2007, p. 6)
6 Yoga is one form of practice that cultivates mindfulness, facilitating our ability to untangle ourselves from these patterns and ground ourselves in our present experience, and thus may play a beneficial role in the education of counselling students.
c. Provoking Epistemological Questions
One other incident in my counselling education that hooked my curiosity was a statement posed by a professor in a research course about the academic literature providing expert knowledge on the subject of yoga. The practitioner in me instantly awoke and rejected this statement, feeling that expert knowledge of yoga comes from long-time practitioners, rather than academics who study yoga from afar. Thus, wrestling with the question of “expert knowledge” on yoga or mindfulness—whether it’s held in academic literature or in yoga texts and teachings of long-time practitioners—provided an incentive for the design of this study. The contrast between the quantitative and qualitative epistemologies of academic research and the experience-based epistemology of yoga practice and philosophy continued to challenge me to find an approach to research that can generate “expert knowledge” of this subject.
D. Value of this Research a. Relevance and Implications
Creswell (1998) related the value of research to the implications it has for the improvement of practice: “by heightening awareness and creating dialogue, it is hoped that research can lead to better understanding of the way things appear to someone else and through that insight lead to improvements in practice” (p. 94). Firstly, the intention
7 of this study is to make a contribution to counselling education and counselling practice through the practice and understanding of yoga. The relevance of this study is supported by Stauffer’s (2007) recognition of the growing interest in mindfulness practice in clinical contexts: “Professional literature, university courses, professional services at conventions and textbooks devoted to educating counselors and psychotherapists in mindfulness-based techniques attest to a growing demand by the field for mindfulness training and mindfulness-based interventions” (p. 4). It is important that we, both as academics and practitioners, continue to gain deeper understanding of the role and potential of yoga and other contemplative practices as they become increasingly integrated into counselling and psychotherapy. Other benefits of this study to counsellor education include: structure and support for a reflective, embodied practice; an introduction to the perspectives of yoga, meditation and transpersonal psychology; and enhancement of therapeutic effectiveness. This research also has important implications for other health-related and helping professions.
Finally, this research is also relevant in terms of expanding the limits of academic research, by exploring questions of epistemology and the integration of direct, contemplative-based knowledge into the academic literature. A number of authors are supporting this integration, including B. Alan Wallace and Brian Hodel (2008), Ken
Wilber (2000), and Arthur Zajonc (2009). One perspective is that the role of experiential, or direct, knowledge is to guide the direction of research, as this knowledge comes from a direct relationship with the subject of study. This relationship creates a context of responsibility and connection from which we can integrate a deep ethics into research.
8 b. Benefit to Participants
Based on my personal experience of practicing and teaching yoga, I believe that this research has the potential to be a positive and enriching experience for the research participants. These possible benefits are described in the general consent form in
Appendix A.
c. Personal Value
There were three significant ways in which embarking on this research study would benefit me as the researcher. Primarily, this project was an opportunity to gain greater insight and appreciation of the ways in which yoga can contribute to the work as a counsellor. Secondly, it provided a structure in which I could immerse myself into a subject and practice that I am deeply passionate about, and this work with others was as, if not more, beneficial to my own growth and learning. Finally, if the program is successful, I hoped to develop a course that I could continue to teach in relevant contexts.
E. Conclusion
My position and experiences, as the researcher, established the purpose of the study, which was to learn more about the contribution of a yoga practice to counsellor development and practice by offering an eight-week yoga course to students in a counselling education program. With this intention, the academic literature was searched to support and situate this study.
9 Chapter 2. Literature Review
A. Procedure for Selecting Studies
An internet search was originally used to locate studies relating to counselling and yoga, mindfulness, and other contemplative practices. From these articles, other relevant articles were identified, and this iterative process of locating relevant articles continued.
Since the focus of this study is the contribution of yoga to counselling education, the most recent literature exploring mindfulness and yoga for counselling education was chosen. Supporting this research both implicitly and explicitly, included articles on: mindfulness and yoga in clinical contexts; yoga for various physical and psychological illnesses; yoga in college counselling, the mechanisms of mindfulness; and course curricula for counselling education courses on mindfulness and self-care (which included yoga). Finally, books on yoga, buddhism, mindfulness, contemplative and holistic inquiry, integral theory, and phenomenology supported my understanding of the topic and the epistemological questions of this research.
B. Review of the Literature a. The Evolution of Mindfulness in the Literature
Over the past ten years, mindfulness has burst forth into the worlds of psychotherapy, counselling, and behavioural medicine (Christopher & Maris, 2010), both in academic and popular literature. The Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, developed at the University of Massachusetts by Jon Kabat-Zinn, is the most well-researched and frequently utilized mindfulness-based intervention (Baer, 2003;
Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Kabat-Zinn, 2003, Schure et al., 2008; Shapiro, Aston, Bishop, &
10 Cordova, 2005; Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, & Freedman, 2006). This program, focusing on cultivating mindfulness through three practices—body scan, yoga, and seated and walking meditation—was first implemented “within a behavioural medicine setting for patients with a wide range of chronic pain and stress-related disorders” (Baer, 2003, p.
126). One of the primary goals of the MBSR program was to create a “training vehicle for the relief of suffering” (Kabat-Zinn, 2003, p. 148), which would be “adaptable to any context in which stress, emotional and physical pain, or illness and disease were primary concerns” (Kabat-Zinn, 2003, p. 149). Thus, this field of research began with an exploration of mindfulness practice for the treatment of a number of medical conditions, including chronic pain, stress, anxiety, depressive relapses and disordered eating (Baer,
2003).
Since MBSR’s beginnings in the treatment of patients with chronic pain and illnesses, “increasing attention has been given to its proposed ability to help prevent stress-related illnesses and diseases” (Schure et al, 2008, p. 48), including the potential benefits for clinicians. The literature has explored MBSR in addressing the many stresses and challenges health-care and helping professionals experience within their personal lives including: increased depression, decreased job satisfaction, psychological distress
(Shapiro et al., 2005), emotional exhaustion, reduced self-esteem (Shapiro et al., 2007) compassion fatigue or burn-out (Schure et al., 2008; Shapiro et al., 2007), stress-related vulnerability to disease (Schure et al., 2008); and loneliness and psychosocial isolation
(Shapiro et al., 2007). These stresses also lead to a reduced effectiveness in their work, marked by: decreased attention, reduced concentration, compromised decision-making
11 skills, and reduced ability to establish strong relationships with patients (Schure et al.,
2005; Shapiro et al., 2007; Shapiro, Brown, & Astin, 2008). A quantitative, randomized control study by Shapiro et al. (2005) found that health care professionals—including physicians, nurses, social workers, physical therapists and psychologists—who participated in a MBSR program found a significant reduction in perceived stress and an increase in self-compassion, in addition to greater life satisfaction, decreased job burnout, and decreased distress.
With evidence that younger and newer professionals are more susceptible to stress
(Shapiro et al., 2008), MBSR programs have also been explored as a part of the education and training of health professionals (Bruce, Young, Turner, Vander Wal, & Linden,
(2002); Grempair et al., 2007; Schure et al., 2008; Shapiro et al., 2007; Shapiro et al.,
2008). A quantitative study of MBSR with medical and pre-medical students found a decrease in anxiety, depression, and an increase in empathy and scores on a measure of spiritual experience (Shapiro et al., 1998). A mixed-methods study by Bruce et al. (2002) investigating the impact of MBSR on nursing students found significant decreases in psychological symptoms and increased ability in working with stress.
The most recent phase of this evolution, concentrated within the past four years, has been the exploration of the benefits of eastern contemplative practices—including mindfulness, meditation, yoga and qigong—in counselling education (Chrisman,
Christopher & Lichtenstein, 2009; Christopher et al., 2010; Christopher & Maris, 2010;
Gempair et al., 2007; Maris, 2009; McCollum & Gehart, 2010; Schure et al., 2008;
Shapiro et al., 2007; Wolf, Mott, Thompson, Baggs, & Puig, 2010).
12 b. Mindfulness and Counselling Education
To date, much of the research on mindfulness and contemplative practices for counsellors and counsellor education has focused on two major themes: the importance of counsellor self-care and the effects of mindfulness training on therapeutic effectiveness.
Much of the literature on contemplative practices in counselling education has centered around mindfulness, defined as “a type of awareness that entails being fully conscious of present-moment experience and attending to thoughts, emotions and sensations as they arise without judgment and with equanimity” (Christopher & Maris, 2010, p. 115).
Christopher and Maris (2010) were also clear that mindfulness refers not only to this awareness, but also to its practice: “mindfulness also refers to the practice of intentionally cultivating awareness and acceptance of each moment, typically through meditative or contemplative disciplines” (p. 115).
Mindfulness practices have been offered to counselling students within an academic counselling program in various ways: an MBSR-based course offered as a credit course in the counselling program (Chrisman et al., 2008; Christopher & Maris, 2010; Schure et al., 2008; Shapiro et al., 2007); mindfulness practices taught within the already existing curricula (McCollum & Gehart, 2010); meditation practice immediately prior to sessions with clients (Grempair et al., 2007); and a non-credit yoga course offered to counsellors and counselling students (Wolf et al., 2010). For example, the graduate counselling programs at the University of Montana and Santa Clara University both offer an MBSR- based course within their curriculum with the intention of providing skills for counsellor self-care, educating their students on the eastern and western perspectives on mindfulness
13 and the current research in the field, and enhancing their therapeutic skills (Christopher,
2010; Shapiro, 2010). A second model in which mindfulness is taught in counselling education is in programs where it serves as the foundation, such as the MA program in
Contemplative Psychotherapy at Naropa University and the Integral Counselling
Psychology program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The studies cited in this literature review are all based on the former model.
Self-care and the contribution of mindfulness practice to the personal lives of counsellors is a predominant theme in the literature. Self-care has been found to be particularly of value in counselling training and early in counselling careers (Christopher
& Maris, 2010) and the efficacy of mindfulness in reducing the possibility of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious traumatization has provided the motivation for research in this area (Christopher & Maris, 2010; Schure et al., 2008; Shapiro et al., 2007;
Valente & Marotta, 2005). A prospective, cohort-controlled, quantitative study by
Shapiro et al. (2007) found that participants who participated in an MBSR course reported significant improvements in cognitive and affective measures of well-being including decreased stress, negative affect, rumination and state and trait anxiety, and an increase in positive affect and self-compassion. In a four-year qualitative study, Schure et al. (2008) found that counselling students in an MBSR course described physical, emotional, attitudinal/mental, spiritual, and interpersonal changes. The significant differences between these two studies, most notably the methodological approach and the amount of practice engaged in by the students, provide complementary perspectives of the impact of these programs.
14 Therapeutic presence has been highlighted as one of the most important factors in healing relationships, and mindfulness as a means of cultivating this presence (McCollum
& Gehart, 2010). Accordingly, in a PhD. dissertation on mindfulness and counselling and psychotherapy, Stauffer (2007) asserted that “mindfulness may change the behaviours, attitudes, and qualities of consciousness important to the therapeutic relationship” (p. 24).
Greason & Cashwell (2009) investigated the relationships between mindfulness, attention, empathy and counselling self-efficacy of 179 graduate and doctoral counselling students using a series of questionnaires. Analysis of the surveys supported their hypothesis that “mindfulness is a significant predictor of counseling self-efficacy and that attention is a mediator of that relationship” (p. 2). Each study of mindfulness practice with counsellors described its contribution to the cultivation of qualities that enhance counselling presence and process: the value of self-awareness in successful therapy
(Shapiro et al., 2007); the relationship between self-compassion and compassion for others (Shapiro et al., 2007); cultivation of empathic responses (Greason & Cashwell,
2009; Stauffer, 2007); increased comfort with silence (Schure et al., 2008); greater attention to the client and therapeutic process (Schure et al., 2008; Stauffer, 2007); changes in view of and attitude towards therapy (Schure et al., 2008); increased capacity for interpersonal functioning and social conflict (Shapiro et al., 2008; Stauffer, 2007); the development of self-experience and self-regulation (Grempair et al., 2007) and acceptance and non-judgment, therapeutic alliance, and metacognitive awareness
(Stauffer, 2007). Research by Schure et al. (2008), also found that many students intended to continue to practice to enhance their effectiveness in therapy.
15 Grempair et al. (2007) found that therapists in training who practiced Zen meditation regularly before sessions scored significantly higher on their assessment of individual therapy compared to a control group. As the first study to evaluate the effects of mindfulness on client outcomes, they also found that the clients of the meditating group also reported being able to better understand “their own psychodynamics, structure, phenomenology and characteristics of their difficulties, as well as the possibilities and goals of their developments” (Grempair et al., 2007, p. 337). The group of clients served by the meditating group also made better assessment of their progress in therapy and their development and actualization of new behaviours (Grempair et al.,
2007).
Using qualitative methods, McCollum and Gehart (2010) studied the use of mindfulness meditation in teaching therapeutic presence to beginning therapists, as
“some of the more difficult to define aspects of the therapeutic presence (empathy, compassion, presence) remain some of the most important.” These researchers integrated mindfulness—both theoretically and in practice—into their existing practicum experience using “readings, in-class mindfulness exercises, journals/logs, and regular mindfulness practice by students” (McCollum & Gehart, 2010, p. 348). The four major themes that emerged in the students’ journals included: being present; the effects of the meditation, including feeling calmer, managing their inner chatter, slowing down, and establishing boundaries between sessions; a shift from doing to being within their sessions; and, compassion and acceptance towards themselves, their clients, and a shared sense of humanity (McCollum & Gehart, 2010).
16 The explicit use of mindfulness in counselling students’ practice has also been discussed in the literature. Schure et al. (2008) reported that students intended to use these practices with clients and would recommend these practices to clients. Given the recent popularity of mindfulness practices, many authors have felt it was important for counselling students to have personal experience of the practices in which their clients may be participating (Adams & Puig, 2008; Schure et al., 2008; Stauffer, 2007). Kabat-
Zinn (2003) also asserted that it is essential for counsellors to have a personal practice if they are to share it with their clients.
An original and valuable addition to existing literature on contemplative practice for counselling trainees is a first-person narrative by Judy Maris of her experience as a student in the mindfulness course offered in the counselling program at Montana State
University (Maris, 2009). This narrative offered a lucid description of the author’s personal experience of the process and the challenges of becoming more fully present with herself and her clients through the practice of mindfulness:
...whenever I tried to attain a more peaceful state and focus on my breath, ‘my magpie mind quickly swooped in, fluttering and squawking in front of my face, blocking my vision. After the briefest moment of resting, my center tilted and I spilled out of myself, scattered on the floor.’ (Maris, 2009, p. 231)
This research was a valuable contribution to the literature as it begins to bridge the academic exploration of this topic with the literature offered by contemplative teachers and long-time practitioners.
Christopher et al. (2010) published the first research exploring the long-term effects of teaching mindfulness to counselling students. Through semi-structured interviews
17 with sixteen students who had participated in the course two to six years previously, counsellors reported impacts on their personal life, including: physical, emotional and cognitive changes; increased self-awareness and self-acceptance; improved interpersonal relationships, which included being more aware of self-in-relationship; increased acceptance and compassion; and, being less emotionally reactive. Professionally, counsellors described the benefits of mindfulness practice in three areas: 1) their experience of themselves while counselling, including awareness, acceptance, reactivity, and presence; 2) the therapeutic relationship, with increased awareness and acceptance; and 3) their clinical practice, including their use of techniques, their level of comfort, and their conceptual framework of counselling (Christopher et al., 2010).
c. Body-Centered Practices in Counselling Education
In addition to these studies that focus on MBSR or mindfulness-based meditation, two studies explored the benefits of movement-oriented and body-centered contemplative practices for counselling students: qigong and yoga. These studies were new contributions to the field, as noted in a study of qigong practice with counselling students,
“most research has focused on meditation, with yoga and tai chi coming a distant second and third” (Chrisman et al., 2008, p. 237).
Chrisman et al. (2008) used a qualitative methodology to explore the effects of qigong for counselling students. This study described qigong as, “a 4,000- to 5,000- year-old Chinese tradition designed to cultivate and circulate qi (also known as chi or ki) and thereby maintain or restore health and well-being” (Chrisman et al., 2008, p. 237).
Cohen (1997) related this practice to yoga: “Qigong is best thought of, like classical
18 yoga, as a family of practices in traditional Chinese medicine that include movement, meditation, and visualization” (as cited in Chrisman et al., 2008, p. 237). Qualitative analysis of journals written by students after the first class and at the completion of the fifteen-week course revealed, in both sets of responses, themes of beneficial physical, emotional and mental changes. In the final set of responses, participants described themes of familiarity of the practice and a sense of group consciousness and interdependence. Based on these results, researchers suggested that “because of its accessible nature, immediate results, and ability to foster connectedness, qigong is currently underutilized as a form of teaching mindfulness” (Chrisman et al., 2009, p.
236). Due to the body and movement-orientation of this practice, two unique findings that emerged in this study may have particular relevance to this research. After fifteen weeks of practice, students “appeared to find more connections among the physical, mental, and emotional realms of their experience with qigong” (Chrisman et al., 2008, p.
251). Secondly, at the end of the course,
...students seemed to cultivate the ability to accept both themselves and their peers and to connect with each other on a deep level. This connection appeared to begin with the individual students learning to feel, observe, and sense their own experience of the movements and then work outward in sharing this connection with others. (Chrisman et al., 2008, p. 251)
This relationship between our experience in these body-centered practices and the way it affects our ability to relate to others has important implications in counselling education.
Two studies have explored the benefits of yoga for counsellors and counselling students. Prior to much of this research on mindfulness and counselling education,
Valente and Marotta (2005) interviewed six licensed psychotherapists with a regular yoga
19 practice to explore their perceptions of the influence of their yoga training on their personal and professional lives. Four themes describing this influence emerged in this research: 1) internal/self awareness and its effects on their thoughts and behaviour; 2) balance, referring to the ability to “regulate the stimulation and demands of their environment to achieve harmony in their lives and prevent burnout” (p. 73); 3) acceptance of self and others, particularly their limitations and emotions and those of their clients without judgment and attachment to outcomes; and, 4) yoga as a way of life, indicating that the distinctions between their yoga practice and the rest of their lives progressively diminished with practice (Valente & Marotta, 2005).
Wolf et al. (2010) used a quantitative methodology to explore the effects of a four- week “luna” yoga program—a yoga program designed specifically for women—on female counsellors and counselors-in-training. Although measures of wellness using the
Five-Factor Wellness Inventory demonstrated improvement in wellness in both the experimental and delayed-treatment control groups, there were no statistically significant differences between them. In their discussion, the authors suggested gathering qualitative data about the participants’ perceived benefits from the yoga program would be beneficial
(Wolf et al., 2010).
C. Four Questions
After reviewing the literature, the following four questions arose from a discrepancy between the descriptions and discussions of yoga in the literature and my personal experience as a practitioner.
1. What is the role of yoga in counsellor self-care?
20 2. How can we explore the use of language to most accurately describe our
experience of yoga and the yoga practice?
3. What is an appropriate worldview or context in which to understand yoga?
4. What is the relationship between yoga and mindfulness?
These four questions, defined by the gaps between two bodies of understanding, weaved their way through my reflections, my writings on philosophy, my teaching, the focus groups and my conversations with participants, supporting the main purpose of this study.
D. Conclusion
Given the current extensive exploration of contemplative practices in counselling education, with only one quantitative study focusing particularly on yoga, this phenomenological study of the experience of counselling students in an eight-week yoga course was timely and relevant. In terms of methodology, as Chrisman et al. (2009) stated in their study of qigong: “By using a qualitative design, we were able to look for all possible effects rather than limit the responses we would find. This open-ended approach proved useful in eliciting a wide variety of responses” (p. 250). As no study has yet gathered qualitative data regarding the experience of a yoga practice specifically for counselling students, a qualitative methodology best allowed an exploration of the contribution of the practice to counsellor practice and development. However, in choosing a methodology, I first explored my questions of epistemology and “expert” knowledge of yoga.
21 Chapter 3. Methodology
A. Exploring Epistemological Questions
Yoga has in recent years been transplanted into Western culture and healthcare, where the enthusiasm of its practitioners has been countered by the skepticism of the biomedical community due to the lack of strong validation data. (Salmon, Lush, Jablonski & Sephton, 2009, p. 62)
My emotional reaction evoked by a professor’s question of creating an authoritative work on yoga has led to an extensive exploration of epistemology. This introduction to the methodology describes my process of reconciling the practitioner and academic researcher in myself, leading to a choice of methodology for this study.
Although the purpose of this study was to explore the contribution of yoga to counsellor practice and development, my emotional reaction was evoked specifically by the question of studying yoga. Yoga texts describe yoga as something we can only know through experience; yoga is impossible to grasp intellectually in its entirety, as the experience of yoga includes and transcends the mind. Therefore, any attempt to describe it, both to ourselves and to others, is limited as our experience filters through the structures of our mind and language. Although this limitation is obvious, to the practitioner it is essential that the ineffable and elusive quality of the practice is the place from which we begin its investigation.
This fundamental indescribability of yoga is at the heart of the conflict between academics (whether they be scholars, medical researchers, or ethnographers) and practitioners. Michael Stone (2010) captured this conflict from the perspective of a practitioner:
22 Although the situation is slowly changing, there is still significant disparity between academics and practitioners, and the English literature on Yoga practice suffers more than the Buddhist. Looking at traditions like Yoga and Buddhism as mere philosophies, especially without practicing the techniques described in them, is not good science, good research, or good history. A purely intellectual approach to these practices leaves their core teachings unexamined, and in such cases the scholar is blinded by his or her books. (p. xv)
Robert Thurman, a Buddhism practitioner and academic, also described the importance and greater implications of an experiential practice as a means of knowledge:
Young people are launched into the world as graduates with lots of skills and information, and with some adeptness in critical analysis for scientific wisdom— but absolutely no training in how to use the mind’s higher faculties through cultivation of mindfulness. (Stone, 2010, p. vii)
As a yoga practitioner, I value direct experience as a path to knowledge. In this perspective, knowledge is reached through connection, rather than abstraction, and being with one’s self or a phenomenon as it appears in one’s present experience. Steven
Phillips (2009) provided a perspective that describes the orientation of the practitioner:
It is the path of wisdom to give the benefit of the doubt to yogic testimony, like all testimony, from the experts, about things which we are unacquainted. This maxim holds for philosophers but is all the more imperative for practitioners. “Innocent until proven guilty” is to be the byword. The alternative, “Guilty until proven innocent,” is unworkable, and slightly crazy in the context of ongoing training...We shall not be able to learn very much if we should have to have a very high level of epistemic or justificational confidence in order to pay attention. (p. 18)
As practitioners, rather than exclusively engaging in philosophical debates and academic scrutiny, we are simply invited to try and see for ourselves. Therefore, to a practitioner,
23 quantitative studies are not necessary to “prove” that these practices are effective, and qualitative narrative studies are limited if we take the content of narratives too seriously, without remembering that they will continue to evolve and change over time.
However, upon reflection, how I learn about the practice is more complex than exclusively my direct experience through practice. In addition to a daily practice, I read extensively, and although this is often focused on the writing of practitioners, I have been highly influenced by academic accounts of yoga, from history to philosophy to cultural studies. Scholar Mark Singleton (2010) described the complex relationship between yoga practitioners and academics: “...despite the prevailing anti-intellectualism among teachers and practitioners of yoga—and a concomitant distaste for “practical yoga” among some scholars—scholarly editions nevertheless often provided the former with access to the traditions from which their practices claimed to stem” (p. 12).
In exploring the origins of a modern postural practice, Singleton (2010) also described the mutual dialogue between yoga practitioners and academia,
Both [popular yoga primers and academic translations and studies of “classical” yoga texts] contributed to the processes of production that shaped the idea of yoga in the modern period: they do not stand outside this production as descriptions of an a priori phenomena, although of course both commonly claim precisely this as legitimation for their interpretations. Scholarship structured and informed practical modern yoga by obliquely sanctioning its choice of texts and endowing “classical” status to certain methods and belief frameworks. In this sense, scholarship is not a meta-discourse that reveals the truth of yoga (though, of course it may) but a constituent part of its historical production in the modern age. (p. 10)
24 Both of these forms of writing—yoga texts and academic writing—have greatly enhanced my practice, encouraging me to continue to ask the question: “what is yoga?”, and going back to my practice to see, rather than settling into an answer. The Dalai Lama
(2011) clearly described this complementarity between practice and knowledge:
In spiritual growth, it is important to avoid imbalances between academic or intellectual learning and practical implementation. Otherwise there is a danger that too much intellectualization will kill the more contemplative practices and too much emphasis on practical implementation without study will kill the understanding. There has got to be a balance.
My understanding of yoga also comes from community and a shared understanding with my teachers and with fellow practitioners. This aspect is of the utmost value, both in terms of providing support for my practice, as well as contributing through dialogue to the cultural, evolving perspective on yoga we are co-creating: “...it’s important that we understand these traditions as shifting reality and not fixed truths untouched by cultural traditions” (Stone, 2010, p. xviii). Yoga has always evolved and developed within a cultural context, and our time is no different. Learning about yoga is like learning about the wind; seen only through the rustling of leaves, disguised and revealed in this movement. Thus, the question for this study becomes: how can we study yoga in this particular context, with this particular population of counselling students, in a way that is relevant and supportive to their lives, while also contributing to our understanding?
Thus, this epistemological question evolved into a methodological one: what tradition best addresses this question? In bringing yoga into counselling education, there were a number of factors to consider in choosing a methodology. As this is a relatively
25 new area of research, qualitative research allowed a more exploratory approach to the topic. It was also imperative that the participants had a direct experience of the practice, and thus the methodology must honour the participants’ description of their experience.
And finally, I saw my role as a yoga teacher first2, directing the participants towards a particular experience through the yoga practice and providing them with yoga philosophy to balance the practice with intellectual understanding, and then as a researcher, describing and organizing their accounts of this experience.
Phenomenology—a qualitative research tradition that aims toward knowing a phenomenon, as it appears in our direct experience, through the act of describing it—fit these criteria.
B. Phenomenology
We write, exploring those places that feel so stuck we hardly dare to approach them, until they undo themselves into a moment of clarity and openness.
Phenomenology has simultaneously been one of the most stimulating and challenging aspects of this research. With the complex underlying philosophy and language, it has been challenging to know whether I am correctly understanding the methodology or simply imposing my own perspectives over top of the words I am reading. Interestingly enough, this challenge is precisely the one that phenomenology seeks to address. From a phenomenological perspective, phenomenology itself can also be studied only as it appears in my consciousness, as it doesn’t exist outside of my consciousness as an objective philosophy to “get right”. Therefore, it was only through a
2 First as in process, rather than priority
26 continual process of looking and describing what I see, and in discussion with others, that
I could come to know phenomenology and the ways in which it relates to yoga and this research.
Phenomenology is rooted in the early 20th century philosophy of Edmund Husserl and his contemporaries: Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty (Creswell, 1998). These contemporaries continued to develop the philosophy, making phenomenology a “diverse set of approaches to research” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 6). I interpret Husserl’s view of phenomenology, “a return to the things themselves”, to be a return to things in their wholeness. We learn with open eyes, curiosity and our very best attempt to describe what we see, rather than dividing our experience and organizing its pieces. Husserl used the word epoché (also described as bracketing) to describe the process of setting aside our “natural attitude”—our personally and culturally accepted assumptions and
“knowledge” about a phenomenon—and coming back to our experience to see again as though for the first time.
Phenomenology steps back from the pursuit of naturalistic knowledge, which engages in measuring, quantifying and knowing the world as though we stand outside of it to create an analytical and intellectual organization of its pieces. Neither accepting nor rejecting empirical knowledge and the subject-object dichotomy that lies at its foundation, phenomenology rather sets it aside, returning back to the direct experience of that being studied. As Moran (2002) described, the aim of phenomenology, “[is] to capture and describe in all its richness the objective phenomenon ‘as it emerges at the heart of subjectivity’” (as cited in McNamara, 2005, p. 697). Thus, phenomenologists
27 seek to describe their experience of meaning of a phenomenon. Henri Bortoft (1996), a philosopher of science, clarified meaning in this sense:
But we must be careful here not to think of meaning as if it were added on to what we see. The coalescence is the meaning which is what we see—the meaning which it is—not the meaning of what we see. What we see is meaning: we see “what it is” directly. Meaning, which is the coalescence of the organizing idea3 with the sensory, is therefore always individualized. (p. 131)
Thus, we can think of meaning as the individualized phenomenon that is seen.
Phenomenology is fundamentally about relationship: we must be in a direct, experiential relationship with a phenomenon to know it. As in any relationship, we come to learn both about ourselves and the other, and as such, knowing and knowledge are an evolving process. Therefore, the knowledge that we acquire through relationship may lead to understanding and action that is mutually beneficial.
Husserl deemed that our consciousness is always conscious of something: there is an intrinsic quality of our consciousness that it is always in relationship to that which it is observing, which he called the intentionality of consciousness. Intentionality here doesn’t imply striving, but orientation toward (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009). Husserl is in no way denying that there is a real object out there in the world, but rather claims that these objects do not appear outside or independent of our consciousness. He called that which appears in our consciousness the noema, and he calls our internal structures, which support and determine the meaning of the phenomenon, the noesis.
3 A full discussion of the organizing idea of cognitive perception is beyond the scope of this project. For our purposes, the organizing idea can simply be understood as an organizing act that, together with sensory experience, creates cognitive perception.
28 For example, as in any relationship, the more time we spend with someone, the more our view of them changes and becomes more complex. At first, we have a particular structure (noesis) based on numerous factors including our past and our culture, which determines how we perceive a new person (noema). However, as we spend time with them, our initial perspective changes because our experience of their complexity challenges our all-too-simple structure, which we modify to account for our experience.
Thus, our knowledge of this person (noema) evolves and becomes more complex over time, depending on how our structures change (noesis). Thus, in this sense, learning is a transformative process.
Husserl’s aim in this relationship with a phenomenon was to encounter and describe its essence, which he defined as those aspects of the phenomenon that, if changed, would change the phenomenon itself. This question of essence is important to the quality of this pursuit of knowing: what is at the heart of something? how can we come to know something on its own terms? how can we describe and put into words an intuitive perception of the whole? Thus, in phenomenology “the assumption is that there is always a core, a nature of things, a shared understanding amongst a group of people, an essence that holds a phenomenon or experiences together” (Bhattacharya, 2006).
Husserl offered a number of processes to move from our experience of a phenomenon to a description of its essence: epoché, phenomenological reduction, horizontalization, and imaginative variation. When an effort has been made to set
“natural” assumptions aside, epoché or bracketing, then phenomenological reduction refers to reducing the phenomenon to descriptive statements of the phenomenon. From
29 this reduction, each statement and quality is given an equal value, which is called horizontalization. Imaginative variation returns the researcher to their imagination, to alter many of the different descriptions of the phenomenon, seeing which can be changed without the phenomenon losing its essence (Moustakas, 1994a). In this way, we are
“relying on intuition, imagination, and universal structures to obtain a picture of the experience” (Creswell, 1998, p. 52).
My understanding of phenomenology has been greatly influenced by my studies of Goethe and his approaches to science, particularly as described by Henri Bortoft. It is from here, and from my own experience, that I have a sense that when we are open to observing a phenomenon, the phenomenon itself manifests in our thinking:
In this case the organizing idea of cognition comes from the phenomenon itself, instead of from the self-assertive thinking of the investigating scientist. It is not imposed on nature, but received from nature. The organizing idea in cognition is no longer an idea external to the phenomenon and which frameworks it, but is now the intrinsic organizing principle of the phenomenon itself which appears as an idea when it is active in the mind...It appears to the sensory imagination, when this is developed into an organ of perception, but not the intellectual mind which tries to go behind the sensory. (Bortoft, 1996, p. 241)
This perspective reflects the Greek roots of the word phenomenon, ‘phaesnesthai’: “to flare up, to show itself, to appear” (Moustakas, 1994a, p. 26). From another perspective, when there is space made for the observation of a phenomenon, we can come to know it on its own terms, rather than through a self-referenced perspective. It is in this way that phenomenology ties into the topic of this research: yoga.
30 a. The Relationship between Phenomenology and Yoga
From the beginning of my research, I intuited a relationship between yoga and phenomenology, although perhaps more simply at first through comparing similar features. However, upon deeper exploration, I have found them more interrelated than I had first realized.
The questions of phenomenology stated earlier—what is at the heart of something? how can we come to know something on its own terms? how can we describe and put into words an intuitive perception of the whole?—also relate directly to the practice of yoga. One of the reasons phenomenology seemed to be congruent with yoga is that the process of yoga is also centered on our direct experience. In yoga we also aim to come back to the practice, time and time again, dissolving our preconceptions of the practice to taste it again. We cultivate a “beginners mind”, knowing that we can’t learn when we already know, recognizing that we can always move deeper, and that getting caught in the mind’s narratives can be a barrier to that path.
The practice of yoga, in one perspective, is to come to see our own patterns of relating to the world and recognize how the ahamkara, the story-teller that places an “I” at the centre of our experience, is keeping us from seeing the world “as it is”. Yoga philosophy speaks to the process of yoga as a process of moving toward samadhi, a non- dual state of being, where the distinction of subject and object falls away, and we are in an intimate relationship with our present experience. In this moment, the ahamkara has become quiet and the story-telling is momentarily suspended. We are able to see the wholeness of the world just as it is and know it on its own terms. Thus, in the language of phenomenology, we are suspending, seeing through, and refining our structures
31 (noesis) so that what we see (noema) is clearer. So, there is a sense that with practice we can see more clearly.
The practice of yoga itself is an experiential study of the self and the world: we continue to be with our experience as it is, coming back again and again to our present experience using our breath, for example, as an anchor for our attention. And as we become more familiar with and able to see our internal structures, called samskara in
Sanskrit, which are what we inevitably encounter during practice, our understanding of ourselves and the world simultaneously evolve. This simultaneity is also described by
Henri Bortoft as the inner dynamic in phenomenology:
The inner dynamic of the process of cognition is also an inner dynamic of the
process of the self. What this means is that the “self-entity” itself emerges from
the process of cognition and is not there as such beforehand. To our everyday
consciousness it seems evident that we are a self- entity which is present before
cognition. (Bortoft, 1996, p. 124)
In this way, in both yoga and phenomenology, there is no separation between the way in which we understand ourselves and the way in which we see the world.
Husserl’s approach to phenomenology was to work with the perceived meaning of a phenomenon, using a number of processes to move towards the essence of a phenomenon, focusing on the noema end of the noema-noesis relationship. In terms of yoga, the effort is placed at the noetic end of the relationship, coming to know our own structures of consciousness—including the body, mind and emotions—so that we might see the phenomenon more clearly, on its own terms. Thus within this research project, I
32 engaged in a deep reflective relationship with the phenomenon; questioning, observing, and making space for my own beliefs and structures so that I could see them, in order to see the phenomenon with fresh eyes. I listened to my participants very carefully, trying to hear them without self-referencing. I used journalling and writing as a process of discovery, trusting what appeared and using my effort to articulate and express it, giving the phenomenon space to come alive inside of me and shape my understanding. In all of these instances, phenomenology required me to be in open and authentic relationships.
C. Conclusion
After specific epistemological considerations, phenomenology was chosen to be an appropriate methodology for this study, and an exploration of its relationship to the philosophy and practice of yoga further revealed its compatibility. Polkinghorne (1989) described that in phenomenological research, “...researchers are expected to develop plans of study especially suited to understanding the particular experiential phenomenon that is the object of their study.” (as cited in Creswell, 1998, p. 54). As such, phenomenology not only provided the philosophical foundation for the study, but determined and refined my research methods and process over the course of the project, as described in the next chapter.
33 Chapter 4. Methods
A. Overview
Phenomenological methods stem directly from their underlying philosophy.
Although these methods have been outlined by a number of researchers, these methods, as Polkinghorne (1989) described, “function as general guidelines...and researchers are expected to develop plans of study especially suited to understanding the particular experiential phenomenon” (as cited in Creswell, 1998, p. 54). In planning the methods of this study, attention was also given to the key characteristics of qualitative studies as described in Creswell (2009): natural setting, the key role of the researcher, using multiple sources of data, focus on the meaning of the participants, emergent design, and a holistic account.
To explore the contribution of yoga to counsellor practice and development, an eight-week yoga course was offered to the full-time students in the Master’s of Education
Counselling program at Acadia University. The data collection process included participant recruitment, an orientation session, an opening focus group and pre-study survey, an eight-week yoga course, a series of focus groups, three semi-structured interviews, and a closing focus group and post-study survey. To complement the data of the participants, my reflective journaling on the process, my role as the researcher, and my own experience of the phenomenon in question also made an important contribution to this study.
34 B. Preparation for Data Collection
Approval for this research was attained from Acadia University’s Research Ethics
Board. In preparation for the data collection and the application to the ethics review board, a general consent form (Appendix B), specific consent forms (Appendix C), recruitment script (Appendix D), pre-survey (Appendix E), focus group protocols
(Appendix F), post-survey and interview protocols (Appendix G) and a debriefing form
(Appendix H) were created. The interview protocol was piloted with a counselling colleague who participated in a yoga class that I taught between October and December,
2009. Survey, focus group and interview protocols were modified according to the suggestions of my supervisor and my own observations. Informal discussions with other researchers and practitioners on this topic, including Dr. John Chambers Christopher,
Michael Stone, Dr. Cheryl Pence Wolf, Dr. David Piper, Dr. Ellen Goldberg, Shahar Rabi and Saskia Tait, supported the clarification of details around the topic and the research method at various points in the process.
C. Research Methods a. Participant Recruitment
Participants were recruited from the 2010 full-time cohort in the MEd.
Counselling program at Acadia University during their first pre-practicum class. At this point in the program, students had completed the first two foundation courses in counselling and were working with clients for the first time. This was an ideal time for
35 this yoga program with its intention of contributing both to their development and practice as counsellors. Practically, this was also a convenient time because the students were on campus regularly, making the yoga classes more accessible. The recruitment was an opportunity to introduce myself, describe a tentative structure of the research project, invite them to participate, discuss why it may be of benefit to them, and invite them to an orientation session the following week. Questions were also welcomed at this time. The recruitment script is shown in Appendix D.
b. Orientation Session
An orientation session was held one week after the recruitment with the following objectives: providing participants with a brief experience of yoga to demonstrate its accessibility; describing my approach to yoga and teaching; creating a schedule for the yoga classes and focus groups; providing an opportunity for participants to ask questions and voice any concerns; introducing the journaling and interview aspect of the research; reviewing the general consent form; and, gathering email addresses of those interested.
Although participants were provided with five days to sign the consent form, all but one participant signed their consent forms at the end of this session.
Due to the intensive and demanding nature of Acadia’s counselling program, the dates and time of the practice were negotiated with the participants to provide the greatest accessibility. Negotiating how often we would meet, the length of the classes, and the amount of home practice honoured the demanding schedules of the participants, as this was an addition to their program, rather than an integrated aspect of the course.
36 Following the orientation session, ten participants signed up to participate in the research, and nine of those participants—eight full-time students and one part-time student—remained throughout the full ten weeks of the research.
c. Opening Focus-Group and Pre-Study Survey
The research began with an opening focus group, creating an open space within which to begin our work together. This focus group, outlined in Appendix F, was held in the same space in which we practiced yoga and was both video-recorded and audio-taped.
Consent forms for the pre-surveys and journals were signed at the end of this first focus group, as shown in Appendix C1 and C2.
Following the first focus group, participants were sent an electronic copy of the pre-study survey, shown in Appendix E. The survey was estimated to require fifteen to twenty minutes to complete and participants were requested to return these surveys before the first yoga class one week later.
The pre-survey and the opening focus group, addressing similar questions and themes, were complementary. The focus group allowed us to come together and learn about our experiences and expectations within that context, stimulating thought and reflection on these themes. The pre-survey, which participants filled out following the opening focus group, was an opportunity for participants to share insights and experiences that they might be uncomfortable sharing in a group, or may have recognized after reflecting within the group context.
From a phenomenological perspective, the pre-survey and focus group provided an opportunity for the participants to explore and come to know, and thus “bracket” how
37 they thought about yoga and counselling, their hopes and fears for this yoga course, and their expectations of how the practice might contribute to their counselling education.
Together, the opening focus group and the pre-survey provided an opportunity for myself as the instructor to learn about the participants’ experience with yoga and counselling and the challenges they were experiencing as beginning counsellors.
As the participants were yet to experience the phenomenon in question, this data was summarized to provide a description of the group and their starting points in the practice and this research.
Eight participants attended the opening focus group. Although all ten participants who originally committed to the research provided their pre-surveys, only the surveys from the nine participants who participated in the full research were used for the analysis.
d. Eight-Week Yoga Course
As a yoga practitioner with a daily practice for the past eight years, and a teacher with five years of experience, I taught the yoga classes on the Acadia campus. Ashtanga vinyasa yoga provided the structure for the practice and the yoga classes were designed and modified appropriately for this group. The ashtanga practice was chosen for a number of reasons: the set sequence supported a self-guided class and allows students to have the structure to practice on their own; a more active practice, ashtanga provided a physical/movement component to balance the sedentary nature of academia; and most importantly, ashtanga was the style of yoga that I have always practiced and taught, know the most intimately, and thus was best able to share.
38 Participants committed to practicing yoga three days a week throughout the research. Each week, a seventy-five minute led yoga class was mandatory for participants.4 A second optional class was offered once each week in a self-practice format, where each of the participants did a self-led practice on their own time with individual instruction and support. The intention of this self-guided class was to provide a second opportunity for guidance and community to practice within each week, and also to encourage and support the participants in learning the practice so they could practice independently upon the completion of the course. This class also provided an opportunity to work with each participant individually, addressing their questions and tailoring the practice to meet their specific needs. Practically, it took several weeks to work toward a self-guided practice and, thus, these optional classes were also predominantly led classes at the beginning.
The yoga course also included a philosophy component to support their practice.
At the beginning of each mandatory class, participants received a three to six page piece of my own writing on various themes of yoga philosophy, included in Appendix A, as well as a related question for reflection or journaling and links to further readings, websites and videos. Reading these philosophy pieces was optional for the participants.
4 It was shared with the participants that although they were expected to attend all eight led classes, missing one class was acceptable.
39 e. Focus Groups and Informal Meetings
Generally, focus groups provide an opportunity for individuals to transcend personal narratives and explore the collective meaning and experiences of the phenomenon to create a deeper experience of meaning through dialogue. Focus groups also encourage an examination of assumptions and an opportunity to generate more general data, and provide an opportunity for both personal and professional growth through a group process (Vibert, 2009). In this research, these focus groups were also intended to create a community that would support the individuals and increase their motivation to continue the practice after the research was complete.
Two half-hour focus groups took place during the eight weeks: at the beginning of the third (focus group 2) and seventh (focus group 3) weeks of yoga classes. Focus groups took place before the mandatory practice, in the same classroom where the participants had just completed their pre-practicum class. The focus groups followed a semi-structured format, described in Appendix F, that was informed by the phenomenological framework and what I perceived would best serve the participants.
The themes and structure of the focus groups were designed to create an opportunity for the group to reflect on their experience of the phenomenon. These focus groups also provided a unique opportunity for participants to deepen their yoga practice through sharing their struggles and their experiences, supporting the community aspect of the practice, and providing me with an opportunity to teach yoga in a way that was relevant to their experience. Seven participants attended both focus groups.
40 Although initially three focus groups were scheduled during the yoga course, I cancelled the focus group planned during the fifth week of practice as it seemed redundant. I replaced this focus group with an opportunity for the participants to meet with me individually. My intention with offering an individual meeting was to provide an opportunity for the participants to share their questions and concerns they might not share within the group, and provide myself with an opportunity to support them in seeing how yoga was directly relevant to their situation. Two informal meetings were held and audio-taped in a classroom at Acadia University5. Although these meetings were not analyzed with the data, a quotation from one of them is used in the conclusion.
Furthermore, I held many informal conversations with the participants about their experiences, which contributed to forming strong relationships and allowed me to have a sense of how they were doing in this process.
f. Independent Practice
Independent practice is an important aspect of yoga as it intensifies and deepens the process and encourages discipline and commitment. Specifically in this research, independent practice established a practice that the participants can continue after the research has been completed. With a set sequence of postures, ashtanga can be practiced independently without the guidance of a teacher.
5 Due to difficulties with the audio recorder, only one informal interview was successfully audio- taped.
41 With having committed to practicing at least three days each week, participants were required to practice on their own either once or twice a week. The minimum practice was to be ten minutes long, consisting of three surya namaskara A, three closing postures: baddha padmasana, padmasana, uthpluthi, and shavasana, and students were encouraged to practice more of the postures as the course progressed. To support this practice, participants were provided with written and visual instructions for the practice, links to on-line videos, and accessibility to the instructor in person or via email for any questions. Participants who already had an established yoga practice in a different style were welcomed to make this their individual practice.
g. Student Journals
For those participants who felt it would be of benefit, journaling was encouraged as a means of processing and understanding their experience with this research.
Journaling was intended to allow the participants to process their experiences, with the aim of facilitating reflection and personal growth, and provided a means to explore issues they were uncomfortable sharing in a group setting or with the researcher. Journaling was optional and participants who chose to journal also had the option of sharing their journals with the researcher. A consent form specific to the journals, as shown in
Appendix C2, was provided in the opening focus group. No journals were submitted by the participants.
42 h. In-Depth Interviews
In-depth interviews provide the opportunity to explore the phenomenon in more depth with someone who has experienced it. Interviews provide information that is more particular, widely-varied, context-specific and in-depth (Vibert, 2009) and creates an opportunity for dialogue and relationship between the researcher and participant.
For the interviews I chose three participants with a diversity of experience with the practice of yoga: a first-time practitioner, a practitioner who had a short-term, intensive practice, and a practitioner with a well-established practice of over twenty years. The themes common to these participants demonstrated aspects of the contribution of yoga to counselling education experienced by participants across a wide-spectrum of experience. The interviews were sixty minutes in length, following a semi-structured interview protocol, as shown in Appendix G, which evolved throughout the process. A consent form specific to the interview, as shown in Appendix C3, was provided. The interviews were conducted in a classroom at Acadia University, at a time of the interviewee’s convenience, and two interviews were audio-taped and one video-taped.
i. Closing Focus Group and Post-Survey
Following the interviews, one final focus group, outlined in Appendix F, was held to reflect on the phenomenon and bring closure to the process. Following the focus group, participants were electronically provided with the post-study survey composed of questions identical to those asked in the interviews, as shown in Appendix G. Thus, participants who took part in an interview were not required to complete the post-survey.
43 A consent form specific to the post-study survey, as shown in Appendix C4, was provided, which participants returned during the final focus group. Participants had one week to complete the post-study survey, which was to take approximately twenty minutes to complete, and return it electronically.
The final focus group was held the week following the last week of the yoga classes. Although I had intended to complete the data collection process before the final group, one interview still remained. All nine participants were present in this closing focus group.
The intention of the post-survey was to support the participants in reflecting on their experience of the yoga course and the ways in which it contributed to their work in the counselling program. The post-surveys were provided to participants following the final focus group as an opportunity to reflect in a more personal way and more deeply on what was shared in the focus group, similar to the way the pre-survey was provided after the opening focus group.
j. Reflective Writing of the Researcher
The self-reflection of the researcher on the phenomenon is an essential aspect of a phenomenological study. Firstly, it supports the ability of the researcher to “bracket” their own perspectives accurately, by bringing awareness to their preconceptions of the phenomenon. Reflective writing also allows the researcher to gain deeper insight into their own personal experience and description of the phenomenon.
Throughout this process, I have used writing to prepare for each of the sessions and to reflect on the topic and the phenomenon of study, the research process, and my
44 personal experiences and learning. I wrote after each yoga class, focus group, and interview, and regularly to reflect emerging themes and interesting and relevant situations that arose during the research process. I also used writing, such as poetry, in a creative and explorational way, to discover and learn by creating space to give expression to my feelings and thoughts. By staying with a feeling, and allowing the words associated with it to emerge, the feeling begins to evolve and move, and thus writing also provided a powerful way of meeting and giving expression to some aspects of myself that were difficult to access. My reflections on the process will be shared in Chapter 7.
D. Data Recording and Organization
Digital voice recorders were used to record the interviews6, and the focus groups were recorded with both a video camera and a digital voice recorder. Surveys were sent and received electronically, with the exception of one submitted in a paper copy. Data was continuously analyzed throughout the data collection process. A data collection matrix was created, recording the attendance at the yoga classes and focus groups and the reception of consent forms and surveys.
E. Data Preparation a. Pre- and Post-Surveys
Each of the surveys were read through as a whole, while taking notes and reflections on the data. Responses in the pre-survey were organized by question.
6 A video camera was used to record one of the interviews when the audio recording device would not work.
45 b. Focus Groups and Interviews
Immediately following each focus group and interview, I wrote my reflections on the experience. For each focus group, I watched the video while taking brief notes of the overall quality and themes. I transcribed the focus groups and interviews from the audio recording, while simultaneously taking notes on anything that stood out to me. When the transcription was complete, I listened to the complete focus group again, ensuring that it had been accurately transcribed, noting any additional reflections. The transcriptions were printed and I read the whole document, continuing to write my own reflections and underlining key quotations to use in the analysis.
F. Data Analysis Process
The phenomenological data analysis method described originally by Moustakas
(1994a), and referenced in Creswell (1998), McNamara (2005), and Moerer-Urdahl &
Creswell (2004) provided the foundation for this analysis in this study. This process can be summarized as follows:
1. Horizontalization: Significant statements that describe the experienced meaning
of the phenomena are highlighted in the data. A list of these statements is made,
ensuring that there are no repeated or overlapping statements; each statement is
equally valued.
2. Creating Meaning Units: For each of these horizontalized statements, meaning
units that express the original description are established in psychological and
phenomenological terms.
46 3. Clusters of Meaning and Textural Descriptions: These meaning units and
corresponding statements are clustered into themes of a similar meaning, and each
cluster is given a descriptive title. At this stage in the analysis, the clusters of
themes will be referred back to the original transcript for validation. From these
descriptions, a textural description of the phenomenon is written, which describes
the noema or “what” is experienced.
4. Imaginative Variation and Structural Descriptions: The researcher uses
imaginative variation to alter the various aspects of the phenomenon, seeing “all
possible meanings and divergent perspectives” (Creswell, 1998, p. 150) to
construct a structural description, relating to the noesis or the underlying structure
and context of the experienced phenomenon.
5. Essence of the Phenomenon: Describing the experiential essence of the
phenomenon is the goal of phenomenological research. Structural and textural
descriptions are brought together into a brief or “exhaustive description” of the
essence of the phenomenon.
Based on this model, the data analysis process for each survey, focus group and interview in this study was as follows7:
1. Data from the pre-survey and opening focus group were summarized.
2. Each statement from the three focus groups, interviews and post-surveys that
described the participants’ experience of the phenomenon was listed, with equal
value, ensuring that there were no repeated statements (horizontalization).
47 2. These statements were grouped into similar themes, and each group was given a
descriptive name (cluster of themes). When each of the data had been grouped
into these themes, the descriptive name was revisited to ensure it reflected all of
the data in the group.
3. From these themes, a description of the phenomenon was written (textural
description) and labelled by the descriptive name.
4. When the textural description was written, the transcripts were read again as a
whole to ensure that each perspective shared by the participants was captured and
no additional data was created through the analysis process.
5. My own reflections, gathered after the sessions and while working with the data,
were summarized and combined with the reflections of the participants to describe
the underlying structure of the experienced phenomenon and written with
thematic headings (structural description).
6. These textural and structural descriptions were sent to the participants with their
quotations highlighted, providing them with the opportunity to ensure they were
fairly represented and comfortable with these descriptions.
7. When all of the data had been analyzed in this way, using imaginative variation,
the various elements of the research and the data were varied, and three
interrelated aspects of the phenomenon emerged. From here, the essence of the
phenomenon was described.
These textural and structural descriptions, as well as the essence of the phenomenon are described in Chapter 5.
48 G. Ethical Considerations a. Informed Consent
All potential research participants were informed by the researcher of the following: the research purposes; research processes and procedures; anticipated demands of the yoga classes, focus groups, interviews, data analysis on the participants’ time; the use of the data and the analysis procedures; the storage and disposal of recorded data; information about the researcher; and, all measures to be taken to ensure confidentiality of data and anonymity.
The process of informed consent began with a thorough discussion of the research in the orientation session and an opportunity for potential participants to ask questions.
Participants were given a general consent form for the yoga classes and focus groups, as shown in Appendix B, that they were welcome to sign at the orientation sessions or to take home so they could reflect on their participation without any perceived pressure.
Separate consent forms were provided for the pre- and post-study surveys, interviews, and journals, as shown in Appendix C.
b. Participation
Participation in this research was voluntary. Participants had the right to discontinue their participation at any time, without consequence, coercion, or prejudice, and remove their data from the study at a later date if they chose to do so. This research was not a part of Acadia Counselling program and did not affect their evaluation in any way.
49 Participants with any range of experience with yoga or meditation practice were welcomed. Information about their medical history was collected during a pre-survey to allow the classes to be tailored to each individual and to create a safe practice environment. If participants had any questions or hesitations about their ability to participate in this research, they were encouraged to contact their physician.
c. Confidentiality
Confidentiality was respected. Only the researcher had access to identifying information, which was protected with the use of numerical codes during the data collection and analysis. Although participants were provided with the opportunity to verify that they were accurately represented in the quotations from the surveys, focus groups, interviews that were chosen to be included in the research, participants agreed these quotations may be used anonymously without their verification. All physically recorded data was stored in a private, secure location and electronic data was backed-up on a daily basis and stored on the researcher’s password-protected computer.
Although research participants were asked to keep what is shared in the focus groups confidential, the principal researcher could only guarantee their own confidentiality and could not guarantee that other participants would observe each other’s privacy. During the orientation session, a protocol for “off-the-record” comments was discussed.
50 d. Debriefing
Debriefing was an on-going process throughout the research, primarily facilitated by the series of focus groups. A final focus group was held after the yoga classes and interviews were completed to bring closure to the process. At this final focus group, participants were provided with a formal debriefing form, as shown in Appendix H.
Although participants were consulted during the data analysis process for feedback, involvement in this stage was both brief and voluntary. When this research is complete, I will bring the group together to share and discuss the findings.
e. Personal Disclosure
To support this research process and the teaching of yoga, appropriate self- disclosure of the researcher was used. Insight into the researcher’s experience with yoga practice provided participants with a context in which to consider their experience with the practice, which normalized their experience, and encouraged them to move deeper into the process.
f. Risk and Safety
A description of the possible risks for participants and the steps taken to minimize these risks were listed in the general consent form, found in Appendix A. Additionally, steps were taken to confirm that the participants had appropriate equipment, including clothing, yoga mats, and props. g. Deception
No deception was used in this research.
51 h. Commercialization and Conflict of Interest
This research was not commercialized and there were no known conflicts of interest.
H. Conclusion
The methods of this study—the preparation, the research process itself, data collection protocols, and a means of organizing and analyzing the data—defined a process by which to explore the contribution of yoga to counsellor practice and development. Ethical considerations significantly informed the methods. Chapter 5 provides a phenomenological analysis of the participants’ descriptions of their experience of the contribution of yoga to their education as counsellors.
52 Chapter 5. Data Analysis
A. Overview
This data analysis chapter begins with a summary of the data gathered in the opening focus group and pre-surveys. The following two sections provide the textural and structural descriptions of the phenomenon as experienced by the participants. These two descriptions are the brought together with the use of imaginative variation to describe the essence of the phenomenon in the fifth section. This data analysis is followed by two separate analyses of the data, demonstrating the group process and how the participants’ narratives changed over time.
B. Meeting the Participants
Previous experience of yoga and counselling
Participants came to the research with a wide variety of previous experience with yoga: from never having practiced to more than 20 years of experience, including many who have practiced “on and off” for three to nine years. The participants had practiced in a variety of styles and only two participants had some experience of the ashtanga yoga practice. Some participants had no experience with any other contemplative practices and some aspired to have daily practices, which included both formal practices, including meditation, tai chi and chanting, and informal practices, such as improving their self- awareness.
Although none of the participants in the program had formal counselling training or experience, they all described informal counselling encounters: within their previous
53 jobs, in a volunteer capacity, and in their personal relationships. Only one participant considered themselves to have already worked in the role of a counsellor.
Perspectives on Yoga
In exploring the question—what is yoga?—the overall theme of the participants was that yoga is an opportunity to shift from their everyday busy lives and the busy qualities of their minds. The diversity and depth of their responses varied throughout the group, from “a complete release...a way to get away from everything” to “trying to shut my brain off” to “a gift of self-care.” Participants discussed the benefits they had previously experienced with yoga, including bringing balance to all aspects of their lives and recognizing their enjoyment of it and its benefits: “yoga, I love...yoga is about balance and grounding in my life and I have a ton of yang energy surrounding me everywhere as it is, so it’s a kind of refuge for me.” One participant, after describing their experience of yoga being more than just a physical practice but one that also affects them energetically, described yoga as a way of excavating memories in the body:
I’ve come to an understanding that just like we hold memory in our brain cells, that every cell in our body has a memory, and yoga can be used in a way to kind of excavate some of those memories. There’s a never-ending learning about myself and about the practice, and it’s constantly changing for me, there’s no two yoga practices that are ever the same.
Shared in the opening focus group, this comment introduced a new dimension of yoga to the group, providing an opportunity to discuss the different orientations participants had toward the practice. Some participants felt their more physical orientation to the practice
54 was a limitation, as they had not had an emotional experience within the practice and didn’t anticipate that they would:
You know, you hear people say, oh, its really inspiring, it’s really spiritual, and I have to be honest, I don’t think I’m going to reach that because I’ve done a lot of things with movement, where it’s just become, it’s physically, it’s just about getting stronger, more flexibility, and that’s it. And I think in the eight sessions we have, I just can’t see it happening.
The two participants who shared this perspective concluded that they were open to or would like to have this experience.
Challenges and Delights of Counselling Education
Participants described the challenges they were encountering as beginning counsellors in three major areas: counselling, academia, and personal challenges. In counselling, participants described challenges with counselling presence, including their ability to actively listen and be present, and counselling process and techniques, with a number of participants commenting on the challenge of asking supportive questions.
Academically, they described the interrelated challenges of time constraints, the work load of the program, and challenges with the structure and “tedious” and “bureaucratic” nature of academia. Personally, participants described feelings of pressure and inadequacy when working with clients, their struggles to establish a new identity as a counsellor, and being overwhelmed with the heightened self-awareness and self- reflection that accompanies such a program. One participant clearly articulated the relationship between these three different personal challenges:
55 It is also very physically, mentally, and emotionally draining being in the course. It is as much of a journey of self-discovery as it is learning how to be a counsellor. My body and mind are on constant overload. An effective counsellor in training or counsellor needs to be aware and focused and in the moment a lot and it is difficult to do that if you are run down.
When asked of the delights of learning to be a counsellor, participants described their interactions with others, their relationships with teachers and colleagues, and learning about both counselling and themselves. In their interactions with clients, participants enjoyed making connection with another person and found being in a helping profession “completely rewarding”. They acknowledged their enjoyment of the supportive relationships with their classmates and the knowledge and personal qualities of their professors. They also described enjoying being a student, learning and being immersed in counselling topics they are passionate about, and learning about themselves, as one participant shared:
The delights are found for me in the lectures or class experiences, an example or dialogue that you identify with, wonder about, or uncover. The language in how you bring something out is astounding, and when you hear a professional at work, or encounter your own catharsis, it’s a beautiful moment.
Although participants described a “big learning curve” with counselling and felt that “I know very little, every day I find out how much more I need to know, I need to learn”, they also shared an optimistic perspective, feeling that they are in the process of learning.
Exploring and learning about themselves seemed to be simultaneously a challenge and a delight. One participant referred to a heightened self-awareness as a
“double-edged sword”, explaining that “sometimes [I] find that I am becoming too self-
56 aware to the point of being self-conscious.” The participants collectively described the constant self-reflection and questioning that accompanied their beginning work as counsellors:
The self-reflecting part. Constant. Why did I think this, and why didn’t I think that, and how come that person knows to go at that angle, and how come I am going at this angle, and is this wrong, or is that wrong, or is nothing wrong?
One participant related her constant self-reflection and questioning to her previous experience of yoga, sharing the value of being comfortable with not knowing and how hard it can be to remember to get to this place.
Personal Anticipations of the Yoga Course
The hopes described by the participants for the yoga course and the benefits they anticipated from the practice encapsulated the full spectrum of one’s being: physically, gaining flexibility and strength and losing weight; mentally, learning how to work with and calm the mind, leading to clarity and focus; emotionally and cultivating a sense of well-being, which they described with the following terms: “fun”, “breathe”, “peaceful”,
“connect”, “let go”, “sense of calm”, “present”, “stress relief”, “grounding”, “balanced”,
“relaxed” and “restoring my energy”, and a sense of presence and spirituality.
Additionally, they described finding time for themselves; and experiencing a heightened awareness and self-knowledge. Participants also described their interest in learning about yoga, including improving techniques, cultivating self-discipline, and continuing to
57 practice after the course. One of the participants hoped to help myself, as the researcher, to promote the “validity” of yoga.
When asked about their fears and concerns about engaging in the course, the major concern shared by participants was the time commitment. Participants also discussed fear of physical discomfort or pain. Many of the fears were of failure and feelings of inadequacy around the practice, as well as a fear of self-consciousness and comparing themselves to others. Some participants were uncertain about the ashtanga style of practice. Participants also feared they would be disappointed with the course, they would not feel any different, they would not enjoy it, “resenting wasting limited time resources” and that it “may cause more frustration than mindfulness”.
The Relationship between Counselling and Yoga
When asked how they anticipated yoga might relate to their role as a counsellor, participants drew a relationship between the practice of yoga, their quality of being and their ability to work with clients. They commented on how the experiences from the practice may translate into their counselling sessions. They saw yoga as a means of developing qualities important for a counsellor: cultivating mindfulness, being present and listening in this capacity in their sessions, and helping them to connect more with their clients, as one participant shared: “Counselling, I am learning, is all about being present. In my experience, yoga and meditation are the best combination for getting to the place of being able to listen without judgement and being present.”
58 One participant also described that yoga or mindfulness could be shared with their clients. Participants also felt that yoga would be helpful in working with clients who are more kinesthetically-oriented, noting that the body and kinesthetic aspect of being had not been addressed in their counselling program. Another participant referred to the idea of thoughts, feelings, etc. being stored in the body like fossils and yoga as a means by which to support a client in accessing them. This participant also stated an intention to integrate yoga and healing arts into their counselling practice in the future.
Participants also anticipated that yoga might support their personal needs as a counsellor, including caring for their physical body and mind to reduce stress and tension.
Participants also saw yoga as a means of reflection and cultivating self-awareness and self-knowledge, which they felt were important to their work as counsellors: “I need to be able to take that space to be able to observe where I’m at and know when things are coming up, and it’s a great place to get that awareness.” Participants saw yoga as a way of releasing those stories that “stick with you”, and “help with not thinking about clients at home.”
C. Textural Descriptions
Fruits of the Practice
Participants listed a number of benefits that they experienced from the yoga practice on all aspects of their being—physically, mentally, emotionally, and experiences of wholeness and integration—and described the interrelationship between these different
59 aspects of being. Participants also commented that these fruits of the practice lingered after the practice and remained with them throughout their day.
Participants commented on enjoying the physical activity, the yoga postures, and the stretching involved in the classes. They described an increase in flexibility, upper body strength, and cardiovascular conditioning. They described feeling tired but refreshed, re-energized, and ‘light’ after practice. Participants also commented on the importance of physical activity within a program that was so cognitively-oriented and thus also sedentary.
Two participants expressed that they were sleeping better at night, due to fatigue from physical activity, which resulted in being able to concentrate better in class, their body feeling less tired during the day, and being better able to quiet their mind when going to sleep:
Instead of going to bed with a list and the racing mind of all the things I should do or have not done yet, just because the breath has been fresh, you know, the practice and the use of the breath has been a more recent experience, I’m able to take that to getting to sleep and staying asleep.
One participant commented on relying on pain medication less frequently for headaches than they normally would while experiencing this amount of tension.
Some participants related the physical activity to feeling more balanced and feeling more grounded, which one participant described as having no intense emotions, feeling relaxed, and feeling that they can handle anything that comes along. Participants also discussed a quieting of the mind, feeling calmer, less quick to anger, more accepting, and one participant described the practice as a means to “help level-off the emotions”.
60 One participant described the class as a “refuge”: “It does help with the stress though for sure...if I didn’t have that hour at all, my anxiety level would be much higher, so it keeps you in balance.”
Participants described the practice time as an opportunity to slow down, put their busy lives on “hold” and just focus on the practice. They felt the practice “informed” them, and they felt “attuned to my body and what it needs”. One participant also commented on being better able to focus “in my work and in my relationships”.
Participants also found that the practice contributed to experiences of feeling centred, present, balanced and integrated. Some poignant statements of this experience include:
“I feel as though I am calmer inside and out. Before starting this practice I appeared calm on the outside, but was not feeling that way inside. I feel like they are more balanced now.”
“My goals are more in my journey, versus getting to the end result. This is reflective in my practice and parallels my personal outlook.”
“I am returning [to] the balance that I need to function at my best in every aspect.”
“Coming back to yoga for those eight weeks was a place where I could do some internal repair work...for me, an introvert, feeling so out there the entire time, it was really nice to come back in and put it all back together again.”
As described by one participant, these benefits to various aspects of being are interrelated: “I did feel more energetic and ‘light’ for the rest of the day. A consequence of this state would be better mood throughout the day, which in turn allowed me have a
61 clearer focus on other tasks (i.e., school work, relationships).” This participant also commented on learning about the relationship between the body and the mind and how this affects other aspects of their lives:
The biggest thing I’ve learned is that body and mind have to work together and when they do, all other aspects of life can follow. It has made me more aware of myself and also aware of others. When the mind doesn’t work with the body, there is probably a reason, this dichotomy communicates that something is out of balance. In becoming aware of this, one can then explore options as to why there is an imbalance.
One participant felt that the practice also helped them by reducing stress and found it easier to sit and do school work after class.
Early in the research some participants commented on finding it hard to know yet if the yoga is actually of benefit, in one case because it had been such few practices and in another not differentiating the benefits of yoga from other forms of exercise. At this time, the participants’ comments suggested they felt hopeful about the practice, indicating their openness to these experiences changing.
Contribution of Yoga to Counselling
Counselling is a process of deep thinking, inner reaching and processing, analysis, and learning. Growth of this nature needs quiet mind, and mindfulness to ourselves. Yoga time provides the type of time I enjoy in accomplishing this type of thinking and contemplation.
Participants described the relationship between yoga and counselling in a variety of ways: as a form of self-care for themselves as a counsellor, and in terms of their work with clients, in terms of counselling presence and process, as well as techniques to share
62 with their clients.
Counsellor Self-Care
Participants related some of the benefits they were receiving from the yoga course as a compliment to their learning in the counselling program. As one participant described:
[Yoga has] joined the studies as a way of self-care, as something I was missing in my life, that sort-of grounding, that time for me....So, it’s been my definition of self-care, and a place for, to quietly work out stuff. Like, sometimes I’m thinking about something we thought of in class while I’m practicing...It seems to have now formed some kind of a kinship.
For their personal care, participants felt committed to the practice as an aspect of self- care, mindfulness and social connectedness. For example, participants described recognizing that listening to their body is key to knowing when they need a break or using yoga postures or breathing between clients.
Counselling Presence
In terms of their work with clients, participants described the value of yoga for developing counselling presence: being more focused, attentive, and physically relaxed in their counselling sessions. They described experiences of feeling fully present in their sessions and the challenges of getting there: “a moment where all of a sudden that releases and I mean, I’m completely there or in the moment, or at least I think I am, but it takes a good 20-25 minutes...”. One insight shared by a participant, which was also
63 shared by others in the group, was how clearing their mind in yoga practice and focusing in their counselling sessions happened effortlessly. One participant commented on this and their new understanding of the relationship between the body and the mind:
I’ve discovered that it is a mind/body experience. During practice I was focused and was beginning to develop the connection of body/mind. Other thoughts, whether of schoolwork or personal life, seemed to stay ‘at the door’ and when I would begin practice that time was for me. What I found most interesting was that I didn’t have to put any effort into clearing my mind or forcibly removing anxiety-provoking thoughts.
Participants also described that with an awareness of their breath in their sessions, they were “able to focus and ground myself, being completely open and present in the counselling practice.”
Participants also shared wholeness and integration as an important theme to the relationship between yoga and their counselling practice: bringing their whole selves to the counselling session, learning to listen and function with the whole body rather than just a cognitive level. One participant described this process with the following analogy:
If I was made of velcro or suction cups or something, things kind of stick. If someone tells me something then it resonates with me in a certain place in my body. And I think, oh yeah, that makes my stomach churn, or what they said might really give me a burning sensation in my throat. And I pay attention to where it is in my body, it gives me a stronger sense of the affect... I don’t know yet if it’s my affect or their affect that I am feeling. But I guess the yoga philosophy of connectedness is really underlying whatever my practice is going to look like...Not to have the need to get rid of it or evaluate [these feelings] but just that it’s like a thread that ties me to whatever they are feeling or sensing at the time, it helps me in my understanding. It’s like a filter in some way that’s just processing what they are telling me.
64 One of the other participants described the shift they experienced in moving from working with only one part of themselves to integrating within the context of their counselling experience:
I guess the difference is when you hear something and when you’re thinking about it all by yourself, essentially, and throwing it back, it’s not integrating into you, it’s staying here, in your head...But being able to take something and actually have it work its way through you is a completely different feeling. And a completely different relationship that you have with your client and I was able to shift it that way. And yoga has definitely played a huge role.
Counselling Process and Techniques
In terms of the counselling process, participants drew parallels between their experience of yoga and their role as a counsellor. For example, improvements in their practice provided them with confidence that they could also improve their counselling skills. Another participant shared that they brought the value of taking things slowly and the recognition that everyone comes to things in their own time, which they were learning in their yoga practice, to their counselling sessions. Participants also drew a parallel between yoga and counselling, recognizing that their role as a counsellor is to accompany their clients in a process of discovering of what they need at this time. One participant also commented that because of the ways the body and mind are connected, we can learn much about a client’s feelings by observing their posture and body. Participants also felt more comfortable when their clients had nothing to say.
Participants described taking the form and techniques of the practice, particularly working with the breath, into both their counselling sessions and other aspects of their
65 life. Nearly every participant commented on plans for sharing yoga as a technique with their clients, specifically describing the importance of the breath in supporting the client to relax, focus, release tension, bring awareness to their body and learning from the body, and “get through tough situations.” Participants discussed assigning breathing and postures for “homework”, and using it in their schools, particularly in group work with children who need to be physically active, as well as in other work in which they are engaged. One participant described how their own practice contributed to their confidence in sharing these techniques with their clients: “Because I am more aware of my breath, I am more confident in instructing clients in how to breathe in exercises such as guided imagery or progressive muscle relaxation.”
One participant found that they were more centred in their role as a counsellor and able to use the deep breathing, but were unsure if their increased comfort was due to the counselling coursework, the yoga, or the combination of the two. Two participants shared that their ideas or understanding of counselling has not been changed by the yoga course. Some participants also shared that they did not see themselves incorporating yoga into their future career plans.
Integrated Perspectives of Yoga and Counselling
Two participants, who had already integrated yoga into their lives, described that they were unable to separate their practices of counselling and yoga, and as one of them commented, at times counselling would also be her yoga. One participant commented
66 that coming back to practice coincided with a shift they experienced within themselves and in their counselling sessions:
I came to you and I said, “I feel a shift happening”, it was then that I had started to realize what was going on, this resistance, this pull to keep holding on and to not let go. And once I realized that, it was there, it really helped me, not only in my personal life letting go, and I could feel the yoga, I could feel the experiences coming back to me. But with my clients as well. And it coincided with a transition with my clients.
Each of these participants also shared how valuable it was to bring their attention to the body and to integrating the various aspects of themselves when the counselling program was cognitively-oriented, both in practice and in theory. One participant, in describing how yoga and counselling were inseparable, commented that regardless of the theoretical approach to counselling, their understanding of the body, the whole person and how emotions are stored in the bodies would be inherent in their counselling.
Structure of the Yoga Course
Participants of all levels of experience commented on the structure of the yoga class being an important contribution of this course to their education. With beginning the counselling program, a number of the participants had stopped their regular physical activity, including yoga practices, because of a perceived lack of time. Participants felt they wouldn’t have practiced on their own and the course supported them in “mentally slotting out” that time and added structure to their lives. One participant commented on forgetting “to do things that are helpful for you”, and reiterated having scheduled classes to be very important within such a full academic course load:
67 There is no way once I made the drive back to the city and looked at the list of work that I have to do that I would have prepared myself to do any kind of yoga practice at home, or gone out to a class at that point. So, I was just grateful to have it built into my time here.
With scheduled classes twice each week, participants were supported in taking time for themselves and engaging in an activity they enjoyed, with one participant commenting that “[Yoga] never felt like a chore.” One participant shared that it was their first opportunity to practice regularly for an eight-week period, which showed them “how important it is to incorporate [yoga] into a regular schedule.” Participants commented on feeling as though the yoga classes were a safe learning environment, perhaps, as another participant suggested, due to the repetitive nature of the practice.
Practicing at regular times, in addition to knowing the others in the group, added a sense of accountability: “It made you build in that self-care piece, whereas normally you might neglect it.” Although the participants felt accountable, one participant felt that the course was also free and open in that participants were able to choose to come, a choice which was empowering: “I am choosing to be here...What is that saying about what my body needs or what my mind needs or what I need?”
Yoga Techniques and Physical Adjustments
A number of participants commented on learning more about yoga techniques: learning how to “tweak” postures to lead to deeper stretch or more balance, finding the changes in postures helpful, recognizing how the smallest changes and movements can make a difference in the postures and thus how they can tailor the postures to work for them, and feeling supported by the instruction. One participant also commented on this
68 yoga course being different from yoga they had practiced before, as I had provided more explanations and details about the postures. Participants also commented on the relationship between understanding the postures and maintaining a home practice:
“Because Sarah spent such a great deal of time ensuring we were comfortable and learning the poses correctly, I am much more confident and familiar with yoga, and therefore more willing to do it in my own time.”
Participants shared their experience and learning from the physical adjustments I provided during the yoga classes. The adjustments held different meaning for each participant: recognizing they were able to do more than they thought they could, thus also recognizing changes in their body; providing a moment in which they could see their resistance to change within the practice, encouraging them to open; and serving as a reminder that there is always more to learn in the practice, commenting that the opening they experienced in the adjustments felt “...internally driven rather than externally placed upon me.”
Support of the Group
Many of the participants described the importance of the support of the group.
The yoga classes enriched friendships and created community of people with a wide variety of backgrounds: “It has been very rewarding to blend people together, a multicultural sort of experience in becoming more open to a variety of perceptions while walking the same path.”
69 A beginning practitioner shared that they were encouraged and supported by their colleagues with more experience, who reassured them that they could do things in their own time and encouraged them to continue with the practice. Participants with more experience shared that they were encouraged in noticing a number of their colleagues, who before the course they perceived as having little interest in or being skeptical of yoga, were opening to the yoga practice. A more experienced participant noted the shift in their colleagues’ language over the eight weeks to “more language of acceptance and...not at all a physical language, more of a language about the internal rather than how the postures look from the external.” Thus, participants with more experience with the practice felt supported and encouraged in pursuing this interest by their colleagues.
Practicing together as a group also provided a sense of community to their personal work: “...to know that it’s not just you. And I guess that goes back to sharing with everyone.” Thus, participants commented on the importance of having the time to
“learn and grow together”:
I really quite enjoyed the community aspect, that we were all heading off to yoga seemed like something nice that you don’t get the same in class maybe, like a different experience, that enhanced it. I found it harder to practice by my own. I felt like, I guess I equate yoga practice to being almost a community thing, even though you’re not talking to anyone.
The Student-Teacher Relationship
One of the participants shared how the individual support provided in the mysore- style classes were helpful in terms of finding ways of working with the postures that suited their bodies and providing more visual instruction. One of the participants
70 commented that talking one-on-one with me frequently throughout the process, receiving both technical explanations and encouragement, also provided support in the practice.
Another participant discussed how the mysore-style class was important for them in terms of taking risks and being willing to make mistakes and learn. They also discussed one moment, which I had also taken particular note of, where I had offered a suggestion, and they decided they didn’t want to change. This moment was particularly significant for both of us, and as this participant shared: “I think that was a great moment for me because, you know, it kind of started me on that journey, it kind of started me, that one moment, because I thought about that for so long.”
Settling into the Practice: Engaging, Opening and Learning
Although the challenges each of the participants faced within the yoga course varied greatly from individual to individual, the general theme of these challenges reflected learning how to work with their bodies, thoughts and emotions by slowing down to find their own pace, using and focusing on the breath, asking questions, finding appropriate modifications of the postures, and cultivating patience. For example, one participant related the practice to working with the residue of a prior illness:
Prior to restart[ing] the practice, my past illness and rehabilitation had me a little worried about my abilities and limitations. There were times that I was overwhelmed or afraid of pain that I needed to overcome. This also translated to going where my body needed to go that day and inner listening and respecting.
Even as participants continued to encounter some of these challenges in the yoga course, they began to focus more on what they were learning and gaining from the
71 practice. Participants shared how their experiences of yoga were different than what they had expected: from finding it was more challenging than they had imagined, to seeing more of a purpose to the practice. As they continued to engage in the practice, I heard patience, acceptance, a willingness to take small steps and work with their limitations— a willingness to meet reality—in a variety of ways:
“Through the practice, I have learned how to modify things that my body can’t do yet and I’ve been watching for the changes as my body gradually allows me to do it.....And making those realizations and granting myself that time to learn and to let my body do what it’s willing to do at that point in time and space”
“I’ve used at least the breathing and some of that progressive muscle relaxation stuff that we do at the end, I have used that at other times in my life. Recently, when I’ve felt anxious, or stressed, it doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it helps.”
“And I still have trouble [practicing at home], but I’m doing it a little bit in small, baby steps.”
“...with yoga, I’m not finding that, oh yeah, I’m way more flexible now than I was before, because clearly, it’s only been 6 sessions...but there’s still something that feels good and healthy about it.”
“Sometimes my body is tired and yoga, even though it has the ingredients that look like it will be a good recipe for mindfulness or stretching, sometimes actually it’s a different thing that serves that need.”
As the participants engaged with their challenges in the practice, they began to see small changes. At the end of the course, some participants described having exceeded their expectations with the practice, which seemed to support them in continuing to
72 practice. With one participant, this came with exceeding their expectations of their physical abilities:
I had accepted the fact that I would never be able to touch my toes. And now I can touch my toes. I’m very impressed with that. I always feel really good after that hour together. I feel loose, so that’s one aspect that I have really enjoyed.
Another participant reflected on having glimpsed where the practice might take them:
I can see how you get stuff from it, because it’s like all of these things are starting to take shape, it would take I think a year for those puzzle pieces to start t o f i t together. But I can see that...
Self-Care, Yoga and Counselling Education
Participants identified self-care as an important contribution of yoga to their counselling education. One participant described self-care as an opportunity for self- reflection and related its importance in the counselling program:
...it’s nice to be able to learn something that addresses part of the bigger picture. I think self-care is something we overlook, and I think it would be inevitable in counselling if you were not doing something along with the mental part of self- care. But this contributes to that as well, it gives you a time to reflect and unwind...Really nice that it accompanies part of the learning and reflection that’s been the big surprise this semester is the amount of reflection.
Another participant described self-care as having both a physical and a mental component, with reflection being an important component:
Sometimes if I’m on R for race all the time, I’m not stopping and doing that reflecting that I need to do, and I think, especially in this program, it requires far more reflecting than it says in the literature. [Everyone laughs] So to me, that’s a bigger component than coming to class, is the stuff that happens when you leave class.
73 Other participants also described the relationship between self-care and their work as counsellors. One participant described the way this yoga course provided an opportunity for self-care, which had a positive impact on their counselling practice: “It’s about that self-care piece and...I know that I am more effective when I am grounded and centered and I think [yoga] is a beautiful way to reach that.” This participant described yoga as a means of creating space, and related it to supporting others in a way that is balanced: “[Yoga gives] people an opportunity or an avenue where they can create enough space within themselves to have room to support other people in a way that’s balanced.” One participant also commented on the relationship between self-care and self-reflection, and the relationship between one’s own personal development and their ability to work with others:
Unless you do something for yourself, you are going to be useless. Self-care is something that we do that actually helps us to deal with something, so that we can resolve our issues, or help ourselves in that way, so we can move forward instead of trying to just suppress something and putting a band-aid on it.
Self-Awareness, the Breath and Being
Participants described a heightened self-awareness, in both their counselling sessions and their personal lives, in relation to the breath, to their body, and to patterns of holding on and letting go.
Many participants described having attained a greater body-awareness, thus heightening their ability to respond to their body’s signals in a beneficial way; some described body-awareness as their most significant learning. They described noticing where and when they are holding tension, when their breathing was shallow, and being
74 able to relax and breathe fully. Thus, they described a greater awareness of the relationship between their bodies and emotions, which also translated to their work as a counsellor:
The anxiety and tension, I’ve gained an awareness of that. So whereas before I would be nervous ... but on a level where I wasn’t really even aware that I was holding tension or nervous about something. So, I’ve gained that through learning about the breathing and the breath and the practice. And that obviously translates to every facet of my life, including counselling.
For those participants who described this body-awareness in detail, a simultaneous awareness of the breath was important to being able to relax and release tension held in the body. Learning to work with the breath was discussed by nearly every participant, as a new practitioner shared: “It’s something that we do that we take for granted that we do, and how often do we focus on our breathing? Before yoga, probably never.” This awareness of their breath, and returning to it as an anchor for their attention, allowed an awareness of themselves and released anxiety, supporting relaxation and an ability to listen more fully:
I think the biggest part of it has been the breath, and getting back to my breath, and always going back to the breath, even in the counselling sessions, the parallel of listening from [the body] rather than listening from [the head].
One participant also drew a parallel between yoga and counselling in terms of the awareness of the breath:
Just like for counselling it’s not necessarily the process or the strategy that you use, or the, you know, particular method that you’re using, it’s more of how you listen and how you bring yourself to that practice. And the same thing in yoga, it’s not necessarily the posture you’re in, or that it might be an ashtanga practice, it’s...how the breath opens you to listening to yourself.
75 One participant also described how a heightening of self-awareness also supported them in being able to move between “holding on and letting go” in their counselling sessions:
And just to go back to what you were saying about increasing self awareness, and how that has a lot to do with letting go too, because you’re thinking about all the things that you thought were right and all the things that you thought were wrong, and what am I going to do when I enter the room with a client? And it’s just letting go of that.
Participants also described yoga as providing an opportunity to relax, slow down, and just be. One striking aspect of these comments is the way in which yoga was supporting participants in resolving the discrepancies between the ways they felt outwardly and inwardly:
I always appear outwardly as a really calm person, but there’s always a party going on in my stomach and my mind. I look calm, but inside I am not at all. So I think yoga has helped me to calm my mind, as well.
One participant also commented on how gaining self-awareness requires one to challenge one’s self, describing the humility that arises when we begin to see those things that we criticize in others in ourselves.
Emerging Perspectives on Yoga
Some very intentional and beautiful descriptions of the yoga practice were shared.
One participant who was just beginning the practice described her experience of yoga as
“rebooting”:
Yoga, it centres me, and allows me to perhaps focus a bit and maybe by giving myself that time to just be in my own space, it prevents all those things from getting [to] that point...where it just builds and then you have to shut down or you
76 have to just cry and let it out. I find by rebooting...that times gives you [a chance to]...stop those thoughts for a little while. Yeah, I don’t find those things come up in that space.
One participant described yoga in terms of changing lenses through which we see the world:
It’s almost like taking that lens, the initial lens away and then you do your yoga practice, whatever that looks like for you, and suddenly you have some kind of different lens that you’re looking through. Yeah. And not to evaluate either lens as being good or bad or right or wrong, but it’s just different, it’s just a different perspective. But to me, it feels like a more holistic one, that I’m not just operating from one aspect of myself, it’s more an integrated aspect.
Another participant shared having learned that yoga “never really leaves you”:
I think this has taught me that [yoga]’s not far away, and that I can let go more easily because now I’ve been basically put in this situation that, to me, is symbolic of that perfectionism, that type A. And for me, that was the biggest challenge. So, now that I have gone through that, and I realized yoga is what works for you. It’s that part of you that allows you to break through those boundaries, those rules that you set upon yourself.
Within the interviews, the participants also discussed themes of opening, accepting, letting go and trusting. These themes ran through a wide diversity of experiences, from becoming more accepting of where they were in the practice, allowing themselves to take small steps, becoming more open to change, and learning and recognizing how that translates to their work with clients.
Learning to let go was an important theme and described in a number of ways: from bringing awareness to habitual patterns that were holding them back and learning to
77 let go of them, to the process of letting go in the body during shavasana. Participants related letting go to trust, in the context of knowing and listening to the body:
I just need to let go and trust that my body knows when to stop, you know, as you say, once again, getting myself, my head out of the way, so that I can just let go and trust that my body knows what I need. And the answers do come from within, I just create the environment to listen.
One participant also related the process of letting go to being integrated as a whole person and how it relates to their work as a counsellor:
I guess it was when it made the shift, and I guess this is what I mean by letting go, it’s that holding in your head...and it was the shift of letting some of that translate for me in a personal way, and then, how does that, once it translates in a personal way, how has what you’re carrying here [head] and not allowing here [body/heart] translate into your work as a counsellor?
Self-knowledge and self-awareness were also important themes, which one of the participants related to the process of letting go:
I guess in yoga you take the breath in, and it just fills you up, and then you hold it for a second and let it go. Well, what I was doing was kind of taking it in and not letting it out...It’s almost...like a shift. And it doesn’t just happen like “that”, it’s a gradual shift because it takes a long time to figure out things, and self- reflect, and be self-aware enough and to be willing enough to let it sit with you and work through it.
One of the participants described their yoga practice as contributing to knowing themselves more so than anything else in their lives. This participant also shared the way in which self-knowledge was important to their role as a counsellor and how the practice of yoga supports this process of knowing one’s self:
...at first when you’re becoming a counsellor, who you are as a person is something you really need to dive into a little bit and get to know. And the one
78 way, one of the ways that I have learned to do that best is through yoga. You know, when you are struggling in a posture and you are in your head trying to perfect the posture, and then to being able to step back and say, wait a minute, why not just do what feels right here and breathe through it and why do you have to make it perfect and what [is] perfection anyways?
In this theme, participants also acknowledged the power of awareness, of “just noticing” or bringing awareness to an aspect of themselves or their behaviour being related to letting go; within the practice their work is to “embrace it rather than try and fix it”. They also described how with this self-knowledge comes responsibility for one’s actions.
Learnings and Reflections
To bring closure to the final focus group, participants were asked to reflect and share one thing they wanted to take away with them from this experience. Rather than summarize these comments, I will allow the participants to speak for themselves:
“For me, it’s just take time, it could be anything, whatever it is, just take time, everyday... Find something that will do it for you that you’ll do everyday, where it’s not a chore.”
“And I had this constant conflict of I never have any time. And then I just kind of clicked... I have time...I guess it’s just acknowledging that you do have time to take an hour.”
“One is to pay attention to your body, pay attention to what your body is telling you, um, because I was quite unaware of what my body was telling me before I came to this program. And the second one was to realize that everyone comes to things in their own time. “
“Allowing myself to take things slower than I typically do. Which is super important, because there is no way that I can master everything.”
79 “I hope to bring those same lessons with me into my practicum, is that self awareness but the self- acceptance as well. This is where I am right now, and where I am today might be different than where I will be tomorrow or where I was last week, but having an awareness of wherever it is I happen to be and just accepting that’s just the way it is.”
“I think that there’s an unknown, that unknown aspect in yoga that, you don’t have all the answers, it’s the journey. And I think that lends itself to what we have ahead as counsellors. So we can, it’s okay not to know, and it’s okay to be building on stuff all of the time. And with a dedication, and with a thirst for wanting more, it’s about the journey, it’s not about the end result.”
“The biggest realization of this experience occurred after our last focus group because, um, then I was saying how sometimes maybe yoga isn’t the best thing for me, ... I’m giving a lot to myself, and I have done a lot of work to be able to provide that by me for me, so yeah, that realization feels pretty good.”
“I struggle with just being in one dimension of being cognitive all of the time, so it’s a good reminder that for me a holistic approach is really who I am and what I need to come from.”
As a part of this closing to the process, I also shared with the group what I would be taking from our work together:
I think one of the main things for me has a lot to do with just trying to figure out how to get myself out of the way...and let things happen, there’s an element of trust that comes...something really good is happening: it’s not what I want, or what I’m expecting, but this is really interesting and good.
Many participant also made comments suggesting that they were looking forward to continuing to practice and that they felt that the benefits from the practice they were experiencing would only increase with practice. When asked of any negative outcomes,
80 they all responded that there were none, or that which appeared to be a negative outcome transformed throughout the course.
D. Structural Descriptions
Vulnerability and the Cyclical Nature of Growth
One theme shared by the some of the participants was the vulnerability they experienced in both the counselling program and the yoga course. One participant described the combination of anxiety, stress and excitement they felt in beginning the program: “my heart was racing for the entire first few weeks of school”. They felt that yoga was a way they were able work with these feelings and address some of the deeper questions they were experiencing as they began the program:
I learned that, what I already knew was going back to the breath, and going back to what I knew in yoga to try to sit with that and sort it out. And it was a combination of all of those things. It was, “what the hell was I thinking coming back to school at this stage?”, and then “am I in the right place? is this the right program for me? is this really what I want?” All of those questions.
Another participant discussed their experience of vulnerability in the beginning of the yoga classes:
I hated it when I started because I felt like I couldn’t keep up and I felt like my body wasn’t doing the things that I wanted it to. And I would see others in the classroom doing things that my body couldn’t. And that, well you saw me after the first session, and I was very emotional and I thought to myself, I’m like “why am I doing this?
81 For another participant, it was the experience of returning to academics that evoked their own personal challenges, after having felt as though they had already worked through them with yoga:
...One of the things...I was able to do [with yoga] was, get rid of, not get rid of it, be with my perfectionism and understand it and learn what it was like to not have to worry about that...when I came back here...I found myself reverting back into that, into that shell of who I need to be rather than who I actually was. And so I felt as though I had lost that part of me that had newly discovered this freedom, this, this willingness and this ability to let go and live in that...”
Feeling isolated was also a theme that emerged in the interviews, due to being away from their family and friends—which one participant described as the aspect of self-care that was missing—or because their vulnerability made them feel as though others wouldn’t understand what they were experiencing.
The content of the counselling courses, and beginning to work with colleagues in counselling-like situations, also contributed to participants feeling vulnerable: “...As a counselling student, just feeling really exposed most of the time, whether I felt exposed as a client, or exposed as a beginning counsellor, either side was uncomfortable.”
Participants also found that because courses were personal in nature, they also experienced vulnerability in meeting some of their personal challenges, particularly at the beginning of the program: “At different points in this program, I feel very vulnerable, because we’re poking and prodding in places that we may never have been or have chosen to go, and now we’re face to face with it.”
Participants described their vulnerability as a particular habitual pattern re- surfacing upon beginning the counselling program that they had struggled with in the past
82 as well as sensitive areas they re-explored within the program. A counselling program, being a new situation in which sensitive material will inevitably arise due to the content and nature of the course, is a likely place in which most students will encounter the vulnerable aspects of themselves. Each interviewee described yoga as being essential in their ability to work with their particular pattern of vulnerability. Where a participant with a long-time practice acknowledged humbly that we “never arrive”; a participant with a short but intensive experience of the practice described this cyclical nature beautifully as they experienced it for the first time. This participant described the loss of feeling whole and integrated when beginning the program, “you feel as though it’s been taken away from you...and it’s very scary”, and then finding their way back in this particular experience through the practice, recognizing “it never really leaves you”.
This re-surfacing speaks to the iterative, cyclical, spiraling, dynamic nature of growth and transformation: coming back again and again to revisit particular challenges in each context. Our ability to recognize this cyclical nature of growth, finding wholeness again and again is an essential characteristic of the practice, building our confidence in finding it even in the most challenging of circumstances.
Counsellor Identity and Yoga
Participants also discussed the challenge of creating a new identity as a counsellor and the challenge of integrating their whole selves into this new role. The shift in identity that accompanies a new role or a new career requires us to open, eliciting questioning of oneself, uncertainty, and a lack of confidence. Questions of identity can be the beginnings of a path of inquiry into the nature of the self: a road to self-knowledge. Yoga
83 provided a means by which to come back to one’s experience of the whole self, a space in which we can hold the vulnerability that is so inevitable to this process, allowing one’s new experience and identity to be integrated.
Challenges with Yoga & Home Practice
Many of the challenges the participants experienced with the yoga and home practice stemmed from a frustration of the practice not meeting their expectations. In terms of the yoga practice, for example, one participant described becoming agitated during the relaxation at the end of the yoga class because they weren’t able to focus on their breath. Other participants described not understanding how others get muscle tone from practice, not being able to take what they have learned from the yoga practice before and apply it to their current situation. They described not feeling like the yoga they do have is enough, as their mind goes right back to where it was when they finished practicing, not knowing what sensations they are meant to be feeling in the body, and thus, not knowing if they are doing the practice “right”, and wanting to do things right away and not permitting themselves time to learn.
Finding the time to practice and doing the home practice without support was another major challenge for the participants. One participant described the busyness of family life, where “I’m going in different directions that aren’t for me”, and others described being easily distracted while practicing alone at home; and feeling stress about finding time for physical activity. Other challenges with the home practice included a lack of motivation to practice at home or on their own, feeling less comfortable in the
84 mornings and thus not feeling that the ashtanga practice would be beneficial, feeling that if practicing on their own they were apt to do it wrong or give up easily, and putting their practice off until other things are done and never quite getting there.
Challenges with the Counselling Program
One participant commented on the relationship between the counselling program and a lack of physical activity, describing a cycle of: anxiety from always having work to do, to feeling guilty for taking the time to exercise, to not exercising, to feeling in a
“slump” due to a lack of activity.
Challenges with Beginning Counselling
Participants shared some of the challenges they experienced in their first counselling sessions, which they described as a “barrage of questions” and “like a really bad blind date”. Participants identified one of the challenges of their first counselling sessions as being due to trying to get it “right”, being the way they thought a counsellor should be, or trying to please others, which is essentially moving away or not listening to the integrated self. One participant described how these challenges affected their first counselling sessions:
It was more about me and how insecure I felt because of this striving to be perfect, because of this holding on to what I knew from my past had worked for me. And therefore I was asking questions that I probably shouldn’t have asked, or wouldn’t have asked if I had been listening to the person. And my physiology, my nervousness, my anxiety, I was so focused on that that the counselling was becoming more about me than the client.
85 One of the other participants shared how easy it is to “go back into [their] head” when they are tired or don’t have the energy to be fully present, and saw yoga as a way of becoming more present.
Teaching and Learning About Yoga
My role and contribution as a yoga teacher to the experience of the participants was also important to their experience of the phenomenon. As a teacher, I saw my role as providing space for and honouring their experiences, and when it was appropriate, providing a context in which to see these experiences in relation to yoga. Thus, while participants shared some of the challenges they were experiencing, almost like a supported mindfulness practice, I provided them with the space to share and acknowledge their experience and then I brought their attention back to their experience: moving their attention away from their stories about themselves and their struggles with the practice back to their actual experience of the practice.
Some of the most direct and poignant opportunities for teaching occurred when students were experiencing challenges with the practice. For example, in responding to a participant’s comment about not being able to practice on their own, I acknowledged their challenge directly and informed them we would be discussing it later, and then brought their attention back to what was happening when they were practicing. Also, when one participant shared that they had difficulty knowing if they were doing the practice right when they were at home, I confirmed with them that they were practicing on their own, to which I said “Great!”.
86 This balance between honouring narratives and bringing their attention back to their experience was also important in the focus groups. I provided more space for them to share at the beginning of the group and saved the teaching for the end. For example, near the end of the yoga course, when the participants were more comfortable and confident in discussing their experiences of the practice, the group had a rich conversation around the topic of thinking and the practice. When they had finished their conversation, I referenced their observations and conclusions to yoga philosophy, with the intention of drawing their attention away from the content of their thoughts and toward the process of thinking, while dispelling any ideals of making the mind silent.
Teaching also included sharing my experiences as a yoga practitioner. For example, when discussing the challenges of practicing on their own, I shared, with humour, my own experience of going through this process, normalizing their struggles and also sharing my recognition that it wasn’t all of those external things that seem to get in the way that kept me from practicing, but my own resistance. In this way, I modeled where to place responsibility: not falling into either blaming ourselves or taking no responsibility, but accepting our circumstances and being willing to work with them. My disclosure also demonstrated to the participants that I was engaged in this process with them. Near the end of the course, as I joked with them about only perhaps knowing the answers to any questions they might have, I could also hear a gentleness, honesty and humility in my voice that wasn’t there in the beginning, showing that I had also fully entered the process.
87 Phenomenology
The phenomenological methodology also created context for the experience of the participants and that which they shared. In each of the focus groups and the interviews, my intention was to direct them back to the phenomenon of the study: the contribution of yoga to their counselling education. One of the challenges I found with the methodology, in combination with the number of focus groups, was that continuing to come back to the same question felt tedious and redundant for both myself and the participants. Therefore,
I continued to find ways of asking questions and directing their attention, reminding them that our role is to describe experience, moving away from both analysis and our ‘natural perspective’. Although I questioned the degree to which this steered their responses, I also recognized that the participants were going to express the most important aspect of their experience, regardless of the questions I posed. The structure of the focus group created a space in which we could share, discuss and contrast our experiences with the intention of making sense of our experiences.
Engaging in the Process
Over the yoga course, participants accommodated for the discrepancy between their ideals and their experience and began to settle and engage in the practice. Thus, one of the major themes that emerged was an overall change in perspective, which was communicated both in words and tone: patience, acceptance, insight, and surprise coloured their narratives. Two comments that describe this shift in perspective were
“[Yoga] doesn’t work 100% of the time”, and “I’m not getting there to get my brain to
88 completely [quiet], but I’m getting better.” From my perspective, these comments were a sign that when the participants’ expectations of the practice were not met they were able to continue to engage in the process, adjusting their expectations, delving into the practice, rather than looking for a technique that is foolproof and works all the time.
Allowing for the possibility that perhaps it’s not the technique that isn’t working, and allowing ourselves to change. As ideals and all-or-nothing thinking are abandoned, a softening essential in learning to work/be with ourselves arises. The participants became a little more pragmatic and practical about the reality of being/working with themselves, inviting humility, a sense of humour, and acceptance, which can only be helpful in work with others. At this time, the participants were better able to relate the yoga practice to changes they were experiencing in their personal lives and their learning about counselling.
Softening within the clash of expectations and reality was also an important aspect of the process for me as the teacher and researcher. Changes in the participants in each interaction was also a place where my ideals of seeing this course as a linear process of growth also met reality. I was reminded that we all move in and out of clarity and in and out of our habitual patterns all the time. And thus, in each of the focus groups, sometimes the participants are clear and sometimes they are entangled, and certainly never all at the same time. For example, the general positive and encouraging attitude of the third focus group shifted in the fourth, with the participants tired and stressed with school work as their semester came to a close. A number of participants didn’t share in the group the way they had previously: they were distracted, tired, and some participants
89 who had already done the interviews felt they didn’t have any more to add. Thus, this focus group was an important reminder that this kind of work is always one in progress: even when participants discussed staying committed and making time in the final focus group, they still felt too busy to come to practice afterwards. This inconsistency only brought me a real appreciation of and patience with the process.
The Many Qualities of Yoga
One of the interesting insights that emerged from interviewing three participants with a wide variety of experience was to see how the practice of yoga exists everywhere from the outer, more physical layers to more subtle, inner layers. The many qualities of the practice, described as opening, trust, letting-go, and the way these relate to self- awareness and self-knowledge, work on all levels, suggesting the interpenetrating nature of the various aspects of being. For example, in terms of letting go, one of the newer participants described the process of letting go physically in shavasana, taking some time for their body to release into the floor; one participant talked about letting go in terms of thoughts, allowing them to integrate with the rest of their bodies; and one participant talked about letting go in terms of their beliefs about the world and trusting their body and what they know. Although with practice we are able to observe more subtle levels of our experience, it is not a linear process, and we are always working on all levels.
These conversations also served as an important reminder that yoga provides different things for different people. When we first start the practice, the attention is generally more attuned to the physical aspects of the postures, because we are just
90 learning them. After repeating the series of postures a number of times, it is common for the mind to drift more because we no longer have to think so much about the postures, and we become more attuned to our thoughts and emotions. Sitting with an experience or a thought, allowing it to work itself through is an important aspect of the practice, learning to neither indulge nor reject our experience, finding ourselves disentangled as it releases. It’s also important to remember that how we are attuned to our experience, whether it is more physically-oriented, or focused on the mind or emotions, is not only different from person to person, but also each time we practice.
Learning about Yoga Together
In some ways, one of the greatest strengths of the focus groups was also its greatest challenge: the participants fed off of each other and there was a lot of momentum to the group, so if the group headed in a particular direction, then much of the group headed in that direction.
In time, the participants began to compare their experiences to learn about the practice. One example of this group learning was a discussion in one focus group about their experience of thinking in the practice. The beginning practitioners in the group had all commented on their heads being empty while they practiced, confusing and concerning one of the more experienced participants whose head doesn’t “empty per se.”
This participant described how in her practice she might be thinking about something from class, in a way she described as a “sort of a reflecting, a wondering”, “not a conversational thing...thinking of something, like maybe even one particular thing I’m
91 working on with a client: those moments are sort of, like, frozen. And so, I’m just pondering an aspect of something.” One of the participants responded to her, clarifying,
“Is it like a space to notice things that wouldn’t usually come up?” This participant agreed, “I have a very fast-paced [life] and sometimes in that I miss certain things. So it’s when things are quiet and pulled back, and yoga gives me that, that’s when I can quietly contemplate or reflect on something.”
The group had a rich conversation around the topic of thinking and the practice, all contributing their experiences and ways they have worked with themselves. One participant described moving more deeply into a posture when they began to think, provoking those practitioners who said their mind emptied to recognize and clarify that they do think in the practice, but they think about what they are doing, rather than thinking about other aspects of their lives. They also remarked that this isn’t something they make a conscious effort to do, but just happens, or they only notice that they have stopped thinking at the end of the class.
Support of the Group
Through the stories shared by participants, I gained a real understanding of just how much support the group provided each of the participants. There was a mutually supportive relationship between the more experienced and newer practitioners: the beginning practitioners were supported and encouraged by the more experienced practitioners, and the more experienced practitioners felt more accepted and understood in the group, and their interest in yoga was encouraged in seeing their classmates engage
92 and evolve in the process. For those participants who are already into yoga, this research provided them with an opportunity to reflect and explore the relationship between their practice and counselling.
The community also provided a structure that was essential to each participant maintaining a practice, regardless of the length of time they had been practicing. As I shared in one of the interviews: “Yoga isn’t something you can do before and you learn the things from it and then you stop practicing because you’ve learned that stuff. It has to be a continual process.” Thus, as the practice of yoga cultivates embodied knowing rather than an exclusively cognitive understanding—yoga works on the mind, not by the mind—a regular yoga practice is equally important for long-term practitioners as it is for beginners. We have to bring the practice alive in every context with our whole being.
The structure of the group supported the participants in overcoming the challenges of maintaining various aspects of self-care, whether they lacked the energy, were consumed by school work, forgot about it, or didn’t feel they had the time.
As a group, we discussed and supported the challenges the participants were encountering. For example, in discussing the challenges of their home practice challenges, one participant offered the value of self-discipline, which I summarized at the time as “even though I don’t feel like it now, I’m going to do it anyways.” Another participant commented, “I always feel better after I do it though”, recognizing that despite the challenges of practicing, it was worth working through them.
Mutual Learning Between Teacher and Students
93 The interviews and one-on-one interactions with the participants provided a touching opportunity for me to recognize how much the participants had engaged in this practice. Even with participants coming to the practice with such diverse experiences, they were all fully engaged in the practice both individually and as members of a practicing community. Some of our interactions also provided the participants an opportunity to process their experiences in the counselling program.
In particular, the interviews provided an opportunity to have an honest and genuine reflection about our interactions with each other over the process. These interactions were similar to the process of working through a counter-transference in a counselling session: dropping the teacher/student, researcher/participant roles and exploring our interactions together and learning from them. In each of these interviews, I talked about the practice as a mirror: when friction arises individually or in a relationship, the practice holds up a mirror in which we’re able to see ourselves clearly, bringing our actions into the light of awareness, which allows the experience to move us to take creative, rather than habitual, action. With one participant in particular, our interaction spurred much reflection on both our parts and led us to both open more deeply to the process. Having the opportunity to talk these experiences through also reminded me that some of the most powerful moments are not the comfortable ones, and thus to be patient and trust the uncomfortable experiences and see how they evolve.
Another form of one-on-one interactions with the participants was with hands-on adjustments in the yoga class: a moment of directly engaging and also where there is physical touch. Adjustments were an opportunity to empower the participants in
94 knowing and caring for their body, as they advised the teacher of what is and isn’t helpful, creating a more equal sharing of power in the relationship. The power of touch is not to be taken lightly, and discussing it with the participants was an important reminder for me as a teacher of how meaningful and intimate this aspect of sharing the practice can be.
The interviews also provided a valuable opportunity for the students to process and reflect on their experiences in both the counselling program and with the yoga. The interviews also provided an important opportunity for me to be able to discuss some of my own ideas about yoga and counselling when they related to what the participant was speaking about. In each of the interviews, I was able to see where I was still stuck holding on to a particular point of view, and thus these interviews were also an opportunity for learning and growth for me. In each of the interviews, many of the ideas that we shared through these interactions were ones that were also new to me, which speaks to the collaborative learning and discovery that takes place in a relationship, which has been essential to this research project.
E. Essence of the Phenomenon
Based on the textural and structural descriptions, imaginative variation was used to determine the essential features of the participants’ experience of the contribution of yoga to counsellor education. The process of variation included altering: the teacher, the participants, the culture, the form of the practice, and the counselling program, for example. In this process, I continued to ask what aspects of the phenomenon would remain when all of these factors varied.
95 Through this imaginative process, in addition to spending countless days immersed in the data, the following relationship between the data appeared as shown in
Figure 48:
Preent-Centered Expe ence Reflection Processing Creating Space Vulnerability Not knowing Being with the Breath Letting Go Awareness Self-knowledge
Structure & Form Fruits of Practice
Challenges Group Personal Counselling Time Comfort with silence Support (group/teaching) Flexibility Listening Accountability (group/ Strength Presence me) Calm Relaxed Yoga philosophy Grounded Techniques Ashtanga Practice Relaxed Posture & Breath Techniques
Figure 4. A holistic practice: the contribution of yoga to counsellor education.
Therefore, I would name the essence of the contribution of the yoga practice to counsellor education as a holistic practice characterized by these three aspects of the
8 The descriptions in each category of this figure are representative of the data, rather than exhaustive.
96 process: the structure and form of the practice, present-centered experience and fruits of the practice, which they experienced both personally and in their counselling practice.
The form and structure aspect of the phenomenon includes the structure of the group, having a scheduled time in which they had committed to practice, and accountability both to myself as a colleague as well as to each other. Technical and personal support, both from myself as a yoga teacher and also from each other, was important to this process. There was a mutually enhancing relationship between the more experienced and newer practitioners. The more experienced participants provided support and wisdom from their experience and the efforts and openness of the newer practitioners inspired the more experienced practitioners, and made the experienced practitioners feel more accepted in the group. The yoga philosophy provided a context and structure within which the participants could understand and frame their experience.
The structure of the ashtanga practice, as well as techniques, provided the participants with a structure they could practice both on their own and within a group.
Additionally, the challenges the participants were experiencing in the counselling program, in their counselling sessions, and in the yoga course and home practice also contributed to creating a form and structure, in that it created the particular context in which the practice was relevant.
The second aspect of the phenomenon is the present-centered experience, which describes their experiences of encountering themselves in the practice. This aspect encompasses the process of reflection, processing of their experiences in the course, the experience of creating space, practicing mindfulness, and their experience of being with
97 the breath. Themes of wholeness and integration, and their descriptions of the many forms of yoga, are descriptions of being in this aspect. This space is this elusive aspect of our experience, where we encounter our present experience with vulnerability and without knowing the outcome. Here, participants describe simply being with the breath.
Acceptance, patience, self-awareness and self-knowledge are all qualities that emerged in this space.
The third aspect of this phenomenon are the fruits of the practice, which were tasted physically, emotionally, cognitively and as experiences of wholeness and integration: gaining flexibility, strength, feeling calm, grounded, relaxed, with better attention and focus. For example, these fruits of the practice were experienced personally and in their counselling practice, which they described as being better at being able to stay in silence, listening fully, developing counsellor presence, and also sharing yoga and breathing techniques with their clients.
F. Further Explorations of the Data
In addition to analyzing the data thematically, other observations and analysis provided further insight into the contribution of yoga to counsellor practice and development. The two other forms of observation included the group process throughout the focus group as well as an analysis of the way in which the individual narratives changed throughout the process.
98 a. The Group Process
Although the structure of each focus group was similar, the discussion topics and general feeling or quality of each group was quite different. The differences between the focus groups, as listed below, revealed insight into the process in which the participants engaged as a group.
Opening Focus Group
In the opening focus group, both the participants and myself were meeting each other in a new light. Although the participants already knew each other from their classes, they hadn’t yet met in this context, and since the participants formed a smaller subset of their class, the group dynamic was different. We were more quiet and tentative, with a hint of vulnerability and uncertainty as we discussed our experience with yoga and with the counselling program. We shared our previous and present experiences: the places from which we were beginning this course together. In this focus group, we also discussed and negotiated the details of commitment to the research and some of the structure: an opportunity for us to learn to work together in an honest and open way.
Second Focus Group
The second group session focused on the challenges the participants were experiencing, both in yoga and in counselling. This group was tinged with a hint of disappointment that yoga wasn’t doing what they thought it would, and a frustration of not being able to figure it out, as though it wasn’t working. The participants were grappling with their questions and experiences. This focus group provided a beautiful
99 opportunity to discuss together as a group how to work with some of the challenges they were facing. It also provided an opportunity for me to teach, expanding the way they were thinking about yoga and the practice. Although some of the participants seemed open to listening and others more withdrawn, there seemed to be movement with all of them after this group. There was an important intimacy and trust that came with our sharing in this group.
Third Focus Group
In the third focus group, there was an air of optimism as we spent time exploring what they were experiencing as different from what they expected and what they were learning. There was a tone of softening, curiosity, patience, excitement, pride, accomplishment, lightness and humour, with a sense that although the course and its relationship to their counselling weren’t exactly as they expected, they were getting something from it. There was a sense that they were coming to understand it as a process rather than an end, and they were just beginning to taste the fruits of the practice. In this focus group, they began to explore the nature of the practice together, comparing their experiences to others in the group and inquiring together. At the end of the focus group, I related their conversation to yoga philosophy, again grounding it in the practice, but they required much less teaching and support from me than in the previous focus group.
Closing Focus Group
In the closing group the participants (as well as myself) were tired, preoccupied, stressed about pending deadlines in their courses and sad about the course being over.
100 This session held a heavier and less open quality than the third session: the group was less exploratory and more confident and definitive, as they settled into a conclusion on their experiences. The participants contributed less to the discussion and I felt more sensitive in asking them questions. Thus, in this focus group, I gave them more space, questioning their choice of language less. At the end of this focus group, we had an opportunity to bring closure to the group by sharing what we were taking with us from this process.
Looking at the focus group process as a whole revealed a group process: coming together as a group; meeting challenges in the process; working and exploring together coherently and constructively; and closing the process. This process reflects the group development process described by Tuckman and Jensen (1977), for example, characterized by the stages of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (as cited in Gladding, 2003, p. 109). In this process, these phases were reflected in both the relationships between the participants as a group, and the relationship each of them had individually with the practice, and thus with themselves. Thus, this analysis brings to light that a group process is an important contribution of yoga to counselling education.
b. Analysis of Data by Individual Participants
Since the opening focus group, I had a vague sense that the method of data analysis typically used for this type of research—describing themes across the participants—seemed to not quite resonate with the nature of the practice. Given that yoga is such an individual path, and one that is constantly evolving, I wondered whether looking at how the individual narratives change over time, rather than looking at what
101 was common to each of these participants, might provide an interesting insight into the question of this research.
This analysis of the data by individual participants explored the evolution of their narratives over the course of the research process. Of course, these changes in narrative cannot be exclusively attributed to the practice, but they do show how each participant’s relationship to yoga changed. This was one of the most fascinating aspects of the research, as to me it provided an indication that the participants were engaged with a transformative process.
The narratives I will be describing were chosen based on a particular quality I heard in the voices of the participants: very slightly defensive, firm, perhaps self- protective, perhaps just a little extra energy or conviction. Other times, I have chosen a narrative that was one of the first things participants chose to share, demonstrating that it was a well-established pattern that emerged when they embarked on work of this kind.9
Example 1
Opening Focus Group: “It’s been a few years since I have practiced yoga, but...I found I need to be in a class or a session, because what happens is I’ll start, I let my life take over and... I stop practicing, I need the structure, I need the structure of someone going through the steps and that with me, as I’m clearly not, I’m not focused enough to do it on my own.”
Focus Group 2: “I haven’t done any practice on my own. Last week was a bad week. I have plans to do more this week because it’s hard for me to determine how much the yoga has helped me because I have only done it a few times with
9 Rather than providing examples for each of the participants, I have shared six that are representative of the group.
102 you. I’ve been very lax, in that, in that I need someone to kick my ass a lot of the time to do things.”
Focus Group 3: “I’m getting better, it’s still going, but I’m getting better. Um, yeah, so if I can keep doing the practice, then I can keep having that calming benefit... So [integrating] actually doing it on my time. I’m only maybe doing 10 minutes, but...that’s still better, because I wander off with the cat when it decides, I’ll do downward dog with you. So, it doesn’t work so well, and I usually get distracted and wander off, but just starting to integrate it in longer pieces.”
Closing Focus Group: “I can carry it away and do it on my own now, because I know how, but having the time to learn and to grow together was good.”
Example 2
Opening Focus Group: “I think for me it is a complete release, like, uh, a way to get away from everything. I thought I would think about things when I was quiet and I found quite the opposite, I was allowed to get out of my own head and put it into my practice and focus and you know it’s the breath or whatever. For me, it was the being out of my head.”
Focus Group 3: “So, [yoga]’s been my definition of self-care, and a place for, to quietly work out stuff, like sometimes I’m thinking about something we thought of in class while I’m practicing.”
Example 3
Opening Focus Group: “Yoga, I love. And I maybe started when I was in university last time, which was a long time ago, but I really like yin and more hatha and maybe moksha and some of those more slower styles, because for me yoga is about balance and grounding in my life and I have a ton of yang energy surrounding me everywhere as it is, so it’s a kind of refuge for me, usually.
103 Closing Focus Group: “The biggest realization of this experience occurred after our last focus group because, um, then I was saying how sometimes maybe yoga isn’t the best thing for me, and I was sort of listening to myself about that, but that is really something to celebrate because it means that right now I am taking good care of myself.”
Example 4
Opening Focus Group:“...I haven’t done this type of activity before. You know, you hear people say, oh, it’s really inspiring, it’s really spiritual, and I have to be honest, I don’t think I’m going to reach that because I’ve done a lot of things with movement, where it’s just become, it’s physically, it’s just about getting stronger, more flexibility, and that’s it.”
Focus Group 2: “I’m not noticing anything major, I’m pretty active anyways, um, so. What I get from the sessions and stuff is just, it feels like just like a very long stretching class, that’s what it feels like. And I’m still baffled, I’m like, how does anyone get muscle tone from this? Like it doesn’t, I don’t know how that happens, because it feels like you’re just stretching, for right now, and um, yeah, that’s it. So I’m still exploring it...”
Focus Group 3: “...there’s something, something very enlightening, uplifting, I don’t even know, about pick up the mat and go to school that day, and say, I have yoga. And it’s not necessarily, it’s not the stretching or the breathing or I’m not becoming one with myself or anything, it’s just something that was refreshing I guess about it.”
Example 5
Pre-Survey: “I think of yoga as a great way to relax the mind and stretch your body. I haven’t thought of it as a contemplative practice before.”
Post-Survey: “Before starting this program, I felt like yoga was a good stretch, but not much more than that. I can now see more benefit to the practice. I myself
104 have noticed changes in my body such as increased flexibility, but have also noticed changes in my state of being. I am feeling calmer and centered as a person, and I feel that if I were to continue the practice this would only increase.”
Example 6
Opening Focus Group: “The self-reflecting part. Constant. Why did I think this, and why didn’t I think that, and how come that person knows to go at that angle, and how come I am going at this angle, and is this wrong, or is that wrong, or is nothing wrong?”
Focus Group 2: “So, I guess the problem I’m having is taking all the things I’ve experienced before with yoga, because I used to do it for two to three hours a night, and trying to like translate it into this environment and it’s not working for me. Um, so, and then, to be able to use it when I do feel that anxiety before it comes on, but not just having the time to just stop and focus before I go in.” “Sometimes, when I’m with my client, there are moments when all of a sudden that releases and I mean, I’m completely there or in the moment, at least I feel I am, but it takes a good 20 - 25 minutes before I actually.”
Final Focus Group: “And I thought of how yoga has helped me, helped me with my ability to let go and move things and not hold onto things as much. And just to go back to what you were saying about increasing self-awareness, and how that has a lot to do with letting go too, because you’re thinking about all the things that you thought were right and all the things that you thought were wrong, and what am I going to do when I enter the room with a client? And it’s just letting go of that. For me, that was the overall theme that just keeps coming up.”
! Interestingly, when participants were asked whether they had noticed a change in the way they talked about themselves and yoga over the eight weeks, there were a wide variety of responses. Some participants found that their narratives did change with experience and recognized the effects of yoga beyond the physical. Some participants
105 commented on talking about themselves in a more positive way, some didn’t think that their narratives had changed, and others found it difficult to take in the narratives because they were so full with the counselling program.
G. Conclusion
Analyzing the data in various ways revealed the contribution of yoga to counsellor practice and development. Through a phenomenological data analysis process, the essence of this contribution was revealed as a call to holistic practice, characterized by three interrelated components of the form of the practice, present-centered experience, and the fruits of the practice experienced by the participants both personally and in their practice. A reflection on the focus groups as a whole demonstrated the important role of the group in facilitating the process and experience of the participants. Finally, an analysis of data by individual participants brought to light the transformative nature of the process. The next chapter provides a discussion of this analysis.
106 Chapter 6. Discussion
This discussion will exclusively focus on the contribution of yoga to counsellor education as experienced by the participants and the analysis of this data. This section will include reflections on the phenomenon as described by the participants, the contribution of this work to the literature and the role of the teacher.
A. The Contribution of Yoga to Counselling Education
Introducing a yoga course into this counselling education program brought the participants into this embodied practice, affecting both their development and practice as counsellors. This course also addressed my own objectives at the beginning of the research, providing the participants with an opportunity to learn about and experience contemplative practice, and a structure within which to learn and cultivate qualities essential to counselling presence. And, perhaps most importantly, the yoga course provided us all with more than we expected.
Through a phenomenological data analysis, the essence of the contribution of yoga to counselling practice and development revealed a call to holistic practice, characterized by three interrelated aspects: the form and structure, present-centered experience and the fruits of the practice, experienced by the participants both personally and professionally.
a. Form and Structure
Although it is generally assumed that counselling students are engaging in a reflective process throughout their education (J. Sumarah, personal communication,
107 November 30, 2010), which is currently offered informally in the counselling program through courses, individual conversations, and supervision, the yoga course offered structure and support for this process. Practicing yoga and engaging in this reflective process as a group provided support, friendship, and a sense of community, as well as commitment and accountability to the process. This course was not only suitable to both beginner and experienced practitioners, but the diversity of experience was actually beneficial to each of the participants, regardless of their place in that spectrum.
Given the combination of the cognitive/intellectual-orientation of the counselling program and the perceived lack of time for physical activity, the ashtanga yoga practice was well-suited to this group, who welcomed a more active yoga practice. The asana techniques and structure of the ashtanga practice created the space in which participants could cultivate present-centered attention and focus to be/work with their habitual patterns of body, mind and emotions. Yoga philosophy, communicated both through the written pieces as well as my actions as a teacher, provided the context and orientation of the practice.
This yoga course supported the counselling students through many of the challenges they described facing early in the program: a lack of time for physical activity and personal time, a heightened self-awareness and self-reflection, and the predominantly cognitive orientation of an academic counselling program. Yoga practices are designed to meet, come to know, and be comfortable with our vulnerability: recognizing the inherent human suffering and working with our own particular set of conditions. As the yoga practice supports us in being present with any pattern that is arising, each of the
108 participants were able to do their own work together as a group, as the counselling program affected each of the participants differently. Creating space for and supporting the participants to learn to be and work with their vulnerability in this way, coming to know it rather than getting rid of it, supported their ability to be with the vulnerability of their clients. When our vulnerability as a counsellor meets that of our client there is an equality and mutuality in the relationship that supports the therapeutic process, from which both the counsellor and client benefit.
b. Present-Centered Experience
As yoga is embodied and experiential in nature, practice is essential, and yet the postures aren’t an end in and of themselves. The present-centered reflective aspect of this process is the space towards which contemplative practices, including yoga, orient us.
Many of the participants commented on the heightened self-awareness and self-reflection evoked both by the deeply personal content of the counselling program as well as beginning to observe themselves in counselling relationships. The counselling students described this reflective process as giving rise to acceptance, compassion, and self- knowledge, rather than the judgment and feelings of incompetence. My hope for each of the participants was for them to have just one experience of the empty-nature of their thoughts and feelings: one taste of the awareness that remains when these thoughts and feelings have been seen through. According to yoga philosophy, this space is inherently transformative, as when we see the emptiness of our thoughts and feelings, our self- narrative is seen through, and from this experience a new self and world emerge together.
109 Many of the participants discussed yoga as a process of integration and wholeness, and one participant described the practice as their own counselling sessions:
Yoga offers, it’s almost like my own counselling session, it’s like the yoga is my counselling and I’m the client...It offers me the time to evaluate my, look at my stuff, not someone else’s.
As disclosed in some of the interviews and one-on-one discussions, many of the participants were also working with their own personal challenges throughout the counselling program, particularly due to the nature of the content they were studying.
Yoga provided a means of directly addressing these challenges, which they could also do within the support of a group and a teacher. In some ways, working with themselves without directly addressing the content supports the context of the practice, which is to pay more attention to the nature of our suffering. As this nature is common to each of us, this orientation demonstrates the mutual nature of healing and change essential to the counselling process, softening the distinction between ourselves and the other. Therefore, the practice of yoga in conjunction with the counselling program provided the participants with the support and means of cultivating the qualities important to counsellors, including being present, non-judgmental, and focused, based on their experience of encountering and working with themselves.
Connected with this vulnerability in entering the counselling program is a shift in identity that comes with taking on a new role or a new career, which elicited questioning, uncertainty, and a lack of confidence. Yoga provided a means of coming back to their whole self, allowing their experience and new identity to be integrated. This practice also opened the participants to deeper questions of the nature of the self and to recognize, in
110 their own experience, this dialogue between experience and language. It is in this dialogue that we encounter and come to know our own habitual patterns and thus gain self-knowledge. Paradoxically, this self-knowledge is also the knowledge of other, as the practice of moving deeply into our own experience is one of understanding the ways in which we are the same. The compassion, humility and wisdom that arise from the practice are essential to our work with others.
Each of the participants described this present-centered experience in a variety of ways. Participants with more experience with yoga described this space more than participants newer to the practice. Newer participants found that during the practice they were able to focus exclusively on the practice, providing a much-needed break from their full and busy minds, whereas participants with more experience described the practice as an opportunity to reflect, to cleanse, and to integrate. Through their process, the participants became more gentle with themselves, more accepting and willing to work within their limitations. Participants described being/working in similar ways, “letting go” for example, on physical, emotional, and cognitive levels, suggesting both the interconnection of these aspects of our experience, and that the practice moves in and out from the tangible to the subtle. Although some of the participants who were new to the practice may not have described or even recognized this reflective space explicitly, they described experiences at the end of the course that were beyond the physical aspect of the practice. Therefore, the inclusion of this present-centered experience as distinct and interrelated with the form and fruits of the practice, may be an important contribution to the literature.
111 c. Fruits of the Practice
The fruits of yoga practice were those aspects of the practice the participants hoped for from the beginning and are likely what drew them to participate in the research.
These fruits of the practice were experienced on all levels of their being: physical, emotional, cognitive, and experiences of wholeness and integration. Participants described these fruits of the practice as being related to a heightened awareness of their bodies, emotions, and thoughts, allowing them to be/work with habitual patterns and responses to stress. In many ways, these benefits inspired a sense that change and opening is possible, as the participants exceeded their own expectations, softening their perceptions and beliefs about themselves. These experiences of well-being also supported participants throughout the program, relieving stress, feeling grounded, feeling
“refreshed”, and gaining physical strength and flexibility. Many participants also discussed how the residue of the yoga practice would continue to stay with them through their day. Participants also described the interconnected nature of these various aspects of themselves. The physical aspect of the practice also introduced an embodied, physical aspect into the counselling program, in which the teaching is cognitively-oriented, and very few of the theories and techniques taught include the use of the physical body.
One of the interesting comments about the fruits of the practice from several participants is that they were surprised by them, as they required no effort on their part.
For example, they didn’t try to be more focused in their counselling session, they just were. This observation speaks to the paradoxical nature of the practice: we can only experience this contemplative space when we have given up trying to get anywhere.
112 These observations speak to the practice being one of letting go, rather than gaining anything or getting anywhere, which raises an interesting question of how our cultural habits of accumulation have affected our perception of yoga.
The participants also found that the outcomes of the practice supported their counselling practice with clients. The self-awareness they gained throughout the practice allowed them to feel more relaxed, patient, grounded and open in their counselling sessions. They found that they were better able to focus in their sessions, and were better able to listen not just with their minds, but with their whole selves. A number of participants also commented on being better able to follow and support the client through their own process, and felt comfortable sharing yoga and breathing techniques.
Some participants described this relationship between the yoga practice and their counselling sessions in a causal way: because they felt more relaxed from the practice, they were able to bring that relaxation to the practice. Others described yoga and counselling as inseparable, reflecting the conclusion of Valente and Marotta (2005), that psychotherapists with a long-term yoga practice described yoga as a way of life. Thus, the following model as shown in Figure 2, as a reconfiguration of Figure 1 (p. 96) , may describe their experience of an integrated practice more accurately.
113 Preent-Centered
Expe ence
Life & Fruits of Practice Formal Practice C nseling
Figure 4. An integrated practice: an alternative model of holistic practice in counsellor education
As yoga continues to inform our experience, the form of the practice expands, toward a point where each experience becomes a form in which to practice. And thus counselling, rather than being a place to which we bring the fruits of the practice, is rather another form for the practice. A formal practice is also important to maintain on a daily basis, creating a space in which our efforts are exclusively focused to this end.
B. A Contribution to the Literature
The participants’ description of the contribution of the practice to their development and practice as counsellors is similar to those described in the supporting literature. Most of the research in this area has analyzed the students’ journals, organizing the data thematically across the participants. A unique perspective of this
114 piece of research has come from the combination of a phenomenological approach, an exploration of yoga philosophy, the reflections of the researcher, and seeing how the narratives of the participants changed over the yoga course through the analysis of the data by individual.
! This analysis provides an important perspective to this research, as it reflects what
I, as a teacher, was attuned to as a sign that the participants were engaged in this process.
Considering the evolution of their narratives over time points to the transformative nature of this process and demonstrates the qualities the participants were cultivating through the practice, which can be heard in their narratives. Rather than answering the question what are the contributions of yoga to counsellor education, by honouring the individual nature of the practice, perhaps this analysis reveals more intuitively how yoga contributes to counselling education.
What is unique about this analysis is that it shows how the participants’ description of their experience changes over time, independent of their narrative of the changes they experienced. It is interesting to note that when participants were asked in the post-survey whether they noticed this change in their narratives, they either said they didn’t, or what they described was different than the process that I observed. It is also very interesting to note that some of the participants could, however, describe these changes in their colleagues. Also, the challenges the participants described in their post- surveys often corresponded to those narratives I heard changing throughout the course.
These observations suggest that the practice allows us to be/work with those places that
115 we find most challenging, regardless of whether they are physical, cognitive, emotional, or spiritual.
Yoga is designed to address duhkha, our experience of suffering or a sense of lack and separation, rather than a particular condition. This purpose is one of the reasons that yoga is particularly powerful for counsellors and those in the helping professions, as it allows us to have a direct connection between our own personal work and our work with others, bringing equal power to the relationship as well as the potential to be compassionate, empathic and humble. Thus, research in yoga should not exclusively focus on investigating its efficacy with various disorders and populations, but continue to look for ways to make it most accessible to various populations by viewing the specific challenge as a form of duhkha.
Thus, this analysis is also the place where yoga philosophy and phenomenology meet. Yoga philosophy describes the relationships between our narratives, our perceptions and encounters with the self and others, and provides a path to seeing more clearly and engaging in authentic relationships. The unique feature of this phenomenological study, which relates to yoga philosophy, is that the participants were asked to describe the phenomenon a number of times over the course of practice. As described in the methodology, the practice of yoga focuses on the noetic end of the noema-noesis relationship, allowing us to see our own structures so that we might see the phenomenon more clearly and on its own terms. Thus, yoga philosophy would suggest that the changing of their narratives was a sign that they were entering a reflective space in which their self-narratives were dissolving and reforming based on new experiences.
116 Also, the qualities that are described to be cultivated in the practice as a result of this present-centered experience can be heard in the participants’ descriptions of their experience.
However, as this aspect is always evolving and changing, there is no particular endpoint to have reached in the eight weeks; there is no conclusion, only a brief snapshot of their process. As I have written previously, this is a long-term process that is cyclical in nature, meaning we come back to encounter the same patterns again and again. Thus, because it is the nature of the practice to be ongoing, it is impossible to be definitive about this aspect of the research. It is not surprising that it hasn’t been included in the research literature, as it would be akin to publishing papers with exactly the same conclusion each time. Of course, the path and the actions that emerge are always different, but what we find ourselves recognizing and remembering is often the same. So, as our structures change or are seen through with the practice of yoga, our ability to know its contribution to counselling only emerges with continued practice. Thus here, we also arrive at the meeting place between myself as a practitioner and a researcher: the path to this experiential knowing is through practice.
If yoga is distinct from whichever pattern we happen to be in at any particular time, it is our ability to be present in every situation that we cultivate in practice rather than particular outcomes. And so, one evolution of the original research questions is: how often are we coming back into this present-centered space and what is the quality of our attention? Thus, whether this course was successful, to me, isn’t reflected in any particular outcome, but rather if a seed has been planted, if the participants have had just
117 one taste of this process. Although I don’t know where this process might lead for each individual, as a teacher (and as a practitioner) I see it as my role to continue to orient them toward and create conditions for entering this present-centered space, and let the rest take care of itself.
C. The Role of the Teacher
Many participants commented on the complementary nature of the yoga course and the counselling program. On one hand, we could say that yoga was a means by which the participants were able to process their learning and experience in the counselling program. The yoga course provided a space for the participants to be/work with their vulnerability that arose due to the personal content of the material, integrating themselves into a new identity as a counsellor, as well as meeting others in their vulnerability. Yoga created the support and structure for a process exclusively focused on themselves, and access to other aspects of their being. And at the same time, the yoga and counselling program complimented each other, and the participants saw their learning coming from both. Yoga provided an embodied experience of what the counselling program was teaching intellectually. The yoga course thus complimented the teaching, modeling, support and supervision of their professors, all fine counsellors and teachers, and their own reflective processes in the program.
In terms of my role as the yoga teacher, I certainly can’t separate myself from the process, but I can say with confidence that my role was only in creating the structure and support for the practice. The present-centered experience and the fruits of the practice
118 came from their own experience, effort, and willingness to engage in the process. The importance of teachers being engaged in practice is also described by Kabat-Zinn (2003):
In our experience, unless the instructor’s relationship to mindfulness is grounded in extensive personal practice, the teaching and guidance one might bring to the clinical context will have little in the way of appropriate energy, authenticity, or ultimate relevance, and that deficit will soon be felt by program participants... How will one know how to respond appropriately and specifically to their questions if one cannot draw on one’s own lived experience, not just on book knowledge and concepts, when the practice itself is all about seeing clearly and transcending (not getting caught up in and blinded by) the limitations of the conceptual mind while, of course, not rejecting the conceptual mind or the power and utility of thought within the larger context of awareness? (p. 150)
A PhD dissertation by Stauffer (2007) also explored this question of mindfulness competencies for therapists sharing mindfulness practices with their clients, concluding that “competent counselors and psychotherapists engage in specific education, training and supervisory experience in order to train clients in mindfulness methods” (p. 81).
Thus, as a teacher, authenticity, training, and a dedication and engagement to the practice are essential elements to the success of the course.
On this note, the following chapter shares my own process and reflections, as the researcher, teacher, practitioner and beginning counsellor, as a complement to those of my participants.
119 Chapter 7. My Personal Process and Reflections
My experience in this research has not been so different from that of my participants.
This research has provided the opportunity for perhaps one of deepest immersions in the practice that I have yet to experience. I was living and breathing yoga. In addition to a daily posture and meditation practice, I also participated in three weekend workshops with three very different, and each very wonderful, teachers. I spent my weeks during the yoga course reading both popular and academic yoga literature, discovering and clarifying my own understanding of yoga philosophy through writing my own reflections, and spent countless hours writing and exploring my own thoughts, feelings and ideas that arose throughout the research, treating them as a gateway to deeper understanding and a path to acceptance, intelligence and love. And it was with this engagement, and thus from this perspective, that I met each of the participants, read each of their surveys, conducted the focus groups and interviews, and taught them postures. It has been from here that I have written creative pieces as well as the data analysis. Thus, the process and practice of yoga isn’t just the topic of the thesis, but has guided the entire process.
My own process in this research has been as transformative for me as it has been for the participants. As I am also a beginning counsellor, just having completed this same counselling program, I believe that my insights and experience are also a valuable perspective to the exploration of the contribution of yoga to counselling development and practice.
Beginning the Process
120 I began this research with lots to prove. The only clarity I had, the only sense of knowing without knowing, was that yoga would be of benefit to the students in the counselling program. This benefit wasn’t a question for me, as it was based on my own experience. The rest however—including the four questions I posed at the beginning of the research about language, a context for yoga, self-care, the relationship between yoga and mindfulness, as well as many of my ideas about yoga—carried too much emotion, firmness and conviction to have this same clarity. And although I knew there was something to them, I also knew that they would transform with me in this process.
Although the first few weeks of this project—the recruitment, orientation session, opening focus groups and even the first week of classes—were exciting and fruitful, they were also filled with unexpected challenges. These challenges came in all shapes and sizes, some technical, some personal: many of the participants wanting my permission to miss classes after committing to the research; emailing the wrong version of the pre- survey after agonizing over the questions; a voice recorder that wouldn’t work at the beginning of the focus group, and fear that this research wouldn’t meet my un-reachable expectations and that participants wouldn’t like me. This last challenge was certainly the deepest and most unconscious, making itself known through many old and well-loved patterns, from fretting over what to wear and each word of an email, to subtly putting myself down in front of others, to talking way too much. In our first few meetings in particular, although I was as honest and as authentic as I could be, I was very “on” in a way that only gets evoked in these sorts of situations. Little defense mechanisms, ways
121 of protecting myself by pleasing others, that I had abandoned one by one over time, suddenly re-appeared.
All of these experiences provided opportunities to bring the practice of yoga to life and test out my theories. Working with my nervousness prior to the orientation session is perhaps one of the best examples of exploring how I saw the relationship between counselling and yoga. Before meeting the group for the orientation session, during which participants would choose whether to join the research, I waited outside their classroom door, squatted down amongst my bags and a calendar drawn on a waist- high chalkboard. I was very nervous, the heart-pounding kind of nervous, and of course, the class was running late, so I had plenty of time to enjoy it. I was fascinated with how my mind continued to flip back and forth between imagining that every single person in the class wanted to participate to fearing that no one would be interested. After a few moments of this flipping back and forth, and suddenly seeing what my mind was doing and the effect it was having on me, I smiled. I started to pay attention to my breath, just tuning in at first and then starting to lengthen my exhale to calm myself down. And with the breath in the background of my attention, I began to watch my anxiety: a perfect opportunity to practice yoga and explore the paradox that the way out of our anxiety is to settle into the anxiety and give up trying to escape it. Of course, impatience and creating stories about our experiences interrupts this process, and I continued to flip back and forth between the two: breathing techniques as a path of getting out of my anxiety and just allowing it. It seemed to me that in trying to get rid of something, our mind becomes fragmented, with one part of it attempting to control the others. And although this can be
122 helpful, noticing and being willing to experience whatever is going on, when possible, feels more authentic and whole. But this process also requires trust, letting go of our story lines and our desire to control the situation. And being with it meant that I met the participants that day with vulnerability, with openness and honesty, which in the end is what I would have hoped. Ten of sixteen students were interested in participating, which was perfect to balance out my all or nothing thinking. This experience was a wonderful opportunity to learn, and was also an example I shared with the participants.
Similar to counselling, or any relationship for that matter, there are always moments of disappointment that occur as we enter into a relationship. It’s as though disappointment is a precursor to a more genuine meeting, as it necessarily loosens our grip on our ideals. I found myself a little disappointed after our orientation session, because of this authenticity, revealing more of myself, my habits, my nervousness, and my scatteredness: my humanness really. Perhaps I felt a little disappointed that the image of myself had been seen through, an image that perhaps even I had begun to believe.
Disappointment has been a common theme throughout this process, which I have come to recognize as a good sign of my ideals dissolving to allow a meeting of things as they are.
The day after the orientation session, the title of my notes was Starting Fresh and the first line said, “thank goodness.” The beauty of a yoga practice: realizing that at absolutely any moment, you can start over. We’re always starting over, and this is one of the lessons of mindfulness practice: when we notice that we have drifted away from the breath, we gently bring ourselves back and start over. And over and over and over. And thus we bring this same approach to the rest of our lives, whether it’s in difficult
123 interactions, a focus group, the middle of a yoga class, or a counselling session: at any moment, we can choose to start fresh. Overwhelmed with some of these challenges at the beginning of the research, I talked with a number of people who all provided very helpful, and different, insights to something that was completely new to me. Of all the wonderful advice, what remained with me was the importance of trust: to trust what is happening and stay with it, rather than trying to make any part of the research conform to a particular idea I have.
Beginning to Teach
My first moment of teaching yoga came even before we made it to the yoga mat.
We began the orientation session with a few minutes of breathing, with the intention of dissolving any of their preconceptions of yoga. I learned so much about my participants during these first few moments of watching them breathe: a quick glimpse of the whole before delving into the parts. And I also learned so much about myself by what it is that I was attuned to. As they breathed, some look as though they have done it before, and do it with a flare, a confidence, something a little extra added. My attention was immediately directed to the ones who were uncomfortable. Even in the first few moments of breathing, deep sighs and physical shifting showed their immediate discomfort.
Interestingly, I immediately provided more instructions as a way of alleviating the discomfort: my reaction was to make them more comfortable. This reaction, our instinctual response to alleviate the discomfort of others, also arises in counselling.
However, if the intention of our work is to create new patterns, discomfort is actually a sign that we’re on the right track. Finding our way right to that edge of meeting our
124 boundaries and being able to stay and work there is an important aspect of the practice.
Our sense of this edge, as a teacher or as a counsellor, comes from our own direct experience within this relationship: listening, watching, and negotiating together.
Yoga Classes
From the very first class, teaching yoga felt wonderful: it flowed beautifully and was a real delight. The yoga classes continued to be my favourite part of the research.
Although, in the beginning, I made an attempt to make the classes more well-rounded by added chanting, a short philosophy discussion, and an opportunity to share and listen about their experience of the practice, it became clear that the participants simply wanted to practice. When I came to the front of the room, they would already be standing on their mats, ready to begin: they were itching to be active. To my own relief as well, I let go of all of these ”additions” and our time together became exclusively focused on the practice of postures. As always, during the classes, I continued to bring awareness to my own patterns of wanting to please others and self-consciousness, but as I found myself very focused on the practice, they were only minor distractions. And given that all that the participants wanted to do was practice, I saw my role as creating a safe and steady space for the practice, and beyond that, I let the practice do the work.
The self-led mysore classes presented another interesting opportunity to explore the balance of challenge and support. It took some time for the participants to become comfortable with the format of self-practice, and thus the majority of the classes remained mostly led, while still supporting the participants into practicing on their own.
This self-directed practicing certainly evoked uncertainty and vulnerability in the
125 participants, which I supported by attending to each of them individually. Of course, I also felt their discomfort, so it also took some work on my part to allow them to struggle and be challenged. Again, it was important to provide space for their discomfort, as this allowed them to draw on inner resources and take risks they might not have otherwise.
The mysore practice also provided a wonderful opportunity to spend time with participants one-on-one, supporting them with whatever they most needed with the practice, answering questions, and providing encouragement. Learning to work in this way, providing them with a different experience, supported softening their narratives of themselves and the practice.
Each participant brought something different to the practice. It is unusual to have a class with such a wide variety of experience, and although I thought it would be difficult to teach without being either under-or over-stimulating, it went very smoothly.
The participants moved in and out of being open to the process, as did I. With each of the participants, I can recall a significant interaction in which we met their edge, and I did my best to stay with this experience, encouraging them to do so as well. The challenges we encountered varied widely, but the common denominator was that each of the participants were bumping up against their own patterns, their expectations, their uncertainty and their vulnerability. The interviews provided insight into the significance of these interactions, which I described as holding up a mirror so that both of us could see ourselves more clearly.
The group members were very supportive of each other. There was a strong sense of friendship and community, and they were very open to sharing their process with each
126 other. A number of the participants also took the opportunity to talk with me informally about their experiences with the practice and at times in relation to the counselling program. These informal conversations allowed me to see how the participants were making sense of their experience, thus allowing me to steer the philosophy writing and teaching in a way that was relevant. These moments provided me with a sense that they were engaging in the practice, and experiencing the benefits of their effort.
Yoga and Techniques
An interesting dynamic, similar to that in a counselling situation, became established at the beginning of this research between myself and the participants, as a number of the participants voiced to me their concern about time, worrying that this course wouldn’t be worth it, or that they would regret or be disappointed if it didn’t
“work”. And thus, at the beginning, I felt a lot of pressure to deliver. This dynamic seemed to be rooted in both the implicit and explicit feeling that each of the participants wanted the yoga to “work”, to help them with the challenges they were experiencing in the counselling program, and I wanted the same. As the yoga course was separate from their counselling program, I felt sensitive to the fact that I was requesting their time: feeling indebted to them, forgetting that I had something to offer as well. And although I am confident in my teaching abilities, I also had a sense that what I had to offer wouldn’t be enough, particularly as the participants began to share in the first few weeks of classes and in the second focus group that yoga wasn’t working for them in the way they had expected. I felt the pressure to offer more than I could deliver, and this pressure led to a exploration of the nature of the practice.
127 In my frustration with the situation, which I turned inward, interpreting as a deficiency in myself as a teacher, I wrote a long message to a dear friend and a teacher for help: looking for that technique I was missing to help my participants. In the split- second that followed sending it, I began to laugh, with the immediate recognition of how
I had become caught. I know that yoga is not a technique in this sense: a yoga practice doesn’t work when we are trying to make things go away. Although, of course, this is why most of us come to the practice in the first place, but in time we recognize that the practice works in a completely different way than we were expecting. And although I know this, there is still always a part of me that gets hooked by this hope, particularly when others look to me with this expectation. The practice and teachings of yoga point to the fact that no technique—if a technique is a “trick” or something we can do to make the undesirable aspects of our experience go away without having to change—can provide relief from our suffering. The path is to stay with any experience with equanimity, allow it to transform us, allowing us to act in a way that is spontaneous and fueled by love. We have to enter fully, trusting, and letting go of any expectation of an outcome.
It is a humbling experience to recognize that we can’t offer our yoga students, or clients for that matter, what they were hoping for. And yet, I also felt incredibly relieved.
Once I recognized this dynamic, I was able to listen to my participants and encourage them in the practice, rather than focusing on the specific challenges they were facing, or pretending to have answers I didn’t have. The second focus group was particularly important in this way, as after the participants had an opportunity to share their challenges, I was able to directly point out how the practice related to them. This
128 moment was intimate and powerful for all of us, and describes how the practice of yoga does take our suffering and turn it on its head: rather than try to fix or work with their problem, I simply encouraged them to stay with the experience of it when it arose. We all seem to understand the practice in areas that are easier for us, but we don’t tend to see how the practice applies for these deeper patterns too. Perhaps because we don’t see these as patterns, but just the way that things are. Thus, having this opportunity to point this out very directly seems to be essential in this kind of group work.
These first few weeks also served as an important reminder that it’s the practice of yoga that works, not me. Keeping myself in the right spot in terms of my role in this process, despite the projections of the participants and my own desires, is so important in keeping a lightness, humour and commitment to the practice. I recognized that I was becoming comfortable with the process: arriving just before the classes began (which is normal for me), finishing my pieces of writing in the morning I was to give to the participants, feeling much more relaxed about teaching as I was preparing without agonizing over it. I felt much more comfortable and relaxed when I was actually teaching, counting through the practice, flowing much more easily, and becoming much more interested in the process. And when I opened in this way, it seemed that the participants did too. As I wrote in an email to my supervisor in the third week:
“I noticed some real movement in some of the participants yesterday: being willing to feel and work with uncomfortable sensations, those who were berating themselves for not practicing at home reported starting to practice at home, huge changes in the physical comfort of one of the participants and a real interest in learning new postures and the steps towards moving into the full expressions of some of the postures, a real willingness of one of the participants who has a lot of
129 experience to play with what I have to offer and see how it's different from what they were doing before. Amazing, some of the initial barriers are softening (of course, I expect we might find others).”
In addition to my design of this research and my interactions with the participants, my immersion in the practice was also deeply affecting my own personal life. Although I didn’t discuss it directly, my own personal practice continued to inform and inspire both my research and the yoga course. It is for this reason that I see the dedication to a daily practice as an essential aspect of teaching: we have to also be fully engaged in the process in order to be able to support others, as our “teaching” is essentially our ability to be present with another.
Wholeness and Fragmentation
One of the continuous processes throughout this research was reflecting on methodology and the research process, with the aim of allowing the phenomenon to inform and shape the methods and my understanding. In the beginning of November, I recognized how implicit a sense of fragmentation was to the way I framed the research question. In the way I was asking about the contribution of yoga to counselling, I was creating and reinforcing an artificial split between the two.
One of my biggest insights during this work, illuminated in the phrasing of this question, was seeing how I was thinking of yoga as something that we “transfer” to other aspects of our lives, as though we “get something” from the practice, which we then take to another part of our life, in this case a counselling session. Although in one perspective it may be causal, this way of thinking is too compartmentalized in relation to the
130 experience of the practice. Asking the question in this way treats yoga as a technique to improve our counselling practice, and misses the mutual nature of the relationship in counselling, which is also excluded from some of the literature on yoga and counselling.10 When we approach yoga in this way, we miss an opportunity to see our wholeness and we miss the opportunity to change and transform (paradoxically becoming more ourselves) by fully entering our life experiences.
From my experience, yoga and our work as a counsellor work together. If yoga is wholeness or intimacy, the practice of yoga informs, and thus changes, how we see both ourselves and the world, as these perceptions arise together in one act of seeing. As we are one whole person, the way that we are affected by the yoga changes our being and our way of understanding ourselves. Then, as we enter a counselling situation, which is engaging in an intimate dialogue with another, this spaciousness, humour and compassion comes with us, changing the quality of our work as a counsellor because it has changed the quality of our being.
If yoga is a way of being and thus seeing, which is different than our normal mode of being, formal practice, time in which the conditions are particularly conducive and exclusively dedicated to practicing yoga is essential to nourish ourselves, cultivate this way of seeing, and to remember this connection. Of course, we can cultivate this way of seeing in any circumstance, including our counselling sessions. As a yoga
10 For example, “The professional literature indicates that yogic practices can also aid in the development of self-awareness and personal growth for members of the normal population. Psychotherapists can potentially benefit from practicing techniques designed to foster self-awareness and personal growth in order to enhance their professional abilities and to attain proficiency in their field.” (Valente & Marotta, p. 71)
131 practitioner, counselling sessions become another opportunity to practice and to offer the fruits of the practice back to the practice itself.
Deepening My Own Practice
Just before the fifth week of class, I spent three days with one of my dearest yoga teachers. After the first evening talking about yoga, she, as always, directed my attention to the fact that yoga was so much more than anything else I had talked about. When I went to bed that night, I was very uncomfortable, tossing and turning, unable to settle.
When I finally did settle, I had the most amazing dream, in which I was with my yoga teacher on a rooftop, and she was explaining to me that yoga was right before my eyes, I just needed to see. Suddenly, the light shifted, becoming just a little bit brighter, and I looked to my teacher and told her what I was seeing, to which she nodded and smiled. In the background, there was a big clock on a steeple of a building, and rather than hands moving around the clock, the hands at the top began to open to each side, with the same light filling the gap between them. I became terrified. I immediately woke up out of my dream, with a stream of everything in my life that I loved passing before my eyes, with this sense that these were all of the things that I would have to give up with the practice.
I met my own resistance to the practice and to change.
Over the course of the weekend, I continued to practice and to cook, asking as many questions as I could, continuing to carry the heaviness of this fear with me. I was also feeling deeply disappointed: questioning my life’s choices and feeling the solidness of my limitations with this practice that I so loved. Working with my teacher this
132 weekend, although I felt incredibly loved and supported, I also felt completely disappointed and saddened by my recognition of my limitations.
And yet, the next day when I came home, surprisingly, my posture practice changed dramatically. I no longer felt the heaviness of my expectations or the usual sense of striving - both of which I didn’t even know were there until they had disappeared. I began to see both forces in myself pushing against one another: the resistance to my practice, rooted in my deep fears of letting go and my striving to get somewhere. There was also a freedom in separating yoga from moving further in this series of postures—something I knew intellectually, but which was yet to sink in fully— and then there was also a freedom to move ahead.
This experience was important for many reasons. Most importantly, with an awareness of my fears of yoga, this experience reminded me how much of what motivates us is unavailable to our conscious minds, and how much of the resistance in our bodies and minds is symptomatic of much deeper fears. It also reminded me of the transformational aspect of the practice: that we have to fully enter into the process, not knowing what the outcome will be, allowing ourselves to be changed in the process. We have to actually go through the process, rather than just think ourselves through it, assuming that we would know what would happen when we did. It also reminded me of the power of disappointment and setting limits, as somehow they create the space for freedom and movement. In some ways, disappointment and setting limits are ways in which we let go to meet reality as it is, and we can only be grateful for those experiences and teachers who point this out for us. This is also an important point for teaching and
133 counselling: the most learning comes not when we are feeling good, but rather when there is just the right balance between support and challenge.
After this experience, I returned to the process with a sense of it coming to a close: this had been a major learning for me, and we were heading into the sixth week.
At this point, I stepped back even further, clearer about my role as a teacher, creating even more space for the participants to explore and process their own experiences.
Drawing to a Close
With two focus groups, one short and unstructured interview, and three in-depth interviews, the final three weeks of the research was intensive in terms of the data collection. There was a major difference between the third and fourth focus group, where the third focus group was much more positive and engaged than the final one. The mood and circumstances of the participants played such an important role in their engagement and in their perspectives on the practice. After such a positive third focus group, I had hoped that the fourth would carry the same open, curious and accepting feeling, confirming some of the ideas that I had about the analysis of the data by individual. Of course, with the mounting pressure of the end of the term, the interviews having left some of the participants with little more to say, and the discomfort of our time also being over, this wasn’t the case. This experience reminded me how in some ways I was seeing the yoga course as a linear process, rather than the up-and-down curves that characterize our experience. This certainly broadened my idea of yoga again: yoga and wholeness are independent of these ups and downs. Thus our work is to recognize that we can be as free in our sadness as we can in our delights, remembering that we always have both the
134 tendency to wake up and to shut down. As this course is so short, these small daily up and downs are part of a much larger and much longer process. It was important to honour their loss and concern as the process came to its end. Although, of course, the process may certainly continue, bringing closure to this process was important.
Yoga Philosophy
Each week throughout the yoga course, I spent much of my week reading and writing on the topic of yoga, culminating at the end of each week with a short piece on my reflections on yoga philosophy. This writing was one of the delights of this research project. As described in the introduction to these pieces, the purpose and intention of this writing was broad. And as always, the greatest learning from these writings came completely unexpectedly. Just as I completed the final piece of philosophy, I looked up from my computer and stared out the window in awe: for the first time, I could see how I conceptualize the practice of yoga. Never before have I had an opportunity to explore my understanding so thoroughly, and in doing so, I could actually see it. And like anything else, when we can see it, we can also see beyond it.
In one sense, writing these pieces of philosophy reflected the phenomenology process of epoché: describing yoga in a way I felt was a coherent whole, thus attaining an intuitive grasp on this way of thinking and body of knowledge. Once we have seen it, we see its empty nature, and what’s left is not more knowledge, but a sense of spaciousness with the softening of the mind and a small smile in recognition. We can see it as one perspective, recognizing that there are also many others, and each is a pathway to the whole. Of course, we need a perspective, in the same way that we need technique to
135 practice, but we also need to be able to set it aside to see what we are actually experiencing. And now that I knew what I thought yoga is, I could really listen to my participants, rather than hearing them through the filter of my understanding.
Secondly, this experience was so essential because it was another aspect of the project that reflects the nature of the practice. I put all of myself into writing these pieces: reflections I hold dearly, insights that have inspired me, gems shared with me by important teachers. And again, it has been a reminder that only when we enter fully can we see the most clearly, and what we find is not necessarily what we expected. It’s at this moment when we see the discrepancy between our narrow, “I”-focused intentions and these gifts of learning that we hardly expect, that the mind opens and we smile: what we are searching for is never what we find. Again, reinforcing that the practice is one of surrender, trust, love, and being grateful for those moments when we happen to step out of the way.
An Exploration through Writing
The last major piece of this thesis, besides of course the patience to transcribe all of the data, has been the use of writing to explore the themes and questions I set out at the beginning of this research: the challenge with language, finding an appropriate context in which to understand yoga, and yoga as a means of self-care. Each of these topics, even after extensive reading and my interactions with the participants, remained entangled within my feelings, thoughts and beliefs. I knew I was stuck on them because each time I thought about them, an uncomfortable knot would appear in my stomach and in my heart, at which time I would quickly dismiss its exploration until another day. I was stuck.
136 Until I took the time to explore each of these topics in a reflective, uncovering way on my own, I was unable to permeate this friction. It seemed to be only through this process of writing that my conviction transformed into curiosity, my own patterns and learning revealed in this process.
The process by which I explored them was essentially the same: evoking this stuck feeling by thinking about the question and writing about these polarized and indignant thoughts, continuing to evoke and strengthen the feeling. Eventually, I switch my attention to the feeling itself, and stayed with it, writing whatever came to mind, following each train of thoughts intertwined within these deep feelings, punctuated by moments of silence, continually ensuring that my writing remained connected to the feeling. I continue to write until the feeling makes itself known, not censoring or indulging it, but giving it free and open space, and staying with the process, regardless of how uncomfortable or embarrassing it becomes. I know that one of these sessions has completed when my mind is stunned into silence by what emerges, leaving only a sense of recognition, understanding and spaciousness.
Yoga and Self-care
Self-care was not only a phrase used frequently in the literature around contemplative practice and counselling education, but also by the participants. Although
I continued to explore this theme with the participants, asking them to describe what they meant by self-care and what constituted self-care for them, I still felt a knot that was yet to be undone. I have included the following piece as an illustration of my process of exploration and undoing this knot.
137 What lies within a question? What provides its animating force, creating the quality with which it is asked? How do we get to the heart of our questions, or perhaps the better question is, can we find the courage and the time to explore, not knowing what we might find? And when we arrive, do we still have more questions?
From the beginning of this research I knew that my questioning of the word self- care, my desire to deconstruct it, to open it up and air out whatever it was that left a knot in the centre of my chest, was fueled by more than curiosity. This aspect of my research always carried a particular conviction, a sharp criticism my discerning mind quickly grabbed a hold of, covering that sore spot that I knew was there, but was taking my time to look at, hoping my research would finish before I had to look. I justified this avoidance with the rationale that writing about self-care would just be too broad for this project, too much for this time, and that not wanting to delve in was more a heroic attempt to keep my project manageable, rather than acknowledging that I didn’t want to know what that feeling was about. But I always knew it was there, and it made itself quite clear in the last focus group, as waves of embarrassment and shame washed over me as one of the participants shared with the group what he had heard as my perspective on self-care in an exploration that took place in a short conversation between the two of us. The same feeling washed over me again when I read through the transcript. The feeling of exposing a point of view, one that might influence others, that I know is fueled by avidya.
Interestingly enough, I have good self-care practices. Very good, even. I get enough sleep, and take naps when I don’t. I eat organic produce we grow on our farm. I
138 have a daily yoga and meditation practice. I take long walks, be sure that I get time outside each day, and I make time for reflection, writing and creativity when things are pressing. I know the difference in the quality of my being and how I am able to interact with others when these things are in place. I also have a lot of patience, acceptance and endurance when they are not and I’m not feeling nearly as stable and open.
I rarely talk about these practices with others, as though I am somehow ashamed of them, mostly in anticipation of how others might feel if I did. But that’s a whole other story. Perhaps some of this resistance comes from part of me that feels self-care practices shouldn’t be talked about in case they make someone else feel badly. But this thought doesn’t get me to the heart of this feeling, it’s more than that.
After spending this morning in a sunny window, finally taking the time to explore this dark cloud of feeling that arises in my chest with this topic, fueling my work in this project— a project I knew I would inevitably have to explore—that I begin to write. I begin: what are my problems with self-care? A number of images pop into mind, which I record as fast as they come: the sense of dread I feel when my mom wants to take me shopping, which I cover by rolling my eyes; a psychic once telling me that my biggest challenge in life would be caring for myself; my love of being covered in dirt and not adhering to typical social attitudes; a desire to be tough and not need self-care; the ideal
I have created of my dad who seems to have endless energy that I want to live up to. I feel the resistance and cynicism when someone talks about self-care, the same one as when someone mentions positive psychology, which is curious, as I may be, quite naturally, the most optimistic person I know.
139 Confusing, but interesting. I continue.
“Nourishing” is okay. I like the idea of nourishing myself, but not caring for myself. Nourishing holds the quality of doing things that are attuned to an internal sense, but caring for myself feels imposed from the outside - all of the things that I should do.
Now that there is a little space, I can make a statement about what self-care means for me: a combination of checking in with myself about what I need and also being disciplined about what I know is best for me. The dualism in this description isn’t quite accurate: self-care is a way of sensing, without preference, where there is energy and sometimes this corresponds to what I “want” and other times what I think I “should do”.
Or perhaps we can think of self-care as caring for what the yoga texts would refer to as the small-s self. I do this often too - allowing space for whatever arises to express itself, listening with an open heart and allowing each part to have its say and its place.
Seemingly out of nowhere, I write: I have an aversion to indulgence.
I stop short. I’ve arrived.
So I go a little further. I write a new heading: What’s wrong with indulgence?, and I start to make a list, not censoring a thing, writing anything that comes to mind, curiosity and trust trumping embarrassment. Although my list starts with a list of words, there’s this image lingering in my mind that is vague at first, but comes to life more clearly as I attempt describe it: the image is a woman that seems to be a combination of characters from two of my favourite books: Matilda by Roald Dahl and The God of Small
Things by Arundhati Roy. As I continue to describe her, a huge burst of sadness rushes forward, my heart begins to ache and tears well up in my eyes. I feel a huge amount of
140 sadness for this imaginary woman, who, in my mind, is unable to meet her life, has traded her own power and potential for indulgence and idleness.
The sadness is the key. I make lots of space for it, despite being in a coffee shop where others might see my tears.
As the sadness evolves and passes, I am left staring at my page, feeling a little more open and ready to continue. Curious about self-care and how my participants experience and make sense of it, still armed with a discerning intelligence, but no longer carrying that same resistance, the avoidance of that sadness.
It’s funny, I would much rather feel this sadness—a true sadness, unaccompanied by wishing it wasn’t there—than this resistance, and yet I just don’t seem to be designed that way. This is a practice. It begins with a discernment of the energy of being stuck, a willingness to stay with it, giving it voice as it evolves, and following without censoring, embellishing, or knowing where it’s going. Waiting for that moment of deep feeling arising and giving it space to be felt, and feeling the spaciousness left in its passing. And then getting on with it. I am left with some understanding of how my past shapes my present, but not because I have figured it out, but because it has had space to reveal itself.
This writing is one of my practices and it ties together the subject of my thesis— yoga —and the process of my research. How questions become and evolve, how they transform into spaciousness from which a new question arises; a new question because this practice creates a new me, a new set of conditions, from which it may arise, bringing the joy of discovery.
141 Thus, the tension I experienced with thinking about self-care has its roots in the sadness of avoiding the opportunity to be with our experiences and meet them as they are.
Many of the counselling students I worked with were hoping that yoga would provide a way out of these feelings they were experiencing in their work with clients, and they felt that the yoga wasn’t working when they were still having them. And often we are told to do something that nourishes us as self-care, as it tends to relax us and allow for these feelings to express and resolve themselves. But, we can’t always do this. From a yoga perspective, self-care was not to help them make these feelings go away with a technique such as breathing in a yoga posture, but also to invite them to explore these feelings too, noticing their aversion and desire to feel a particular way, noticing their habits of clinging. And of course, as often happens in counselling, it is easy to get swept up in the desires of our yoga students (and our clients for that matter) and want to have the magical tool to help them, because we care. But when I stepped back for a moment to reflect, it is at this moment they were asking the perfect questions, the same ones that have fueled my exploration and practice for the last number of years: what is the path of yoga in this particular context, in this particular moment? I certainly wouldn’t want to answer their questions and take away this opportunity to explore. I was simply happy that they were now asking these questions.
Exploring Language
I once wrote in exasperation during this research, “no matter what I write, think or say about yoga there is always more - each reflection is just one piece, with the whole remaining always ungraspable and hidden from the languaged mind.” Although language
142 is inherently limited, it has been an important aspect of this project, right from the beginning until the end. I explored the use of language in writing my pieces on yoga philosophy, diligently choosing words that described my experience as accurately as I could, humbly recognizing how challenging this can be. Within the focus groups and in my interactions with the participants, I continued to question them about their descriptions of the practice, their use of particular “popular” words, and paid close attention to articulate my experience as closely as I could. One example of this from a focus group is as follows:
Participant: I just ask because in the postures you say, just kind of push [your thoughts] out.
Sarah: Not push them out. If you have thoughts, just notice that you have thoughts and come back to the breath. It’s a little different...
And, as I shared with the participants in the final focus group, the challenge of describing yoga is significant in and of itself:
“So that, when you’re trying to describe [your experience of yoga], finding the right language and finding the right words to talk about what you’re experiencing is always really difficult...I think that in and of itself is really interesting, because to me it signifies that it’s a process that you actually have to engage in.”
As yoga is a process that includes and goes beyond the cognitive mind, an experience of seeing the world without commentary, we struggle to find language to express this experience. And yet, making the effort to find an appropriate language develops and encourages a continual dialogue both between our experience and our mind and also within a community, deepening our practice and understanding of yoga.
143 Questions of Context and the Relationship between Yoga and Counselling
Influenced by writers including Ken Wilber, Mark Epstein and Brant Cortright, I began this research with a more abstract understanding of the relationship between counselling and yoga, which I equated to western and eastern psychology respectively.
In my own words, this relationship could be summarized as follows:
The work in counselling is to expand the ego, or one’s sense of self, to gain the capacity to hold more of our experience, whereas yoga and contemplative practices enable us to see through the ego structure, catching a glimpse of “reality” outside of its narratives. In yoga we are not trying to change the ego structure, but see through it, whereas in counselling, we are working with the ego structure, without questioning our assumptions about it.
Although this conceptual structure was satisfying and carved out a distinction I could set out to prove, I also knew that based on my own experiences, this definition didn’t quite fit. As a client in a counselling session, I have experienced powerful shifts when basic core beliefs are brought to my awareness, and aspects of myself that I didn’t even know were there suddenly dissolved, leaving in their place a spaciousness that was full of joy, humour and authenticity: the promise of the yoga texts. I have also had uncountable times when I use affective, cognitive and behavioural techniques to steady myself and bring my attention back to my breath in my yoga practice.
The pieces of philosophy I wrote were one opportunity to deeply explore the philosophy and context of yoga on its own terms, without directly relating it to counselling. It was from this work that I could articulate, both for myself and for the participants, yoga in the context of its own tradition, creating the space for all of us to draw our own conclusions about its relationship to counselling.
144 In keeping to phenomenology, I set aside these theoretical perspectives and explored the relationship between yoga and counselling from my own experiences. In the opening focus group, I shared with the participants my experience of working with my anxiety prior to the orientation session as an example of how I was seeing the two: flipping back and forth between trying to get rid of my nervousness using techniques, and simply being with my nervousness, allowing it to move and transform me. Thus, one of the ways I saw the relationship between yoga and counselling at the beginning of this research was very much in line with this theoretical perspective: yoga as a practice of staying with our experience with equanimity and counselling providing a path of working with the anxiety in an attempt to calm ourselves.
A second opportunity to explore the relationship between yoga and counselling was in creating the pre-survey questions and puzzling over my intention: was I interested in asking the participants questions to find out their answers, or was I interested in questions that would help them to be more open to their experience? The questions that reflected the latter were more playful, worded in ways to evoke emotions and beliefs, acknowledging the different aspects of themselves with the intention of creating space for them to experience the practice with an open mind and heart. Thus, my intention was to begin to take stock of the content of the mind, not because of the content in and of itself, but because in doing so they would bring awareness to the lens through which they were coming to this experience, and perhaps see beyond it. This is also how I saw the difference between counselling and yoga: in counselling we are paying more attention to the content and working with it, whereas in yoga, we are attempting to see through our
145 stories about problems so we can come into contact with our present experience in which they unravel. After agonizing over how to ask the questions, I decided to withhold the pieces that were more personal, as I didn’t feel that I could offer the context and support necessary to ask this kind of question which might evoke vulnerability, and instead saved them for the focus group where I could bring a playfulness and curiosity to the exploration.
I also had an opportunity to explore this relationship in the contrast between various interactions with the participants. Before the beginning of the second focus group, one of the participants shared with me that they were feeling a lot of stress with the yoga course and didn’t feel they could continue. In this moment, I listened and supported their thoughts and decisions. And just shortly after, in the focus group, in addition to listening and supporting their experience in the practice, I also took the opportunity to point out to the participants how their challenges could be seen as a part of their practice of yoga, learning to see these patterns and stay with them. This went over well with the participants, indicating that they were ready and willing to take this perspective. The contrast between these two experiences allowed me to recognize how each of these approaches is appropriate at various times depending on the situation.
Thus, through this research, my perspective on context of yoga and counselling has become less theoretical and more practical. As a yoga teacher and a counsellor, it seems to me that both of these perspectives have a place and a time, and perhaps are two stages in an evolving process, or even two paths to the same outcome. In many instances, counselling techniques are a way of being/working when we are completely enmeshed in
146 our stories, and need some support and techniques to create a little bit of space. A yoga perspective is characterized by coming to know this distinction between awareness and the contents of our awareness, detangling from our stories, but this approach may require the first before it is possible. Although I used the word evolving, I don’t see these as a linear process over time, which dangerously holds our happiness at arm’s length, but rather a process we engage in, moment to moment, with two tools that necessary at different times depending on our relationship to our experience. Perhaps the role of a counsellor and a yoga teacher is to be able to discern which is most helpful and compassionate at which time.
Yoga and Mindfulness
The question of the relationship between yoga and mindfulness has been a significant one throughout this research. After much reflection, the question of the relationship between mindfulness and yoga has transformed into the following: what do we lose when we see yoga only through the lens of mindfulness? In some ways, it feels as though the life of the practice is missing: the dynamic, creative, beauty of life and the full experience of all aspects of it. The release, love, and deep gratitude are missing. The stories, metaphors, and poetry are missing. In the language of the yoga tradition, Shakti, the feminine, creative life force, is missing. Perhaps due to its inclusion in academic literature, behavioural medicine, and research agendas, awareness has been created as an ideal to which we aspire. Yoga, however, is about the epic love affair of the two: allowing the creative energy of life to meet pure awareness, never one to the exclusion of the other.
147 Yoga is about bringing the creative, dynamics aspects of us: our body, our emotions, our thoughts—ever-fluctuating seasons, winds, storms and sunshine—to meet awareness. Not with the intention of changing it, holding on or getting rid of anything, but fully living our lives, recognizing that our suffering comes from avoiding this contact.
Being in this process also brings mystery and the unknown back into our lives, which radically changes how we see ourselves and the world. Yoga embraces not-knowing and being curious and open to life as it presents itself.
Each story that the participants and I share are Shakti - the creative manifestation of life - to which we are working towards bringing into contact with awareness through the practice and through our interactions with each other. Each feeling we experience, our act of listening, our bodies, our thoughts are all Shakti. We are of this body and of this world: trees, rivers, the bird that lands on a tree branch are no longer so separate. We don’t want to move away from this connection with our bodies, from the grounded, physical aspect of our being, but to welcome this aspect of experience. The body is the place in which the practice takes place.
Swallowing our Shadow
One of the last important moments of learning for me in this research was having my work reviewed by someone whose knowledge of yoga, both academically and as a practitioner, I highly respect. In her comments, she asked whether in the West we are:
“trying to make yoga in [our] image rather than the other way around...let yoga make [us]....and why? Are we making it in our image so that "we" are intrigued and drawn to it, a projection of who we are so it fits our lifestyle so we don't have to change, give something up, sacrifice.”
148 Although it is difficult to see our own shadow, this statement resonated with me and left me asking the following question: am I creating yoga in a way that aligns with my own views, so I don’t have to change, question, or even give them up?
Even prior to this comment, as I read the transcripts of the first two focus groups,
I heard myself casting yoga in a particular light, subtly promising that which I knew my participants were looking for: I could hear myself going beyond the practice, making it into more, and thus less, than it actually is. This is something that I have heard, not only in the participants, but also in colleagues and students in the community: making yoga about what it is we think will bring us happiness—fitness, a nice body, rules, doing those things that are challenging, letting go, discipline. Of course, if yoga is wholeness, yoga can be the opposite of these too.
What interested me in this question is not only asking it on an individual basis, but also on an academic basis: as an academic community, what are we projecting onto yoga? How is our use of yoga determining our understanding? Perhaps an analogy to this question is like asking how is our use of trees for paper determining how we see trees? Although trees can be used for paper, that is not their sole purpose. Trees also create oxygen, their roots provide a home to billions of microbes and insects, they are homes for birds and animals, they provide shelter and beauty, they can be used for medicinal purposes, and they can be used for paper. Furthermore, trees are also one small part of a much greater ecosystem and we can only see one small part of the tree, and much of it extends down below the earth to reach in places beyond our imagination.
Thus, like trees, with yoga it’s important to recognize the ways in which we are
149 perceiving something for our own benefit, and opening to look again. (Question - hierarchy of purposes).
In working with these shadows, exploring our own projections and allowing them become fuel for our practice, we recognize the importance of opening to relationship and dialogue. We recognize that seeing through the limited perspective of our own agenda is not only harmful to those around us, but also to ourselves. Thus, in relationships we have the opportunity to become more and more ourselves, as we open to the expression of another. So perhaps it is the same with yoga: as we practice, our freedom to be authentic and a deeper appreciation and understanding of yoga arise together. So, as we, as practitioners, allow ourselves to be changed by our relationship to the practice, letting go to what we have projected onto yoga, we also come to a deeper understanding of the practice. Thus, perhaps our perception of the practice in both popular culture and in academia has become too narrow, using the practice to achieve our own desired ends, as valuable as they may be, and we need to open up to the possibilities of the practice and ourselves again.
This experience also brought a number of other important aspects of the practice to light. Teachers and community are so important in helping us to see where we are stuck, and thus practicing and being in community is essential. It also reminded me that, no matter how much I study and read, yoga is a discovery, about finding things that we didn’t know that we were looking for, rather than only seeing something that confirms our view. And, if our work is to be honest and discriminating with ourselves, and as my teacher suggested, let yoga, or wholeness, make us, we return right back to the beginning:
150 the key to experiencing yoga is practice, allowing it to continue to shape and inform who we are.
Expanding my Practice
In terms of my own process of learning, this thesis has been a process of coming to see, over and over, that yoga is not a “technique” to “fix” our discontent or to make it go away. The four questions I proposed at the beginning of this research project: the use of language, an appropriate context in which to describe yoga, the relationship between yoga and self-care, and the relationship between mindfulness and yoga, were all symptoms of this dissonance between my sense of the practice and the underlying assumptions in the description of yoga in the literature. This was a difficult learning to uncover, as these assumptions (and hopes!) are held deeply within me as well. Therefore, my personal process throughout this research has been to see this assumption in myself as well as in the research literature and my participants.
My main learning throughout this research has been simply to love and to honour each experience. Yoga is a transformational practice, a practice of wholeness and intimacy, which we enter without an agenda and without knowing the outcome. Of course, this is completely paradoxical, which is the nature of the practice. And although the practice of yoga is helpful in preparing and orienting us toward this space, no yoga technique itself can bring us there. We still have to let go of our narratives, which keep us preferring certain experiences over others, and fully enter our experience allowing it to meet awareness, valuing both awareness and its contents equally. As I wrote the pieces
151 on yoga philosophy early in this process, there are certainly hints of this dualistic perspective in my writing. If I was to rewrite my pieces on philosophy with the perspective that I have now, the additions would be: transformation, action, and the non- dual teachings of the practice.
Yoga and this present-centered experience are transformative, requiring us to soften and change. In my writing I would have placed more emphasis on the transformative aspect of the practice, recognizing that the practice isn’t going to change part of ourselves or the world to meet our preferences, but that through the practice we change by letting go of these preferences and self-narratives.
Related to this transformation is action: our practice and our ability to be present calls us to act in ways that are more reflective of the whole. Thus, an essential aspect of the practice is staying with our feelings and allowing them not to dissolve, but to evolve into authentic and creative action—“like beads on a tray - sudden, ready, spontaneous” (Stone, 2008b)—rather than out of habit. As described in their research on qigong, Chrisman et al. (2009) described the important social implications of the actions cultivated through these types of practice:
By developing the individual’s capacity for healthy identification and connectedness, mindfulness practices such as Qigong have the potential to heal the splits of a dualistically divided world and foster the kind of ethics of care and compassion that are sorely needed in our 21st century. (p. 254)
Finally, there would have been more reflection on the non-dual aspect of the yoga tradition. Although at the beginning of practice it is essential to first develop the ability to see the difference between awareness and the contents of awareness—prakriti and
152 purusha, Shiva and Shakti—the non-dual teachings of the tradition speak to the fact that the two of them are not separate, but inherently interconnected. Richard Freeman likens understanding the non-dual tradition to cooking a pancake: we need to cook the dualistic side long enough, before we can flip it to see the non-dual nature; otherwise it splatters everywhere and makes a mess (Richard Freeman, personal conversation, June, 2008).
Although it’s important to cook it long enough, our culture is also very dualistic, and thus we run the risk of favouring awareness over its contents—our experience of life—seeing yoga as a means of getting away from the aspects of life that don’t suit our preferences.
We need to be sure we flip the pancake too.
These themes that were left out of my writing are also reflective of what has been left out of the literature. In seeing the non-dual nature, we begin to open to more and more of our experience, leading to transformation that comes with the dissolution of the narratives of the self, creating the potential for creative action. This has important implications for research, as our concepts of self-care, for example, might change if these aspects of the practice were brought to our work in counselling, rather than continuing our approach to counselling in the same way, and using yoga as a means of fixing and controlling stress and burnout. Rather than seeing yoga as a means of addressing a problem, it could be seen as a way of avoiding this problem completely.
And lastly, although it was difficult in an academic and language context, what I hope was conveyed in my writing is that yoga is ultimately unknowable, a mysterious process that we have no control over, but rather a process we put our effort into to prepare ourselves for its appearance. When yoga appears in our experience, it is never when or as
153 we expect. Thus, love, devotion, humility and sacrifice are essential aspects of the path.
My writing could be expanded to include more of this aspect of the practice, including the Bhagavad Gita and texts that are less technical and psychologically-oriented. As I have been humbly reminded a number of times, yoga is not something that we can harness and control, in fact the more we try to do this, the further we move away from it.
Although it is the aspect of the practice that is impossible to control, the scope and potential of the practice are limited without its inclusion.
One Last Reflection
This morning, one week before this thesis is due, I woke up after a marathon ten hours in the car and a memorial service for a dear family member. After only a few hours of sleep, I woke up both emotionally and physically tired. And, although I only intended to do a few sun salutations before getting on with my day, a few sun salutations turned into a few more, and then a few more, and before I knew it, I was making my way through the standing postures. It felt so good to move and to breathe. And perhaps with the perspective only granted to us on such occasions, I suddenly felt how fortunate I am just to be able to do these postures. How fortunate that I can feel my arms outstretched, that I can feel that tightness in my hips, that I can feel my breath moving up and down from my pelvis to the crown of my head. How fortunate to breathe and to be here.
Suddenly the practice becomes very clear: this moment, this breath, this body is so precious. Right now, just as it is. So simple. Not because of what I am going to get from
154 doing the postures, not because of this complex philosophy, not because I will become a better person; but because our time is limited, this moment is inherently precious.
This insight vanished as soon as it came; my heart closed again not long after it opened. And after my initial disappointment and scramble to get it back, I see my habitual reaction to a loss, and I smile and my body softens. On the one hand, this seems to be how it goes: in and out, in and out. But on the other, each in and each out are parts of one movement, one glimpse of the same whole, each equally as precious.
155 Chapter 8. Conclusions
This final chapter brings together the participants’ description of the contribution of yoga to counsellor education with my personal reflections. First, the four questions on language, context, self-care, mindfulness and yoga posed at the beginning of this study will be revisited. Bringing closure to this study, considerations for future yoga courses, the limitations of this study, and implications and recommendations will be discussed.
A. Returning to the Four Questions a. Language
My question about a language sympathetic to the practice of yoga was a response to the control and achievement-oriented language in the academic literature, which conflicted with my experience of the practice. Through the writing of this thesis, however, I humbly came to recognize the Herculean task of finding a more suitable language. This language, flavoured with hints of achievement, striving and an attempt to get away from undesirable experience, also coloured the participants’ hopes at the beginning of the course: “if I am successful in quieting my mind”; “chance to escape from the real world for an hour or two”; and, “learn how to “turn-off” my thoughts.”
Therefore, this type of language is not specific to the academic literature, but is characteristic of the greater culture of yoga in the West.
In describing yoga, language holds such importance because the quality or feeling with which we practice is essential and subtle. We can be doing the same postures, the practice can look almost exactly the same, but there can be enormous differences in our intention and our internal orientation. Thus, it seems important that we continue to
156 question our use of language to uncover underlying assumptions and be creative in exploring a language that reflects this inner quality of the practice.
The questions around language were important throughout the process because they provided an opportunity for us see our assumptions and ways of conceptualizing our experience, and explore them further. In this way, this exploration of language was also an important aspect of the epoché process, coming to see our “natural attitude” and setting it aside in order to accurately describe our experience. Exploring the gaps between our experience of yoga and yoga as described in popular culture, and playing with language to describe our experience, is one way of coming to a deeper understanding of the practice.
Language also provided a means by which I was able to access some of my deeper emotions and beliefs, through the writing of poetry and reflective writing, which allowed me to engage more deeply in this research process. Perhaps this process speaks to one of the suggestions of Dr. David Piper that one way of thinking about the practice is as a means of re-engaging the dialogue between language and emotion (D. Piper, personal communication, January, 2011). Often, when we are stuck and struggling, we are either unable to gain distance from our perspective or our stories of our experience, stuck on language and thoughts, or we are caught in emotions we have no way of expressing and thus separating ourselves from. He suggested that the practice of yoga and meditation is a means of re-engaging this dialogue, continuing to keep the feeling, emotional self in dialogue with our language and story-telling capabilities.
157 This ongoing dialogue relates to my experience of the practice of yoga, and what I see as essential in learning about counselling: the on-going nature of this dialogue and the mutually-informing relationship between our experience and our thoughts, with no definitive end or right answer. It is through continuing to engage in this process that self- knowledge emerges, not as a story of ourselves but an understanding of this relationship and how this creates a self. This is essential knowledge that emerges through the practice of yoga, and continues to deepen through practice. I see this as essential for counsellors to understand in an embodied way, the yogic tool of emptiness even as it applies to ourselves, helps us to better understand the roots of the challenges we and our clients all face. It is within the inherent limitations of the mind, rather than the content, where we are fundamentally the same, and thus we recognize the work of our clients to be no different than our own.
Our work with language was particularly important, as it determines how and thus what we see, which then also determines the actions we take. And thus, language was also the gateway into exploring and understanding my questions around the context of the practice.
b. Reflections on Context
In the literature, yoga has been adopted with an implicit assumption that the worldview and goals of yoga and counselling were the same. I had an intuitive sense that yoga was limited in this welcome into the world of counselling by the restrictions placed on it by the worldviews into which it was being integrated. This limitation has also been recognized by Jon Kabat-Zinn (2003) with mindfulness:
158 Because interest in mindfulness and its applications to specific affective conditions is likely to increase even further...it becomes critically important that those persons coming to the field with professional interest and enthusiasm recognize the unique qualities and characteristics of mindfulness as a meditative practice, with all that implies, so that mindfulness is not simply seized upon as the next promising cognitive behavioral technique or exercise, decontextualized, and “plugged” into a behaviorist paradigm with the aim of driving desirable change, or of fixing what is broken. (p. 145)
However, upon reflection on my learning about this relationship, I was too caught up in the literal at the beginning: thinking that yoga happens in yoga classes and counselling in counselling sessions. Both perspectives have been helpful at various times in both counselling sessions and yoga classes, depending on what is needed in that moment.
I can also see that the context and perspective of yoga is not something that is set, but a way of seeing and meeting our experience that arises from the complementary practice and philosophy; together they transform our experience and thus our way of seeing. The yoga texts provide maps to the practice, rather than a set of rules to follow.
So perhaps another way of understanding context is to ask the question: in this moment of time, how are we seeing? Are we identified with the ego and our experience, or are we experiencing our thoughts, emotions, and physical body as a sequence of events arising in awareness? Thus, context isn’t a cognitive structure, but a mode of seeing/experiencing ourselves and the world. And, of course, we move between these two all of the time, identifying with our thoughts and seeing our thoughts, and thus it’s important to have strategies to work with both.
With continued practice, we find ourselves able to be in more situations with this openness, and gradually the scope with which we are able to apply this increases, and we
159 catch ourselves more easily when we become identified with our thoughts. Through the practice of yoga, as we begin to recognize the impermanence of our feelings, thoughts and physical sensations, this understanding continues to expand to more and more of our experience. In the yoga tradition, this process is called viveka, or discrimination, and is described by Chip Hartraft in an interview in this way:
It’s as if the self were a giant edifice that we’re deconstructing brick by brick. Or perhaps better, we’re replacing the bricks one by one with glass tiles so that more and more of a given area is rendered transparent. At enlightenment the whole edifice is still there, but it’s transparent. Of course, the more bricks we replace with glass, the more we can see that other bricks might also be replaced. So, very gradually, or sometimes abruptly, our object world becomes viveka-ized, if you will. It becomes accessible to discrimination, even things that we were really holding onto, such as “this sensation is me. (Stone, 2003)
Of course, this process is ongoing, and as we become more comfortable with one set of patterns, another appears. As one counsellor told me lovingly, life continues to happen.
Thus, yoga isn’t a path that arrives at some far off place in the future, but in each moment we have an opportunity to practice and be yoga.
Thus, I might say that the context of yoga is an embodied knowing that can be cultivated through practice and study. Both of these approaches, which I have referred to as “counselling” and “yoga”, are necessary at various times and it is through our experience and ability to be present that we have the sense of what is needed at what time. Thus, to hold and be able to share this perspective accurately, it needs to come from our experience; otherwise, it becomes a cognitive, rules-based approach that lacks authenticity. Thinking about the context of yoga in this way also speaks to the importance of being supported in this process: to have others to guide us, to listen, to
160 support us in our learning, whether they are yoga teachers or counsellors. As I have come to discover over and over again in the course of this research, this process is not something that we can do alone. Thus relationship also becomes an important form of the practice, which is an interesting perspective with which counsellors with an interest in yoga to approach their work.
c. Expanding our Notions of Self-care
In the light of yoga, self-care requires us to make space for our full spectrum of experience, thus putting us, as counsellors, in touch with our own vulnerabilities. It seems that self-care and healing require us to experience our vulnerability and to create space for them too, beginning to befriend them, and changing our relationship with them.
Thus, if the context is limited, and we are working from a position of the ego, which is inherently dualistic, we value certain qualities and avoid others. Thus, perhaps the need for “self-care” arises as we become exhausted trying to embody all of these qualities of a counsellor, fighting back everything that becomes evoked in a counselling session that isn’t aligned with this perspective. If we are rejecting our own vulnerability in our work as counsellors, does it comes back as a shadow, building until we become exhausted and are no longer able to hold the weight of its force, leading to “burn out”?
What does it mean for our clients if we are unable to hold our own vulnerability?
Throughout this research, I have continued to ask myself the question: what are we doing in counselling that we are not caring for ourselves? This question continues to lead me to the mutuality of the counselling relationship. When we’re counselling, we’re
161 always working with two people at once, our client and ourselves, both of whom need to be attended to and cared for simultaneously.
What if we were not only told from the beginning that our education that counselling would require us to be willing to regularly work with our own vulnerabilities, but offered a means to support this process? The inclusion of this yoga course in
Acadia’s counselling program communicates to the students that their personal work and ability to be with themselves is not only important, but essential, to their roles as counsellors. When our personal work is supported and considered essential to counsellor education, the students’ vulnerability and challenges into the program become valuable opportunities to deepen their understanding of the counselling process. When beginning counsellors find themselves in these positions, they begin to ask all the right questions and provide counselling educators an opportunity to also teach directly to their experience, in addition to a more cognitive and abstract way. As counselling students, personally engaging in this process and knowing it intimately provides a confidence that others can do so as well.
d. Yoga and Mindfulness: Postures as a Form of Practice
A second consideration is yoga postures as a form of contemplative practice.
Although this topic warrants an entire paper itself, as explored by Salmon et al. (2009), the discussion here will be limited to the relationship between yoga and mindfulness and the implications for postures as a form of practice.
Since the beginning of this project I have pondered (and pondered some more) the relationship between yoga and mindfulness. As the academic literature focuses nearly
162 exclusively on mindfulness, describing this relationship was important to locate my work into this body of literature. This is a question I have taken many avenues to explore: reading books, brainstorming in notebooks, asking friends and teachers, and working with that deep and knotted feeling within me intertwined with this question.
As Salmon et al. (2009) described in their paper on yoga’s inclusion in the MBSR program:
Much of the attention directed at the MBSR program focuses on sitting meditation, a predominantly cognitive practice that has its roots in Buddhist meditation practices. Hatha Yoga, on the other hand, draws on related but somewhat distinct cultural and philosophical traditions that employ physical activity in the context of meditation practice. That the two elements have been juxtaposed in the same program, along with the body scan, is something of an anomaly, reflecting the particular experiences and training of those who originated the program. (p. 60)
My learning about these practices has been likely characteristic of that in the West: my learning about mindfulness has come predominantly from the Buddhist tradition, whereas my learning in yoga from the Yoga tradition, and the two inform each other. Due to the way they have both been integrated into western culture, there have been some recent explorations of the intersections between yoga and mindfulness in popular writing
(Boccio, 2004; Stone, 2010) and academic literature (Salmon et al., 2009). The intention of these pieces of work has been to look more deeply at the commonly accepted notion of yoga being a body practice and mindfulness as a mind practice, exploring the relationship between the two.
In the academic literature, authors have moved away from a single form of practice and focused on the technique at the heart of the practice itself: mindfulness. So,
163 in an MBSR program, for example, yoga, sitting and walking meditation, body scans, and more recently qigong (Schure et al., 2008), loving-kindness meditation (Shapiro et al.,
2005; Shapiro et al., 2007) and a “three-minute breathing space” (Shapiro et al., 2005), provide the form, or “scaffolding” as described by Kabat-Zinn (2003, p. 4), in which mindfulness is cultivated. Stauffer (2007) described the practice of mindfulness as a sequential process of:
a) resting attention on current experience with an accepting and open attitude, b) catching/noticing when attention is narrowed to consuming thoughts, c) remembering to reorient, d) reorienting or “switching” attention to current experience without judgment of the previous distraction. (p. 16)
As such, the yoga practice we engaged in could be seen as one form of cultivating mindfulness, fitting seamlessly within the current body of literature. However, it seems to me that yoga is more than this. After focusing so narrowly on the mindfulness component of these practices, this exploration has been to open up the conversation again. In doing so, a number of questions have emerged.
What is the relationship between the form and the practice of mindfulness? Is practicing mindfulness in yoga postures different from practicing mindfulness in sitting meditation, and if so, how? Through exploring this relationship between form and practice, we could come to understand more clearly which form would be most suitable at various times for different individuals.
Therefore, from my experience in this research and in my reflections, I would suggest that the form of the practice is not a thing in and of itself that is either good or bad, but rather it is the way we bring it to life, or perhaps, the way it brings us alive, that
164 is important. Therefore, on the one hand, the form in this process does not have to be yoga, but could be any practice that creates structure. On the other hand, there is an important relationship between the form and the other two aspects of this process, and thus, we have to be careful not to assume that the form is irrelevant. The practice of yoga postures does have its benefits: an engagement of and relationship with the body, a culturally-acceptable form of the practice, an accessible practice for those new to contemplative practices. For myself, and perhaps for others, there is also something very joyful and playful about being in and working with the body, which is so different from much of our cognitively-oriented lives. Furthermore, this question of the form of the practice and the teacher go hand-in-hand, as the best form of practice will be the one in which the teacher practices regularly and thus knows the most intimately.
Furthermore, my reflections on what is missing when we see yoga exclusively through the lens of mindfulness brought my attention back to the importance of body.
This research demonstrated the value of bringing the body and cultivating our awareness of it into counselling education. As counsellors, experiencing our challenges and vulnerabilities with our bodies and minds coordinated makes them much more approachable as they are grounded in reality. In terms of counselling education, the contribution of the yoga course was to allow the same concepts, skills and qualities offered more abstractly in the counselling program to be explored in a more embodied way.
165 e. Conclusion
The contribution of my personal reflections to the literature directs our attention to the way in which the academic literature, like myself as I began this research, has viewed yoga through a specific lens. Thus, this model and the analysis of the data by individuals may lend some insights into the current limitations of the literature. One of the limitations has been its focus on the fruits of the practice. In this way, yoga has been used to solve problems, and although these are very important and pressing issues, the literature is doing so without situating itself and its perspective. When the contribution of yoga is viewed without acknowledging and penetrating the reflective aspect, yoga is reduced to a technique to directly produce measurable outcomes. This is also a cultural assumption, and is why the participants, as well as myself, wanted yoga to be like a
“technique” to make their discomfort go away. In the literature, self-care has been subject to this assumption, as much of the research links the form of the practice, whether it is walking, listening to music, or writing, to the outcomes of reducing stress, feeling calm and improved counselling practice, without acknowledging the reflective aspect of this process. Thus, it is my hope that this research opens up this discussion and allows us to further explore the contributions this practice might have to counsellor development and practice.
B. Considerations for Future Yoga Courses
As this research was the first time I have taught a course like this and done qualitative research, there are a number of changes I would make if I were to do it again:
166 • One-on-one interactions with each of the participants were an important aspect of
this research, as the participants were more open with me than in a group setting
and these interactions provided a valuable opportunity to directly point out the
ways in which yoga was relevant to their specific experience. If I were to do this
research again, I would have a mandatory 10-15 minute session with each of the
participants part-way through the course. These short interviews would have also
provided the opportunity to develop a deeper relationship and level of trust with
the participants.
• I would have more space between the focus groups: either holding four focus
groups spaced evenly throughout the research, or holding only three focus groups.
• I would do the individual interviews after the final focus group. When the
interviews were held before the final focus group, I established a different
relationship with certain members of the group, which resulted in too many
references to our interview within the group. Also, those who had done the
interviews had already shared their perspectives, and were less active within the
group.
• Although I was very careful in sharing my opinions with the group, with more
reflection and care this could certainly be improved on.
• I would make more of an effort to ground their experiences in yoga philosophy.
Yoga philosophy is a way of viewing our experience with the intention of
orienting us toward growth and transformation, of viewing our experience that
recognizes more unity than it does differences, and offers us a way of opening to
167 our experiences and acting with greater wisdom and compassion. Of course,
integrating philosophy into this course would be dependent on my ultimate hope,
which would be to have this become integrated into the counselling program. The
participants could have gotten much more out of the yoga course if they had the
time set aside for it within their program, rather than as an addition to an already
full schedule.
C. Limitations of the Research
Firstly, there are a number of limitations and challenges identified with a phenomenological approach. As stated by Moerer-Urdahl & Creswell (2004), “A thread needs to flow between the significant statements, the meaning units, and the essence descriptions with the researcher building a composite description of increasingly general meaning”, which is difficult to achieve in the data analysis. Secondly, the essences as identified in this study will only reflect that experienced at this particular time, place and by the individuals who are interviewed, and thus the generalizability is questionable.
Third, as Moustakas (1994b) pointed out that “the process of epoché is difficult to achieve, this pure state of being consciously present for perceiving and experiencing in a fresh way.” Although I did my best through practice and reflection, this will continue to improve with experience. A final limitation is the challenge of penetrating the language and philosophy of phenomenology, affirmed by Moerer-Urdahl & Creswell (2004):
“Transcendental phenomenology requires that researchers learn a specific language of research and to understand the philosophical issues embraced by Husserl (1931). The unique language of this phenomenological method requires
168 an openness to understanding these terms and how they might be applied in a specific study.”
This, of course, was one of the biggest challenges throughout the research. I will look forward to the opportunity to delve more deeply into this research methodology and work with other researchers on this topic in the future. Therefore, inherent in the limitations of this study is the learning process of the researcher, which will only become more refined and precise over time and experience. This speaks to one of the other limitations of this research, which was partaking in this project alone, and thus being limited in having a diversity of perspectives from which to explore the data.
In terms of the yoga course, to address the current lack of research in this area, a qualitative methodology has been chosen to gather more understanding and knowledge about the relationship between a yoga practice and counsellor development and practice.
However, one of the limitations of this methodology is that no control groups were used to determine a direct link between changes experienced in the students and the practice.
There are also limitations to the self-reporting nature of the data. One of the other limitations of the study is that we are looking at the changes experienced over a relatively short time of practice, and there was a lot of flexibility in terms of the amount of practice engaged in by the participants. Yoga is a long term process and this cross-sectional study lacks insight into whether or not the experience has a lasting effect on the students and the way they assimilate the experience into their personal lives and counselling practice.
Finally, this study may also be limited by the dual role of teacher and researcher.
Therefore, one possible limitation may be that participants feel the need to respond positively to the teacher, thus censoring their experience and opinion about the
169 integration of yoga into counselling education. This may have been partly overcome through the analysis of the data by individual, but was certainly still a factor.
D. Implications and Recommendations
In some ways, the literature around yoga, contemplative practices and counselling education has become quite narrow, zooming in and focusing on the practice through a particular lens and with a particular end in mind. This research has made great contributions to counselling education and has paved the way for others such as myself to bring their interests in contemplative practice and counselling practice together. Based on this study and my conclusions, my interest is now in zooming back out to look at the practice more broadly. What can we learn from understanding yoga in its own context, and how does this change the ways in which we bring it to counselling students?
My most important recommendation based on this research is that we, as counselling educators and researchers, begin to also question and explore the ways in which a reductionist paradigm might be found in ourselves, in the assumptions of our research, and in our ways of teaching these practices to counselling students. This integration of yoga and contemplative practices into counsellor education could lead to greater understanding, insight and growth for students than we have begun to explore.
The four areas that I identified in this thesis may be areas in which to begin this exploration: the relationship between yoga and mindfulness, the use of language, the context in which we place yoga, and the way we conceptualize self-care.
From this research, there are also important questions and recommendations for counselling education programs. Although the counselling program at Acadia, as with
170 many counselling programs, doesn’t require counselling students to enter their own counselling, a yoga or contemplative program could be an important means of supporting students through their own process. Doing this work as a group within the counselling program not only makes it financially and practically accessible, but provides a supportive context, also deepening friendships with their colleagues.
Although yoga is only one possible form of contemplative practice, it has its benefits. Firstly, as it involves physical movement, it contributes a body-centered, kinesthetic, embodied learning to the program, which is currently lacking in this counselling program. Physical activity was important for the participants, and yoga provided a mode of activity that many participants commented on being very different from other forms or exercise, leaving them feeling relaxed, refreshed and energized. This work and emphasis on the body and breath also supported participants in having a greater sense of body-awareness both in their personal lives and in counselling sessions. More broadly, this research brings to attention the importance of the body in counselling and healing, and supports finding ways of incorporating it into the counselling curriculum.
One interesting aspect of this study was the wide range of experience with yoga and contemplative practice of the participants, which benefitted each member of the group. As yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices are so widely popular in the West, it is important that counsellors have an opportunity to explore these experiential practices, as they are likely to encounter clients who are engaged in them. Further, for those who are already engaged in these practices, having an opportunity to participate in this work and further support its integration with their work as a counsellor is important.
171 From my own experience, as someone who takes a deep interest in these practices and recognizes their transformational potential, counselling is one of the few places in our culture in which we can explore this work with others. Thus, as yoga and mindfulness continues to be practiced in the West, counselling programs are likely to see more applicants with this background. Supporting this avenue for people with an engagement with contemplative practices, bringing these two complementary perspectives together, creates the possibility of contributing to our understanding of counselling. Bringing these two together has the potential to reduce some of the challenges we are seeing with burn out and a lack of self-care, supporting a shift from such a strong “other”-focus to one that holds the care of both the counsellor and client together in the counselling process.
My personal interest in continuing this process is a further exploration of this present-centered, transformative aspect of this process. Further questions that arise from this process include: how can yoga become relevant to the greatest number of counselling students? How can we best direct students into this process? Are there other avenues of inquiry and practice that would support this process? How do participants describe their experience in this space, and how does it inform their practice of counselling? How can we, as educators, best support and facilitate this process, and what is the relationship between our own practice and those who we work with? And finally, how can we create a form to best support the participants in this process? Based on my experience with this research, incorporating a short sitting practice with the yoga postures, beginning half-way through the course, might enhance the experience of the participants by providing them
172 with a diverse set of forms. A diversity of forms is the approach taken within these courses in other counselling programs (Schure et al., 2008; Shapiro et al., 2007).
Self-care has been an important theme throughout this entire research, and been the source of much of my own learning. The main question that continues to arise for me has been: what is it about counselling and other helping professions that is causing us to not care for ourselves? Although there are certainly a number of contributing factors that are external to us, this research suggests that perhaps there is also an inherent personal resistance to present-centered experience and change. One of the participants described this resistance as follows:
I was in that space, and I was going through all these changes, and not really willing to look at it. And I think it was because I hadn’t been doing yoga. Like, the yoga had stopped. And so when we started doing yoga again, all of those things started to surface for me, but it was more of a slow progression because I was fighting it, because that was what had kept me safe in school for all of those years before.
This resistance should become a welcomed and openly-discussed aspect of counselling education, as it is precisely the same resistance we meet in our work with our clients.
And thus, in counselling, learning to work with our own resistance is important, as transformation and change necessarily come from this intimate engagement with others.
Furthermore, as this model suggests, it is not the form of the practice that leads directly to the outcomes, but there is also a relationship with the present-centered experience. And thus, although the yoga postures themselves are an important aspect of self-care, it is complimented by the attitude we cultivate in the practice. Self-care seems to be about a willingness to enter into a relationship, both with ourselves or with others,
173 and a willingness to act from this place. And thus, for counselling educators, there are two questions: how does the structure of the counselling program encourage the ability to be in this relationship, and secondly, what are the attitudes of the educators to responding within these relationships? Thus, one way of conceptualizing self-care could be as an open attitude in our relationship with ourselves and with others.
Finally, this work has important implications and relevance to fields beyond counselling education. Any field in which relationships are key would greatly benefit from this research. Other helping professions, including social workers, medical and nursing practitioners, psychologists, physiotherapists, psychiatrists, alternative health practitioners, and anyone in a supportive role would also possibly benefit from this work.
Educators and teachers, both counselling and otherwise, would also benefit from an exploration of this work, both from having a contemplative component integrated in their education and training, as well as from exploring contemplative methodologies.
174 Afterward
Upon the reflection that only comes after many edits and revisions to our work, it has become evident to me that the thread that has woven this piece together has been wholeness.
Yoga and counselling are each practices of moving toward, practicing, recognizing and embodying wholeness, both requiring the support of others when we have become stuck. This research provided an opportunity for the paths of the participants, supervisors, teachers, many supporters and my own to meet, and for exploring what emerges when we open to our experience together. The continual lesson throughout this process that yoga is not a technique, but a process that requires all of ourselves, is a call to wholeness, both personally and in our professional roles as teachers, counsellors, and educators.
My personal reflective process and my writing have been playful experiments of wholeness, each describing the path taken in the experiment of each moment. These paths have arisen through formal practice, through writing, through my interactions with others and through reflection. Each morning, I arose to sit on my cushion or practice postures on my mat, patiently waiting and discerningly looking to find that place from which this project has emerged.
Phenomenology and yoga philosophy are both approaches to wholeness and relationship: questions, maps and descriptions of how we see when we are no longer separate. Over the past week, I have been thinking about how the qualities that emerge from a yoga practice are from the whole, and how the parts—the body, the mind, and the
175 emotions—are in a constant dialogue with the whole: the parts as gateways to the whole, and the whole informing the parts.
Of course, I’m not sure what wholeness is. However, it’s the word that continues to come to me as a way of describing an elusive and consistent experience. Over the course of this project, it has become synonymous with yoga, and also with this gentle, open, humour-filled, feeling that I can only describe as love.
That feels like a good note on which to end a thesis.
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183 Appendix A. Yoga Philosophy and Reflections
A1. Introduction
This appendix is a compilation of the writings on yoga philosophy I shared with the participants at the beginning of each week during our eight week yoga course. Included in each piece of writing were questions for reflection on the topic, as a way to bring the topic alive within the context of the personal experience of the participants, and multi-media resources to pursue this topic further.11 In each piece, I discussed yoga philosophy exclusively, allowing students to draw their own conclusions about the relationship between yoga and counselling. These pieces are also written with an English translation of sanskrit terms for accessibility and ease of reading. The purpose and intention of this writing was broad. These pieces were an opportunity to introduce the participants to the philosophy of the practice, creating a broader context within which to understand the posture practice, placing some of the popular language of yoga into context, and through sharing my own personal reflections and experiences, making the practice relevant to their everyday lives. These writings on philosophy provided a compass to keep myself as the teacher and researcher learning, oriented and focused throughout the data collection process. In terms of the research questions, these pieces on yoga philosophy addressed my question of the context of yoga in the literature by exploring yoga within the context of its own tradition. Finally, these pieces of writing also provided me with an opportunity to deepen my own understanding of yoga. It is rare to have an opportunity to devote one’s self to these deep questions and philosophy. My intention was to cover what I saw to be the major topics of the subject and, in the end, there were only a few topics for which I ran out of space. By engaging with the material creatively, I was able to express this philosophy in an integrated way and share with the participants my own insights about the practice. The resources I used were not academic sources, but rather those of teachers that I have either personally worked with, or ones that I have been reading for so many
11 The questions for reflections and multi-media resources have not been included as they are outside of the scope of this thesis, but are certainly available for those who are interested.
184 years they have integrated into my way of seeing the world. In this way, I was able to draw on a personal connection and integration of their teachings. Writing in this way allowed me to share with the participants the love, care and interest I have for both the practice and the wisdom shared with me by other teachers. Being/working with ourselves, which is a true art, requires both technique, practice, and opportunity for expression. Yoga philosophy provided a perspective, a particular lens, that supports us in seeing the world in a way that unifies rather than separates, thus allowing us to see those connections between ourselves and our own process and that of those with whom we are working.
185 A2. A Return to the Beginning
Yoga, through its thousands of years of evolution and transformations, has always been a path to freedom from suffering. Suffering manifests in innumerable forms, not only over time and in different cultural contexts, but also in our day to day lives, and yoga is both a way of working with our suffering and the experience of its release. Although starting from our points of discontent is counter to our usual approaches to working with it, yoga begins here, as giving attention and space to these experiences allows us to explore the paradox that the path out is in. Suffering, or duhkha, describes our experience of disconnection, isolation, discontent or a pervasive sense of lack (Stone, 2010, p. 47). Yoga is both the path from duhkha and an experience of ourselves as its opposite: an experience of wholeness and intimate interconnection within ourselves, with others, and with the natural world. The word yoga comes from the root yuj, which is also the root of the english “to yoke”. We could also consider yoga as a practice of “yoking”: bringing together and orienting all aspects of ourselves to this one path. These two explanations—yoga as something we are, and as something we do—are both accurate and valuable. When we are experiencing ourselves as disconnected, yoga is the path of bringing our whole self together to work/ be12 with our suffering. However, in the release of our discontent, the practice allows us to recognize and remember through direct experience that we are already connected and whole. If we trust the yogis’ assertion that we are already connected, our sense of lack and disconnection is more of an error in perception than reality. The intention of yoga practices is to address this error in perception, which is why practices are often described as helping us to “wake up”. Suffering here refers to not only our most challenging circumstances and deepest wounds, but also to experiences that are quite ordinary. Suffering may manifest, as it does in my life daily, as being caught in an endless loop of rationalizing and creating theories, as an uncomfortable thought, or as a less-than- desirable reaction in a relationship. And the path of yoga, in these moments, as it has
12 I will often use work/be together, as, from a yoga perspective, as in English neither alone are sufficient.
186 always been for thousands of years, is an experiment to find contentment even in difficult circumstances. Yogis have always taken a radical stance on suffering; the practice of yoga takes our usual approach to working with our challenges and turns it on its head. Rather than buying into our stories and looking externally to fill this sense of lack or relieve our suffering, the practice of yoga invites us to turn inward to investigate, experientially, the suffering itself. Before we can find a way out of our suffering, we first have to understand its nature and how it works. The key to the practice is shifting how we see our challenges: from something to fix or avoid, to our entry point into the practice or even an “auspicious sign” that we are ready to grow and change. In fact, attempting to fix or change our problems only reinforces our perception that there is, a problem in the first place. Rather than make our suffering go away, yogis suggest that the path out of suffering is to experience and see these patterns, just as they are, without changing, manipulating, or explaining them. We may find that when we move fully into our experiences, without preferring whether they go away or stick around, we may soften and experience qualities of curiosity, acceptance, friendliness, humour, and love. The practice of yoga begins each time we step onto our mat, each time we find ourselves entangled in our stories, and each time we decide to look deeply into what’s troubling us. The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, which scholars suggest may have been written sometime around the 2nd century C.E., begins with “atha yoga anushasanam” or “now the teachings of yoga” (Hartranft, 2003, p. 2). The word now refers to the present moment: the practice of yoga can only happen when we are open to our present circumstances. The word “now” also carries a sense that we are finally ready to take a good look: deep down we know that our efforts to figure it out, to avoid it, and to turn it and twist it around in an attempt to turn it into something else, are not working. This honesty, often accompanied by a sense of giving up, are essential to beginning the practice. The word now is also essential to maintaining a regular, daily practice: we practice with our tiredness, stress and grumpiness; we practice with our boredom and our busy-ness; we even practice with our skepticism of the practice. Yoga is a practice of leaving nothing out. If during the practice, we find ourselves thinking, “I’m not any good
187 at this”; “this is too easy”; “this teacher’s voice is annoying”; or (my all-time favourite) “should I have soup or sushi for dinner?”, the key is to notice our thinking and bring our attention to our full present experience. We can bring ourselves back by noticing: what is my breath like? what is happening in my body? where am I contracting? where are I no longer paying attention? Getting caught up in thinking removes our attention from our direct experience and reinforces our habit of experiencing ourselves as an “I” separate from our experience. That which brings us to the practice is honourable and precious. Even in being honest about what brings us to yoga, we begin to see our challenges in a new light: they are the gateway to this exploration. Thus, over time, when our attention is yoked to the practice in this way, we may even begin to feel grateful for even our most challenging circumstances. As we practice, we commit to showing up to and being willing to explore whatever presents itself. The yoga practices of postures, breathing, and meditation create a set of conditions that are supportive of this exploration of our present experience, and over time our practice expands into more areas of our lives. And although, for me personally, even writing about showing up for all aspects of my life evokes fear (and will likely always do so), there is also a sense that this might actually work. Although the practice comes with no guarantees, as Freeman (2010) described, we work towards creating conditions for experiencing for ourselves what others in this tradition have experienced: But like so much in yoga - and in life for that matter - experiencing the present moment is not something you do; it is something that just happens. You “do” the practices so that when the flash of insight arises, you are awake enough to notice it. So again and again we begin the practices for precisely where we are. (p.25)
And so, the beautiful aspect of the practice is that regardless of how many times we have practiced yoga—whether it is our billionth practice, a mere thousandth, or even the very first time—stepping onto our mat holds both the qualities of a fresh start and an intangible familiarity of coming back: a return to the beginning. Perhaps the most important note on which to end this first piece on yoga is that we don’t have to buy into any of this: skepticism and critical thinking are essential to the practice. Rather than making any metaphysical promises, we are invited to see for
188 ourselves. Yoga philosophy is a description of reality as seen and experienced by those who have asked these same questions and walked this path, leaving for us maps of the paths they took. If we choose to engage with these questions and exploration, our intention with the practice becomes important, as it reconnects us with our aspiration to see clearly, and also with the lineage of practitioners who have also struggled with these same questions, who we can look to for support and inspiration. Thus, as we begin to practice, we settle into our feet, our breath, and we pay attention.
189 A3. Seeking
! In August, I began to re-establish a more substantial daily yoga practice than the twenty minutes I had negotiated with the mid-July garden. And on this first day “back”, my practice was filled with intoxicating thoughts and feelings of being grounded in the practice and an excitement and anticipation of what is to come: “I am going to practice every day like this”; “I’ll finally be able to do those postures that have eluded me thus far”; “I am finally going to be living in the way I have always wanted”. Of course, in the second practice, there is always a clash between these fantasies and reality. Perhaps the practice is challenging, perhaps I still can’t do those elusive postures, or perhaps I’m grumpy and not exactly exhibiting those qualities for which I had hoped. And although I am still surprised and disappointed when this happens, this experience seems to be a gateway into coming into contact with a deeper longing for connection and a path to that experience I am longing for, through both effort and letting go. Thus, rather than the disappointment being a sign that there’s something wrong, I have come to see it as a good sign. Disappointment quickly sweeps away my hopes and expectations and grounds the practice in the reality of my life. When our ideals bump into reality, we begin to see our fantasies of where this practice might take us, an awareness to what we were hoping to get and to escape from. When this is seen, what remains may be a sense of longing, a pure sense felt deep in the heart. This longing is to connect with something larger than ourselves, and we see that this longing isn’t really connected to our desires. As such, this sense of longing provides us with the insight to see through the usual distractions that arise in our practice. When we allow ourselves to connect to duhkha with our heart, when we are honest with ourselves and actually feel our discomfort, with it arises an impulse to find a way out. This impulse is called samvega in the yoga tradition, which can also be translated as urge, aspiration, vehemence, (Cope, 2006, p. 15) which describes the energy the practitioner brings to the practice, fueled by this longing for connection. This impulse has motivated the seeking of yogis for a direct experience of yoga, or interconnection, throughout the history of the tradition. Their experimentations have taken many forms: working with the body and breath in haṭha yoga, developing intellect and discernment through questioning and inquiring into the nature of reality in jnana
190 yoga, working and acting in service of others in karma yoga, recognizing the sacredness of everything in life on the tantric path, allowing our practice to reach all corners of our inner and outer life in Patanjali’s ashtanga yoga, cultivating love and devotion in bhakti yoga. As Richard Freeman (2010) described, each of these paths are aimed toward the same experience, The specific differences between traditional schools of yoga are less important than the fact that most are intended to eventually lead to a direct experience of reality. Whether they are successful depends on the intelligence, devotion, and ability of the individual students and teacher to correctly adapt and interpret teachings and practices. (p. 6)
Many of us will have had spontaneous experiences of yoga in one, if not more, of these ways: a spontaneous gesture of kindness to help others, our mind being stunned into silence after reading something that speaks to us; a moment of wonder and awe at a beautiful sunset; being lost in the scent of a beautiful flower; sitting in the woods or by a river when the mind becomes very still; or the heart suddenly opening to another’s suffering. These experiences are available to us at any time, and the practice of yoga is simply a way of creating the situations and contexts in which they are more likely to arise or we are more likely to notice them. Thus, yoga moves between a disciplined practice and spontaneous expression (Stone, 2009, p. 28). We all experience this in our everyday lives: moments when we are spontaneously generous and kind, and moments when although we don’t “feel” like it, we have the discipline to offer ourselves to whatever life presents. In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali describes the two paths that create the potential for this direct experience: abhyasa and vairagyam, or effort and non-attachment. Both of these practices are aimed toward working with our habits that keep us caught in patterns of duhkha. On the one hand, with abhyasa, we continually realign our attention with our present experience, as our habitual patterns of doing anything else but are deep and unrelenting. With vairagyam, non-attachment or dispassion, we practice letting go in situations where we would normally react or be hooked. In terms of practicing yoga postures, we can see these two paths as one movement: we continue to align our attention with the breath, bringing it back each time we find ourselves caught up in a habitual pattern, continuing to let go of these patterns as they arise. In the context of practicing
191 yoga postures, we could also think of them as putting effort into the practice (abhyasa) without attachment to any particular outcome (vairagyam). Abhyasa and vairagyam are essential to keeping us oriented toward the practice. Language around yoga in our culture, such as being happy, content, peaceful, free, creative —as promised by the yoga clothing, books and DVDs—can lead us to believe that if we are feeling angry, discontent, frustrated, or grumpy, we are doing it wrong. Yoga is a practice of leaving nothing out. If there is anger in the present moment, then we practice with it, staying with the experience and letting go of our habitual stories around our anger. If there is fear and anxiety, we pay attention and give them space. We don’t have to try to get anywhere, we don’t have to resolve everything or figure it all out. What we have to see is that this is taking place, and return our attention to our present experience. In doing so, we begin to befriend these patterns, rather than rejecting them. The particular practice we choose, whether it is hatha yoga, karma yoga, or bhakti yoga, provides us a structure in which to do so. Yoga doesn’t happen later when we have the perfect body, have resolved all of our challenges in relationships, and don’t have any more school work to do. Instead, it’s within the imperfections of our bodies, our challenges in relationships, and the busy-ness of our lives that the practice comes alive. So, the practice is only about becoming more familiar and gentle with ourselves exactly as we are now. When we begin to see through our expectations and hopes of the outcome of the practice, what’s happening right now becomes much more interesting. We begin to see that what we are seeking is actually very near. We don’t have to look outside of ourselves, but rather deeply into our own experience.
192 A4. Getting to Know the Kleshas
Once we feel a resolve to inquire a little more deeply into our experience we are often left wondering “now what?” At these times, it can be helpful to look at some of the maps left by others who have asked these very same questions. In many of these maps the next step is to understand duhkha and its causes, more deeply. Typically, when we think about the causes of our suffering, we get caught in our stories about our suffering. In becoming entangled in our stories, we miss the opportunity to see the overall patterns that are common not only to our personal struggles, but also the struggles inherent to being human. In the yoga tradition, the root causes of duhkha are called the kleshas. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a collection of 196 aphorisms on “Raja” yoga, or the royal path of yoga, is one text that describes the kleshas in relation to the path of yoga. In order to explore the kleshas, and the ways in which they relate to our suffering, we need to begin with Patanjali’s view of yoga. In the second sutra, after beginning with now the teachings of yoga, Patanjali provides his view of yoga (provided here in two translations): (1.2) yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness (Hartranft, 2003, p. 2) or (1.2) yoga is the cessation of the turnings of the mind (Freeman, 2010, p. 150)
Patanjali defines yoga as an experience in which the fluctuations of citta, the thoughts or the mind, have settled, paused, been suspended, or been seen through. Yoga, an experience of wholeness and intimacy occurs when the mind is temporarily quiet, and we are no longer seeing our experience through the filter of the mind. For example, perhaps you have had an experience of seeing a beautiful sunset that takes your breath away. At first, there is an experience of simply admiring the sunset. Then, a few (very short) moments later, the mind springs back into action, creating a story about the beautiful sunset. According to Patanjali, those few moments when the mind is quiet is an experience of yoga, and the practice of yoga is about cultivating an opportunity to experience the world in this way. In the third sutra, Patanjali continues to describe this experience of stilling the mind, and in the fourth sutra compares this state to our ordinary state of being:
193 (1.3) then pure awareness can abide in its very nature (1.4) otherwise awareness takes itself to be the patterns of consciousness. (Hartranft, 2010, p. 2)
According to Patanjali, when the patterning of the mind has been stilled—at that moment when we are purely experiencing a sunset—we also experience awareness. When there is patterning in the mind—when we begin telling ourselves stories about the beautiful sunset—then we confuse awareness with the thoughts themselves. Although they often feel like the same thing, pure awareness, which is that aspect of our experience that is unchanging, is actually distinct from the contents of our awareness, which are constantly in a dynamic and creative flux. Patanjali is stating here that much of our suffering comes with identifying with the contents of our awareness— our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, or any part of our inner and outer worlds gathered by the senses—and creating a story about our experience with ourselves as the main character. Although perhaps confusing, this is good news! This distinction between awareness and the contents of our awareness means that we can observe our thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations with a little more space. When we act as though our awareness and its contents are the same, we identify with our thoughts, which puts us in a position of having to fix or change the contents of our awareness in order to feel happy and content. According to Patanjali, the fact that pure awareness is separate from the content of consciousness means that we have a place to rest that is distinct from all of the ups and downs of our experience. For example, according to the Yoga Sutras, if I suddenly feel embarrassment and ashamed because I am mistakenly a half hour late, I don’t have to wallow in my thoughts and feelings or even try to change them to positive ones. Instead, if I slow down and watch the physical sensations of the rising anxiety and the thought patterns that are simultaneously beating myself up and making excuses, I can watch them arise, manifest (usually build and become stronger), and then dissolve back into the background where all other feelings, thoughts, and sensations originate and return to. Once this has happened, although I am still a half hour late, I am able to take action in a way that is no
194 longer driven by a desire to no longer feel my shame and embarrassment, but is spontaneous and appropriate to that moment. Our thoughts, feelings, and sensations are impermanent and context dependent, although they often feel more problematic and permanent than that. According to Patanjali, awareness can be seen by allowing the patterns of consciousness to settle, so that the mind reflects awareness back to itself. Awareness seen in the reflective quality of the mind when it has become quiet is similar to the clarity of the red and yellow autumn leaves in their reflections in a pond when the water is still. Working with mind in this way requires abhyasa and vairagyam: effort to keep the attention focused and dispassion toward our habitual patterns. When we practice in this way with thoughts or feelings, allowing them to arise, manifest and dissolve, the body relaxes, and a small smile appears with a feeling of understanding, acceptance, and love. However, as simple as it sounds, there are a number of built-in obstacles that get in the way of an experience of yoga. In yoga philosophy, these obstacles are called kleshas, which comes from the root “klis”, meaning “to suffer, torment, or distress” (Stone, 2008, p. 66). The first klesha is avidya or not-seeing, and the other four kleshas flow from it: asmita, the sense of “I-ness”; raga, attachment; dvesha, aversion; and, abhinivesha, fear of death, or, more practically, the fear of letting go of our points of view. Vidya means “to see”, and in Sanskrit, the “a” placed before a word creates a negative, so avidya means not-seeing. According to this philosophy, avidya is not seeing the difference between awareness and the contents of awareness, mistaking them to be the same thing. Much confusion and suffering stems from trying to create permanence out of something that is constantly changing. It is from this fundamental misperception that the other kleshas flow. Asmita is the sense or feeling of “I-ness”, which is directly related to the ahamkara, or the function of the mind that creates an “I”, who is experiencing a pattern of consciousness. For example, when hunger arises, the ahamkara interprets this experience as “I am hungry”. In this moment, duality is created as we separate ourselves from our experience: rather than there just being hunger, we create an “I” who is separate from the
195 experience of hunger. An important aspect of this practice is an inquiry into this “I” that so much of our life is based upon serving. With this sense of “I”, and thus narratives about our experience, we begin to make choices to confirm these stories, to ground and hold onto this sense of “I”. Thus, from asmita flows raga and dvesha, or attachment or aversion respectively, which are two forms of clinging. We spend much of our energy moving towards those things that bring us pleasure and away from those things that are difficult or painful. Thus, from this sense of an “I”, we create a list of rules that we think everyone should follow, and most of our discontent arises when these rules aren’t adhered to by ourselves and others. In clinging, we lose our freedom within our present circumstances, as only one small piece of the entire spectrum of experience is acceptable. For example, as so much of our culture is focused on being happy and healthy, we have created very little space for experiences of sadness, depression, anger, and illness. And yet, these are all valuable aspects of our experience, without which wholeness would not be possible. The final kleshas is abhinivesha, which is the fear of death: the creation of an ego is necessarily accompanied by the fear of it dying. And it is really the death of the ego that evokes fear, as we know that the physical body will simply enter back into the cycles of nature. On a more daily basis, abhinivesha could also be interpreted as the fear of the death of my “story of me”. In a practice, when we begin to become very absorbed in a posture, a fear often arises, which we have to face directly or else it tends to reinforce our patterns of clinging and a story of experience. We even hold on to our most painful stories, as they give us a sense of an “I” that is stable and unchanging amidst difficult circumstances. Although these stories are helpful by providing us with a way of organizing our experience, they also separate us from a direct experience of our life. We can see how the kleshas create suffering and keep us caught in their web. In mistaking a transient pattern of consciousness for something permanent, and creating an I who is experiencing this pattern, we create a self separate from our experience. In one way, we could think of duhkha as the shadow of creating a separate, individual self (Stone, 2009, p. 38). From this position of a separate self, we try to resolve our suffering by clinging to and avoiding certain aspects of our experience to try to prove, maintain and ground this self, held to our task by the fear of its dissolution. In this typical way of
196 being, we are trying to become connected from a place that is fundamentally disconnected: an impossible battle. Yoga, instead, brings us back to our direct experience, before this separate self was created, and asks us to look deeply at our experience, noticing the ever-changing nature of the contents of awareness, in order to see more clearly. When we can see through this process, it can lead to both compassion for the ways in which we all become entangled and wisdom to be able to see it when it’s happening. It is these qualities that the practice enables us to bring to our work and relationships in the world, as Pema Chödrön (1991) described, “A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet” (p. 3). As in all yoga practices, the first step is just to make all of this philosophy relevant by grounding it in our experience and seeing the kleshas in the context of own lives: not to change them, get rid of them, or feel guilty that they are functioning. The kleshas are essential to the life of the ego, and, like every aspect of our experience, a mystery to explore. Thus, perhaps practically, we treat the kleshas in the same way we would treat a young child who is trying to hide by burying their head under a pillow: with great respect, a recognition of their efforts to achieve their goals, with humour, and with love.
197 A5. Breaking the Habit
One of my all-time favourite quotations by Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, which has become one of my rules of thumb for working with any challenging emotional state or relationship, has been internalized like this: “When you’re caught up in an undesirable pattern or habit you know all too well, do something different, do absolutely anything as long as it’s different than what you’ve done before.”13 For me, her message has been that what matters most in these moments of being caught up is not what we do, but just that we break the pattern. In moments of high anxiety, rather than heading down that same old road filled with the same thoughts and emotions that lead to the same confusion and self-defeating behaviours, we dance, we run, we call someone, we do a headstand. We do this not because dancing, running or headstands are particularly special treatments for anxiety, but because when we do something different, just this one time, we create the possibility of a new path in this moment and in the future. We all know this feeling of being “hooked”: before we know what’s happened, we are swept into a cycle of sensations, emotions and thoughts that weren’t at all where we planned, or wanted, to go. These cycles of habitual patterns are called the “wheel of samsara” in Eastern traditions, which comes from the root “sr” or “to flow” and “sam”, which means “together” (Stone, 2008a, p. 222), describing the cycles that keep us stuck in duhkha. Getting to knowing our “favourite” patterns occurs naturally within the practice of yoga: each time we come back to the breath in a posture, we are able to see the pattern we are returning from with a little more space and clarity. Furthermore, each time they show up and we are able to recognize them as a pattern, we begin to identify with them less. In our practice, we work towards gaining a little more freedom around the patterns of thinking, emotions and physical feelings that we have established and continue to reinforce throughout our lives. We are working towards gaining an awareness of when the patterns arise and the ability to provide them with space so that they can manifest and so we can see what is revealed when we allow them to move through their own cycles.
13 Despite being a favourite, I cannot find it anywhere. I believe it came from Chödrön (2002).
198 In yoga philosophy, habitual patterns are called samskaras, which comes from the root “sam”, meaning to come together and “kr”, meaning action. We can think of samskaras as “latent impressions, predispositions, imprints, inherent tendencies, molds, or internal grooves” (Stone, 2008a, p. 118). The translation of samskara as a “groove”, evokes an image of our habitual patterns as grooves in web of the body, mind, and emotions that can either run deeply—our most entrenched patterns—or shallow. The word groove also relates our patterns to time: the more frequently we repeat a particular pattern, the deeper the groove becomes, the more easily our energy flows through it, and the more energy and effort it requires to do something different. Each groove consists of a physical, physiological, mental and emotional component: each groove permeates all of the different aspects of our being, not causally, but simultaneously. As such, the samskaras extend throughout both our unconscious and conscious life, through our physiology and our intellect. Because they are habitual grooves, these patterned responses to our experience are the reason it is so difficult to be free and open in the present moment: we almost always meet the present looking through the goggles of our previous experiences. The kleshas have an intimate relationship to the samskaras, and to samsara, this wheel of suffering. Psychotherapist and yoga teacher Michael Stone (2008a, p.72) created the following diagram of their relationship:
199 Not seeing things as they are “avidya”
Fear of letting go Action (abhinivesha) (karma)
Psychophysical grooves in Stories of “I”, “me”, and “mine” the mind and body (asmita) (samskaras)
Data moves through the Aversion or Attachment sense organs and the mind (dvesha) and (raga)
Feelings Perception
Sensation
At the top of the circle is avidya, or meeting the world without noticing the difference between our awareness and the contents of our awareness. Experientially, avidya feels like meeting the world already knowing everything about it. Based on the way we see our situation, we take action (karma). Action creates a samskara, or groove, or deepens a previous one. These grooves shape our organs of perception, so that as data moves through the sense organs and the mind, it is organized into a perception based on our previous experiences. In other words, the “grooves” in the bodymind almost automatically determine how we organize our experience into perceptions. Sensations, thoughts, and emotions arise in the body, based on our perception, leading to a feeling about this experience, which is simply negative, positive, or neutral. From this feeling, we experience either aversion (dvesha) or attachment (raga), which leads to the creation of a story (asmita) about ourselves in relation to this experience. Upon the creation of this story a fear of letting it go is also created, which once again leads to avidya, or an inability to meet the present moment due to our many trips around this cycle. When we
200 are caught in samsara, we are meeting life with a predetermined pattern of experience rather than a clean slate. Perhaps an example, one that may be familiar to many of us, would be useful in making this cycle relevant to our lives. Let’s say that before I go to bed at night, I set my alarm for 6 am to be sure that I have enough time to practice yoga in the morning. Although I have such great intentions of getting up early, I also have a habit of always thinking that I have plenty of time when the alarm goes off (avidya) and hitting my snooze button (karma). Doing this every morning for the past twenty years has created a deep groove (samskara), so that hitting the snooze button is almost automatic. Thus, despite my best intentions, when my alarm goes off, the sound enters my ears (data moves through the sense organs), and I almost instantly perceive the sound to be my alarm (perception). Physical sensations, my emotional comfort, and thoughts of how comfortable I am in bed (sensations), all arise in response to this perception. A positive feeling arises as I think about staying in bed, and I feel attachment (raga) to staying with this pleasurable experience (which is simultaneously an aversion (dvesha) to getting up). With my attachment to pleasure, very convincing stories about myself and staying in bed arise (asmita), and with these stories, a resistance or fear to doing anything counter to these stories (abhinivesha) arises when I question staying in bed. This whole cycle leads me to once again view the present moment through a lens of “I have lots of time to keep sleeping”, which leads to hitting the snooze button (karma), and on and on it goes. Of course, hitting a snooze button, in and of itself, isn’t a problem. The real problem is that I am no longer free to make a decision based on my present experience. The question that Patanjali sets out to answer in the Yoga Sutras is where can we interrupt this cycle while remaining engaged in the world? The first half of this cycle happens so fast and automatically, we don’t actually stand a chance of catching it in our daily lives (Saskia Tait, personal communication, October 22, 2010). Patanjali suggests that the place we can interrupt the cycle is at the feeling stage: rather than moving into attachment or aversion, we can stop and experience the full spectrum of feelings. Stone (2008a, p. 81) illustrates these possibilities in the following diagram:
201 Seeing things as they are “vidya”
Non-dual Action (karma)
Psychophysical grooves in the mind and body (samskara)
Awareness empty of Self Form (svarupa shunya) Data moves through the sense organs and the mind
Perception
Sensation
Full spectrum of Feelings
In this diagram, the right-hand side of this cycle is the same as the cycle of samsara. However, according to Patanjali, when my alarm goes off, I can stop this cycle if I can pay very close attention to all of the sensations, thoughts and emotions that I experience. When I keep my attention on the feeling itself, its impermanent nature is revealed and I am able to perceive my experience directly (vidya), in which case I can take action (karma) appropriate to this particular moment based on an experience of interconnection. And as samskaras are evoked with this new action, this cycle begins again. Based on this model, our feelings are never a problem in and of themselves, but it is our reactions to our feelings (with aversion or attachment) that keep us stuck in these habits. Therefore, in staying with the feelings, we begin to see them as temporary phenomena that require only our love and acceptance. Also important to this cycle of possibility is that there is no fixed outcome. In entering this process, I may or may not get up to practice, but my choice will be made based on present circumstances, rather than habit. When we practice in this way we create conditions that are supportive of
202 repeating it, as Stone (2008a) described, we “take actions that reinforce patterns in the mind-body that create conditions for being just as present in the next moment” (p. 79). A taste of this intimacy and connection, even just once, provides the confidence and incentive to continue in this way. In the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali describes three components of what he calls kriya yoga, or a yogic action: tapas, svadhyaya, and isvara (Hartranft, 2003, p. 21). Tapas, literally means “heat”, and it is the heat and energy we experience in staying with the full spectrum of feelings that are arising, holding the tension of many opposing feelings, without forming any conclusions. Svadhyaya means “self-study”, which includes not only studying and learning from yoga texts about the nature of the self, but also being willing to see these teachings as they occur in our own lives. Finally, isvara refers to pure awareness, reminding us to remain oriented toward discerning the difference between those aspects of our experience that are impermanent and our awareness of these temporary phenomena. In Figure 3, this awareness empty of self form (svarupa shunya) is shown on the left-hand side of the diagram, and will be described in further detail in the following piece of writing. We can relate Patanjali’s recipe for yogic action to the example of waking up in the morning. When the alarm goes off, and we begin to experience a positive feeling related to staying in bed, if we can stay with this feeling without setting into a conclusion of whether or not we should get up (tapas), while watching all of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that are particular to us (svadhyaya), with our attention tuned towards noticing what aspects of our experience are impermanent and choosing not to identify with them with the ideal of pure awareness in mind (isvara), we will see the impermanent and empty nature of these samskaras, returning us to the present moment with a choice about whether we get up to practice. Being caught up in these cycles is a regular state of affairs. We don’t have to worry when we notice them, or get even more caught up trying to intellectually sort them out. In fact, coming to recognize the ways in which we are caught up in our own lives, and being gentle with ourselves, is the source of compassion for others: although the contexts vary, we’re not so different. And yet, Patanjali suggests that there may be a way of working with this situation. And even when we understand what he’s saying and have
203 read the Sutras one thousand times, it’s still up to us to experiment, trying his suggestions on, seeing how they fit, again and again, in relation to each particular moment.
204 A6. A Little Journey
Yoga has always been, and continues to be, subtle and impossible to express literally. Like love, it is taught with metaphor and poetry, with patterned practice and ecstatic release. (Freeman, 2010, p. x)
Once upon a time, in a far away yet ever so close land, a young girl named Saskia was returning from a long adventure. An excellent science student who was very concerned about the environment, Saskia had received a generous grant to travel around the world to spend time with the most acclaimed scientists learning all about the environmental consequences of large dams. Along her travels, Saskia learned about every river system, every dam, and all of the different ecosystems they impacted. Although the projects she studied varied greatly, Saskia’s intuition gave her deep insight into the consistent ways each dam was impacting its environment. Saskia’s trip concluded about a five-hour bus ride from her home, where she was to return to write a best-selling book about her adventures and all that she had learned. Although she was feeling quite tired after her journey, and pleased with how everything had gone, she was also feeling very troubled. When Saskia reached the place where the bus was to pick her up, she said goodbye to her last scientist friend, and sat down beneath a large oak tree. As she settled down into the grass, leaned back into the tree, and closed her eyes for a much-needed rest, she felt confusion and frustration well up inside of her. The grant she had been given for her travels and for this book was from an engineering company with a new dam project they hoped her research would support. However, through what she had seen, she knew deep down that the work they were doing would also be devastating to the environment and the local communities nearby. What was she to write? As her mind continued whirling around with this debate, not to mention everything she had learned over her travels, her mind began to quiet down in her complete exhaustion, and she moved closer and closer to sleep. Suddenly, she heard a deep sigh. Saskia opened her eyes in surprise, but as she looked around, she realized that there was no one there. Figuring that she had begun to dream, she shrugged her shoulders, smiled to herself, and again closed her eyes grateful for an opportunity to rest.
205 And, again, as soon as she had settled back down, she heard another sigh. This time, Saskia assumed that it was a dream and she kept her eyes closed. And when she heard the sigh for the third time, she realized that she wasn’t asleep, but that the sigh was coming from within her! “‘Hello?”, she said tentatively and quietly within her mind, feeling a little silly for talking to herself. “Finally!”, replied an excited voice, “I have been trying and trying to get your attention for, well, for the past 20 years! I had practically given up. Your mind was just getting stronger and smarter and I was beginning to think that I didn’t stand a chance!” “Who are you?”, Saskia asked, looking around her. She was very confused about where this voice was coming from. It sounded so real that she kept thinking it must be someone close by. “I am Krishna”, the voice said, relief beginning to turn into excitement. “It’s been a long time since I have come across someone like you, perhaps since my time in Hastinapur with my dear friend Arjuna.14 I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get your attention!” “What do you mean, someone like me?”, she asked. “Well, it’s not so often that someone like you comes along: a courageous explorer, with a sharp intellect and deep intuition, who, most importantly, cares very deeply.” Saskia blushed. Krishna continued, “I need your help. My dear friend Shiva has once again been separated from his beloved Shakti, and their whole land is in disarray. Shiva is the strong, silent type, and he’s just waiting and waiting for Shakti to come back. Shakti is the most beautiful and creative woman, who is always changing her appearances, although she has a few favourites she appears in often. She has become very depressed and turned into a snake, all coiled up in a funk. At the moment, they are at opposite ends of the Sushumna river, which used to be a beautiful flowing river, but now is completely dry. When the two of them are separated, the whole land suffers along with them.” Saskia was confused, as she had never come across this beautiful river nor had she heard of these great lovers in all of her travels. However, she was still flattered, and
14 References to the Bhagavad Gita
206 this Krishna had a very calming and bright presence that made her feel clear and at ease, so she continued to listen. “There are seven centres along this river that govern the different aspects of the land, and at the moment, they are all out of whack. Some of them are too big and have taken over, and some of them are too small or have become stagnant, and they have all lost their ability to function well. These seven centres are the meeting points of thousands and thousands of other nadis, or rivers. Some say there are 72 000 nadis that flow through the land, but I think there are just too many to count. There are two essential rivers that flow on either side of the Sushumna, crossing at each of the first five centres and meeting at the sixth, called the Ida nadi and Pingala nadi. The Ida, a white, cool, gentle river, like the moon, flows on the left and the Pingala, a hot, red, quickly flowing river, like the sun, flows on the right. When the prana, which flows through these rivers, is flowing through the smaller nadis and unevenly between the Ida and Pingala, the land is always discontent, flipping between too hot and too cold, between liking this and not liking that. And the worst part, is that my dear friends Shiva and Shakti remain separated from each other, each devastated to be apart from their beloved. We all remember times that the two of them were together, when Shakti was able to moved freely along the Sushumna to be with her Shiva. Now, the whole land yearns for that again, but has forgotten how to bring them together again. This is why we need your help!” “My help!?” Saskia exclaimed, “I don’t know how I could possibly be any help. In all of my travels I haven’t seen any of these things that you’re talking about - this land, these rivers, these centres, and these two lovers, whose love has the ability to reestablish harmony.” Saskia sighed, tired, but very curious (and still flattered!) “But if you think I can help, I trust you and will do what I can.” Saskia opened her eyes, stood up, and started to put on her backpack, thinking about all of the places she had been, where she might have to go, how she was going to catch another bus, what it would mean for her travels back home...and suddenly she realized that Krishna was gone. “Krishna?”, she asked. She stopped to listen. “I’m here!”, he said, “It’s hard to get your attention through all that thinking! But where are you going? I thought you were going to stay to help?”
207 “I’m getting ready!”, she said confused, “Where are we going?”. “Come sit back down”, said Krishna with a smile, “we don’t need to go anywhere. Everything you need is right here. After all of your work exploring the natural world, you know everything you need to know. Please come back and have a seat, it’s hard for you to hear me over all those thoughts and movements!” Saskia sat back down with a thoroughly confused look on her face. “But all of those problems that I am studying are out there! In this little space under this tree, I don’t see all of these rivers, or centres...” Again, Krishna smiled, “Most people would try to look for solutions outside of themselves, but you can do this work right here. Although doing it this way can seem personal, the more personal we get, the more we see it’s actually a lot like the trees, rivers, winds, moon, and sun that you have been so diligently studying. Why don’t we start from where we were before: lean up against the tree so you’re sitting nice and tall and close your eyes.” Saskia settled back down underneath the tree, her back supported by its wide trunk, and closed her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and this seems very strange to me.” “Perfect! We’ll do the best work if it doesn’t make sense to you.” said Krishna. “Now, if you’ll let me, I can guide you. Everything you have learned in the past about your body is going to be helpful in terms of directing your attention, but once you get there, you’re going to have to forget all of that to see those rivers and winds that you have so diligently studied before.” As Saskia closed her eyes, and settled into her place beneath the tree, she found herself suddenly transported into a place that she had never seen before, but at the same time felt very familiar. She looked to her right and saw Krishna standing there next to her, a gentle smile on his face. Although it was the first time she had seen him, she recognized him as though he was an old friend. As she looked around, she was surprised and delighted to see that they seemed to be standing near the centre of a brilliant red lotus flower. She felt a particular depth and gravity to this place, and could also see that the four petals of the flower were slightly wilted. At the centre of the flower, she could see
208 two rivers that flowed into the flower and met at the base of a central river, which was completely blocked by the mouth of an enormous, coiled, sleeping snake. “That’s her”, whispered Krishna, “that’s Shakti, dressed as Kundalini. Doesn’t she look miserable! Her beloved Shiva is at the other end of that long river. We’re now in the Muladhara Chakra, which is at the very base of this central river. This lotus is responsible for basic survival needs of the land, including its deepest, most basic intelligence. And yet, see how the two rivers are flowing into this centre, but only continue to flow back into themselves and all of the smaller rivers? Without having Shakti to nourish this flower, this basic intelligence to support the needs of the land are being neglected, and we are all suffering because of it. To begin, we need you to wake Shakti up, so she can begin to make her ways to Shiva.” Terrified by the sight of this snake, Saskia suddenly looked up and said, “I can’t do this! I am not the person that you are looking for!” Saskia began to try to find a way out of this dream, attempting to open her eyes and come back to her lovely seat under the tree, but to no avail. After a few attempts, she looked back helplessly at Krishna. Krishna looked at her with a knowing smile on his face: “I know that the snake appears to be huge and frightening, but that’s only because you haven’t seen it before. You’ll have to trust me that it will be okay for you to awaken her - she is one of the most beautiful and creative goddesses you have ever laid eyes on. All you have to do is be willing to stay, and gently touch her so that she wakes up and begins to move up the central river.” Realizing that she had already come this far, Saskia took a deep breath, relaxed her shoulders away from her ears, and began to move very quietly towards the snake. Although she felt terribly afraid, as she moved closer, she also began to feel her curiosity arise. Her heart was still pounding as she reached out to touch the snake, but as soon as she did, the sensations remained in her hands, but the snake itself began to transform, turning into glittering prana, which began to flow up the river. With the snake dissolved, the other two rivers began to flow into the central river, and the prana of the 72 000 tiny rivers also emptied into the Sushumna. The petals of the red lotus suddenly filled with energy, its petals full and brilliant. Saskia looked at Krisna with an amazed and confused look on her face: “I thought you said that Shakti was a beautiful woman?”
209 “Ah, she is,” said Krishna, “but she is always moving in and out of forms: you will have to be able to recognize her in all of her many costumes. You have done beautifully. Your fear has been somewhat relieved, hasn’t it? You’ll have to keep remembering these experiences, as they will help you as we continue.” As they continued along this mighty river, they found themselves at the second centre, in the deep orange lotus of Svadhisthana, responsible for the expression of the deep emotions of the land, including those which govern the fertility and reproduction so important for the biodiversity and ability of the land to rejuvenate itself. They watched in amazement, as this lotus, which had become quite small and muted in colour, flourished as Shakti flowed through it. As Saskia looked around, she noticed that these changes in the lotuses were reflected in land around them, which also became more vibrant and smoothly functioning. They followed the river to the third centre, a ten-petaled yellow lotus called Manipura, which governed the individual power of the land, absorbing what it needs from its environment to create energy, enabling it to be self-sufficient and confident in its abilities to care for itself. This third centre had become enlarged, due to too much growth, which had created cracks in its petals from the strain. As Shakti poured through the centre, the yellow lotus shrunk down in size until it was the same as the others, the cracks of the petals healed. As they moved just to the outskirts of the third centre, Saskia noticed that the river again stopped by a large number of rocks piled up in the river bed, so that the river seemed to turn back on itself, unable to move any further. “What is that up there?”, Saskia asked in confusion. “That’s called a granthi, which is like a knot, blocking the movement of Shakti. You have seen one of these before, called the Brahma Granthi, when we first began this journey, but at that time it had the form of the snake. Here, it’s called the Vishnu Granthi, and it looks like those boulders have gotten in Shakti’s way. Those boulders had been placed there as a border between this part of the land and the others. Often, the Manipura can become too strong, and all its wonderful confidence and self-sufficiency ―identifying with everything it does―can actually block its ability to relate to others, which is the work of the next centre. However, if you move those boulders, we can continue on our way to Shiva.”
210 “Those boulders are way too heavy for me to move,” Saskia exclaimed. “Ah, but remember how you felt at the beginning?”, Krishna asked with a small smile, “Go ahead and try.” Filled with doubt and disbelief, Saskia began to move toward the boulders. As she got closer, she reluctantly put her hand out to touch one, thinking “This is ridiculous!” And when her hand met the cool, solid rock, she suddenly felt it begin to shift and change, becoming less and less solid, until it completely dissolved in her hands and Shakti continued to move up the river. This dissolution, which filled Saskia with delight, reminded her of her first experience with Shakti as the snake, and she felt confident and inspired to continue on this journey. They continued up to the bank of the river to the fourth centre, a twelve-petaled green lotus called Anahata Chakra, which is the heart of this land, governing all of its relationships, both within itself and with others. Also the centre of love and devotion, as Shakti passed through this lotus, its deep green petals came alive with radiance, and a deep connection and reverence for this magical place filled Saskia. From here, they continued towards the fifth centre, a sixteen-petaled blue lotus called the Vishuddha Chakra, the centre of all communication and expression, whose work was to express and share the understanding of the Anahata. Again, Shakti breathed life into this centre, purifying and simplifying all of the communication throughout the land. Saskia could tell at this point that they must be coming close to the end. Finally, they reached the sixth centre, a violet two-petaled Ajna Chakra, where the Ida and Pingala rivers merge with the central channel. At this centre, the centre of wisdom and clear seeing in this land, the three rivers were no longer separate and distinct. And although the two petals of this flower were nearly invisible when they arrived, they reappeared, completely clear and almost reflective as Shakti moved through this centre. But, just as they reached the very edge of this lotus, Saskia looked up and realized that there was no place left to go. “The river stops flowing here,” Saskia said, confused. “And yet, we don’t seem to be at the end yet, as Shakti looks as though she’s stuck again. How could we have come all of this way, just to read a dead end?” Saskia sat down on the grass, discouraged and defeated.
211 Krishna looked on knowingly, “This is the last of these knots, the Rudra granthi. This is the last barrier to Shakti finally reuniting with her Shiva at his place in the seventh lotus. The knot here is created because the wisdom from the last centre becomes stiff and stuck as thoughts, which keeps it from returning to its source. So, what you see is that there is no where to go, and Shakti follows as though this is the case. Don’t let your perceptions fool you, follow to the end of the river.” “This is ridiculous,” Saskia thought to herself, “the river stops here!” As she continued to make her way towards the end of the river, this thought continued to repeat itself over and over in her mind, each time increasing her annoyance and frustration from being so close to reaching her goal, and having no way of moving forward. When she reached the end of the rivers, she stopped and looked out onto the a steep, black hill rising before her. There was definitely nowhere for the river to flow. Angry and defeated, Saskia stomped her foot on the river bank and let out a frustrated “arrrgggggg!!” In the moment of silence that followed her frustrated call, Saskia felt her legs begin to sink down through the river bank, as though it wasn’t there. As a wave of fear moved through her, her mind kicked back in with confusion, and she found herself standing back on the river bank again. “What just happened?”, Saskia wondered to herself. Krishna laughed from behind her, “Don’t get caught in thinking and trying to figure it out, your mind won’t help you here! It was the silence that helped.” Saskia, thoroughly confused, turned her back to the river and looked at the steep hill rising before her. She could hear her mind turning over and over, trying to figure out how to get around what seemed like such an impossible situation. And suddenly, she could see her mind turning and turning, and although it didn’t stop, she could feel that silence again. Gently separating herself from her mind’s attempts to wrap itself around this situation, she suddenly became very focused and open to seeing what was before her. And with this openness, the huge hill suddenly shifted in perspective, and she realized that what she had been looking at was a large black river flowing directly before her, very different than the one she had been following earlier. She just hadn’t recognized it! And in the very moment that this shift occurred, Shakti poured forth into this river. “The Brahma nadi”, said Krishna with a smile. “Well done.”
212 Krishna and Saskia continued up the river to the seventh centre, the white, thousand-petaled lotus Sahasrara chakra, where Shiva resides. As Shakti flowed up towards the centre of the lotus ahead of them, Krishna looked over to Saskia and with a soft bow said, “This is it, thank you.” Suddenly, a sense of recognition, joy, and release filled the air. No longer able to see anything around her, only feel the warmth and light of her surroundings, Saskia suddenly found herself opening her eyes, looking around, beneath the oak tree. “Krishna?”, she said in confusion. She looked around, and stopped to listen, but there was no response. The warmth and light continued to linger in her awareness, so she closed her eyes for another moment to savour them as though she had just woken up from the most beautiful dream. Lingering in the residue of her dream, Saskia heard the sound of wheels driving along a nearby road. She opened her eyes to see her bus arriving. She smiled at the troubled thoughts that were still floating through her mind, suddenly knowing better. She stood up and got on her bus, ready to go home.
213 A7. Exploring the Body and the Mind
After having a sore shoulder for a number of days, which encouraged a few days of much-needed quiet and restorative practice, I returned to my mat on Sunday evening to discover that the pain in my shoulder had disappeared. As I began flowing through the sun salutations on the rhythm of the breath, a huge smile spread on my face as I felt and remembered the joy of being in and moving my body. Like any relationship, a little time away from our practice allows us to return fresh with a sense of appreciation. There can be a real magic to being in the body, to exploring its range of movement and its boundaries, inviting deep breaths to bring the posture alive. And as the mind joins in and wanders from the practice, the practice of postures allows us to begin to explore their relationship. In the first pieces of writing, as we have dipped our toes into the tradition and philosophy of yoga, texts, psychological perspectives on yoga, and we have been introduced to the subtle body of hatha and tantric yoga, we can begin to appreciate the complexity of the yoga tradition. And, as if it were not complex enough, we are in the process of introducing this vast tradition, which has its roots in an eastern religious context, into our modern, secular, individual-centered, western culture, which is also undergoing rapid change with technological advances and environmental and social upheaval. The meeting of yoga with western culture is certainly complex, requiring practice, deep reflection and community to navigate this encounter. We risk losing the transformational potential of the practice if we just take those aspects of yoga that fit our agenda. How can we practice yoga in a way that is helpful and relevant for us, while also allowing us to learn from the tradition? Although the philosophy and the tradition are complex, my yoga teacher describes yoga itself as being “simple, but not easy” (E. Goldberg, personal communication, November 6, 2010). Perhaps it is helpful to ground what we have explored so far in the context of something very concrete: the body and the mind. We have both of these! Perfect. Even with all of our technological advancements, we are not all that different from other yogis who explored the human potential throughout the evolution of this tradition: they also had sore backs, busy minds, and lived in troubled times. We also have the potential to see what they saw.
214 Our bodies and minds are the vehicles we have for this work: our relationship with them and through them is the path of the practice. The practice of yoga isn’t about changing or escaping from our bodies or our minds, but to sit with them, work with them, and befriend them. Again, simple, but not easy. Our bodies and minds are not only imperfect in the sense that we have preferences of how we would like them to be—for example, my life would be perfect if only my shoulders weren’t in knots and my mind wasn’t so busy—but also in the sense that our sense organs, which in the yoga tradition includes the mind, are inherently limited. I may see the sky as blue, but a bird may not see the sky as blue, nor would my friend from Japan, who would describe it as green. Physics tells me that there is an entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, of which I can only see a very small part. Our senses can only provide us with a limited or relative perspective on reality. This limitation is also at the root of avidya, or not seeing (E. Goldberg, personal communication, November 6, 2010). Avidya is therefore inherent and a practical and unavoidable reality of being human. Thus, the question for yogis is: how can we work with the body and the mind in order to see clearly? We begin working with the body because, unlike the mind that lingers in the past and future, it is always present. However, as we work with, explore and investigate the body with the use of the breath, we inevitably meet thoughts, memories, and patterns of the mind. And when we begin to investigate the mind, we are almost immediately brought back to the physical sensations of our thoughts. When we explore one, we can’t help but begin to explore the other. This interdependent relationship is key to the practice of yoga. Before we can recognize the way that the body and mind are interrelated through our own direct experience, it may be helpful to first recognize our current ways of thinking about them. The reason it is so difficult to observe the body and mind is because they are so close to us, so ordinary. We imagine the practice of yoga to be so much more exotic than our body and mind. Perhaps an essential aspect of the practice is bringing our attention to something we so easily take for granted From my experience, there are (at least) two major hurdles we have to overcome to freshly observe the body and the mind. The first hurdle are all of our ideas about our body, from our ability to label various parts to our opinions about them, which are both
215 personal and cultural. Thinking about the body separates us from our direct experience of it: thinking is both a way of quickly organizing a lot of information and is a powerful defense from feeling things that are uncomfortable or painful. When we come up against the limitations of our tight hamstrings, rather than staying with the feeling of their tightness, we tend to begin to create stories about them. The second challenge we face in directly experiencing the body and the mind is that culturally we have inherited a dualistic, Cartesian separation of the mind and body, where we think of, and thus experience, not only the mind to be separate from the body, but also a “me” that identifies with both of them. These two challenges feed off of each other. A dualistic perspective of the body and the mind severs the connection between them, allowing us to objectify, and thus manipulate and control the body and the mind. Objectifying the body means that we experience ourselves as separate from it, which can lead us to either being dissatisfied with it and always trying to fix it (dvesha), love it and never want it to change (raga): most of us experience both of these with different aspects of the body. This is why at the beginning (and in the middle and likely at the end) the mind can always get in the way of the practice, using it as a means to reach an end of its desire. However, if the practice is working, when we reached these desired ends, we find that we are still not totally satisfied, but perhaps have had a taste of something else we didn’t expect that we are curious about, and our practice continues and deepens. The tradition of yoga offers us numerous models, stories, and ways of thinking about the relationship between the body and the mind. These models are maps of this relationship as it appears to the direct experience of practitioners. The key pattern in all of these models is that the body and mind are in an interdependent, mutually-influencing relationship: there is no separate “me” watching both the body and the mind from the outside. One way of describing the relationship between the body and mind is in terms of prana, life energy, and citta, the mind. In the practice of yoga postures, for example, we work to bring our body and mind, or prana and citta together. As Stone (2008a) described this relationship, ...we come to see that there are two streams we are working with [in our yoga practice]: a stream of breathing and a stream of mental formations. These two streams can be thought of as prāṇa (breath, life energy) and citta (mind,
216 imagination, perception). We are trying to bring these two streams closer and closer together. The paradox is that these two streams are fundamentally intertwined, but our distracted mind keeps pulling them apart. (p. 126)
Often, citta and prana are described as two sides of the same coin. Freeman (2010) used a beautiful image to describe their relationship: It is said that the mind and the inner breath move together like two fish swimming in tandem; when the mind moves in a particular pattern, the fish of the inner breath moves along with it through the course of the body, hitting deep sensations and feelings as it moves. Likewise, if that inner fish of the breath moves in a certain way, it stimulates or wakes up associated patterns of thought or imagination within the mind. The connection between these two fish forms a basic axiom that we use for yoga practice: the joining of opposites. (p. 41)
In this way, we can think of the practice of yoga postures as a purification process, moving the body into various positions, inviting the breath into different aspects of the body and beginning to wake it up. As new places in the body begin to open, the thoughts associated with those holding patterns also arise in our awareness. Our work in the practice is to create an open space in which these thoughts can arise. If we can stay with these thoughts and sensations, with acceptance and love, the holding patterns in the body begin to release as this cleansing process can take place. Simple, but not easy. The challenge in the practice is that the thoughts that arise feel personal, so we tend to become distracted in our practice when a habitual pattern of ignoring or indulging certain thoughts, feelings, or sensations arises. As we notice these patterns of distraction, we gently guide our attention back into the body and the breath. Just noticing that we are distracted bring us back to the practice. Thus, the structure of the practice creates the circumstances and support to allow whatever arises, and as we practice equanimity towards whatever is arising, we allow it to unfold in its own time. As the distracted mind quiets into observing the practice, we begin to notice how thoughts and sensations arise together. In the word hatha, “ha” means sun and “tha” means moon, and together the word hatha refers to, “any practice that unites opposite patterns within the nervous system in order to open up the core of the body for our observation” (Freeman, 2010, p. 1). In hatha yoga, one way of describing the opposites patterns are prāṇa and apana. Prana not
217 only refers to life energy, but (just to keep us on our toes) is also one of the vayus, or winds in the body. Prana vayu resides in the heart, and is the quality and movement in the body on the inhalation pattern: expansive, opening the chest, and blossoming up through the top of the head. Apana vayu is the descending pattern that resides deep in the pelvis and is responsible for the elimination of waste from the body: it moves downward from the pelvis, rooting through the feet. Prana and apana are like two lovers (an obviously important theme in the description of the practice, reminding us of its pleasurable and sensual qualities) who in their union become more and more themselves. Our role in the practice is to unite these two lovers, these two ends of the breath. We can work with the pranic and apanic patterns of the body in each of the yoga postures, in pranayama, and in setting up our posture for meditation. As the postures become more comfortable, our attention begins to turn inward to the movement of the breath through the core of the body. As Freeman (2010) explained, watching the breath in this way is fundamental to the practice of hatha yoga: The underlying process of haṭha yoga is to explore deeply this relationship of the inhale and the exhale; to discover the root of apana in the prana and expansion of prana in the apana. We do this initially by cultivating and observing physiological patterns in the body. (p. 44)
When we have become comfortable and familiar with these patterns, we can then begin to bring the two of them together: inviting the very best of the inhale, the lifting of the heart and the roof of the mouth, into the exhale, and the best of the exhale, the rooting and lifting in the pelvis, into the inhaling pattern: “We learn to consciously join prana and apana where they meet” (Freeman, 2010, p. 46). The key to understanding yoga philosophy is to practice: we keep coming back to revisit the philosophy through our experience. So many details from experienced practitioners can be overwhelming, but they have a invaluable outcome: humility, which leaves us no option but to observe our experience once again. We are just at the very beginning of this path of practice: exploring the body and cultivating the steadiness of mind to observe our experience and referencing them within this vast body of philosophy, metaphors, and literature. We have lots of time to practice: this is a long-term venture!
218 And therefore, we have to practice in a way that is sustainable, and as I described at the beginning of this piece, perhaps even joyful.
219 A8. Impermanence, Emptiness and Interconnection
In late October, after returning to the late-fall garden after having been away for a few weeks, I am struck with the reality of impermanence. The garden has transformed with the changing seasons. The colours have shifted from a bright and vibrant green, speckled with red, white, purple, yellow and orange, to shades of gold, brown, black and dark green. Plants that at one time were adorned with lush, full leaves and fruit are now spindly and bare. One could say that everything has died, and yet, the garden is still fully alive: the plants and the garden are still beautiful, just transformed. Each fall I am struck by how our garden of the spring and summer, in which we had put every ounce of our energy, skill, knowledge, hope, occupying nearly every thought and conversation, has dissolved on its own terms, its cycle completely separate from all our hopes and desires. I reflect on how we put so much effort into something that is inevitably going to follow its own rhythms within the context of nature’s cycles. I am humbly reminded of my role in the garden: a participant in this natural process. Perhaps this insight will, over time, allow me to ride the farming season with a little more equanimity and a better sense of humour. Recognizing this pattern in the garden also draws my attention to impermanence as a general truth of nature: a constant, creative flux. The plants in the garden are subject to it. I am subject to it. Although I see myself as being quite different from the plants in the garden, I wonder if we have more in common than I think. In living close to nature, we can learn a great deal about how our bodies and minds work, remembering that they are actually aspects of nature akin to any tree, river, forest or wind. I have been reminded a number of times to come back to nature when my life is feeling overly complicated. There is something about being in a forest or on a still lake in a canoe, that evokes a deep relaxation and remembering that all that moves through me is also the wind, the rain, and the sun. Impermanence, the quality of the constant process of change and transformation, is a natural law in the same way that gravity assures us that everything will eventually fall to the ground. Throughout our exploration of yoga philosophy, we looked at the difference between prakriti and purusha in the Yoga Sutras, or between Shakti and Shiva in tantra: the differences and intimate relationship between the ever-shifting and
220 transforming creativity of nature and awareness. Yoga practices provide us with an opportunity to cultivate viveka, or discernment, between that which is unchanging and that which is changing. Within our practice of postures, we begin to look very closely at our experiences—our thoughts, our physical sensations, our emotions, and our ever-so- familiar commentaries—and begin to question and observe their nature. In observing our experiences very carefully we may realize that we can’t pin them down. In staying with a point of tension in my ribs in shavasana, I can only find a dance of sensations. When I recently asked a teacher about this she laughed and said, “It sounds like impermanence to me.” So, rather than watching my thoughts or feelings be a helpful “technique”, she reminded me that I am just encountering the nature of our experience. Related to impermanence is emptiness, or shunyata. Emptiness, or no-thingness, does not refer to a void or imply that something doesn’t exist, but suggests that everything exists in relationship to its context. For example, when we label people and things with the use of language, we remove them from their context, as though they exist as independent entities. In doing so, our use of language also separates us from that which we have perceived, as observing an object simultaneously creates a subject, an “I”, separate from the object being observed. Emptiness therefore reminds us of the limitations of language, and encourages us to look more deeply to see beyond our conceptual labels. Michael Stone (2008a) provided a helpful description of emptiness that relates it to our practice: Emptiness as a tool assists us in removing that which cuts us off from the web of life we are immersed in. Emptiness is a utilitarian term, not a description of a sacred space or a claim of truth. It is about creating space in our relationship to ourselves, through which we can free the mind from fixations that isolate and reduce us to the claims of an isolated and self-referential ego. (p. 179)
For example, if while I am practicing and feel my knee moving into a half-lotus posture, I might have the thought “if only it wasn’t for my knee, I could do this pose!” At that moment, I have cut myself off from a direct experience of my knee, and see my knee as this thing that is holding me back. When I do this, my knee is an entity distinct from “me”. With close observation, however, I can see that my knee isn’t a “thing”, but is actually a combination of muscles, tendons, ligaments, skin, bones, which are connected to all other parts of my body. As I continue along this exploration, I can also see that my
221 knee is also in my mind, in that I have long narratives about all of the challenges that I have with my knee. When I look even more deeply, I can’t actually find this “me”, who is so annoyed. Thus, emptiness can be seen as a tool to explore our experience. Essential to the practice of yoga, therefore, is noticing our commentaries about our experience as a cue to come back to our direct experience. Thus, in this example, a pain in our knee becomes an entry point to move more deeply into the practice. As Freeman (2010) described, The process works because when we observe something we give it space, meaning we temporarily suspend our incessant desire to know it, package it, or compare it to other things...When we give something space we are practicing the physiology of kindness, and we are offering the structure of compassion. This gesture of giving respect to whatever the object is and of honoring the environment that the object has come out of. (p. 34)
Emptiness is a tool to see through our commentaries, and return to immediate experience, as a path to recognizing wholeness or intimacy. One of the great metaphors of emptiness and interconnection is the story of Indra’s Net. Indra was one of the Vedic Gods who casts a net of maya, or illusion, over all beings to either bind or free them. Indra’s net stretches to infinity in an infinite number of directions. When we are entangled in Indra’s net, ignorance or egotism are dominant, and we see everything as separate. When we are caught, we grasp at some objects, and push others away, entangling ourselves more and more in the net. However, sometimes we have an experience that allows us to actually observe the net itself. When we begin to look very carefully, we notice that each “object” is actually a jewel at each junction in the net. And if we look at each jewel very carefully, we see that it is actually reflecting each of the other jewels in the net. And thus, each jewel is not separate, or an entity in and of itself, but is actually reflecting all of the other jewels, which are in turn reflecting all of the others, and on and on to infinity. A change in one point in the net, ripples throughout each of the jewels, in a never-ending dynamic process. When we see this quality of the net, we no longer continue to grasp and avoid particular aspects of the net, and no longer feel the need to escape it, and thus within Indra’s net we become free. This analogy of Indra’s net brings together the ideas of impermanence, interconnection and emptiness: in a dynamic flux, each jewel reflects the movements of
222 each of the other jewels, with none of them existing as an entity in and of themselves, but each reflect the pattern of the whole. When we can see this about the net, we no longer feel the need to escape from any one point, because we recognize its connection to every other. Therefore, when we practice, whatever jewel arises in the practice, rather than avoiding it or indulging it, if we stay with it with equanimity and curiosity, it no longer appears as a separate entity, reuniting with its background. Seeing ourselves this way brings us back to our place in the natural world: all thoughts, feelings and emotions arise out of a particular context, or set of conditions that have been created over our lifetime. This metaphor is also important as it asks us to see each thought, feeling, sensation, emotion as a jewel: they are all entry points into the net, as each of them reflects all of the others. When we look at the structure of the net: a happy thought, a distressing thought, a pain in the shoulder, a release in our lower back, competitiveness, or doubt, are all jewels intimately connected to each other. When we stop struggling with moving towards or away, each one is an entry point into seeing the entirety of the net. Although perhaps on a superficial reading of these teachings, impermanence and emptiness may seem nihilistic, they are actually quite the opposite. As we begin to open up to working with our own particular patterns and cultivate the fearlessness to stay with them and explore their nature, we find joy, wisdom and compassion. The more we practice in this way, the less we get so caught up in our patterns of reactivity, or duhkha. In the same way as when we can see Indra’s net we no longer need to escape it, when we see that duhkha is a regular aspect of our experience, we can become curious about it: Compassion is being with the reality of lack without seeing lack as something that needs to be filled. When we no longer treat lack as a vacuum, compassion arises through intimacy because instead of self-image being something we need to fortify (which only serves to increase the lack), we let go and find ourselves flourishing in this vast, shifting, and interconnected life. (Stone, 2009, p. 47)
When we begin to see the ways in which we have been stuck, compassion arises both for ourselves and for others who are stuck in the same way. Furthermore, when we begin to see through our stiff self-narratives, we don’t have to put so much energy into maintaining them, and we free up some energy and become more interested in others. As we find ourselves caught up again and again..and again, humility and a sense of humour become essential qualities we cultivate to continue in the practice. These
223 patterns arise out of particular sets of conditions (which can actually be quite impersonal and predictable!), so when we practice each time they arise, we feed them less and less, and find that each time we do this they have less pull. And then again they arise, and there isn’t much to do but laugh. In an interview on the practice of yoga, Richard Freeman said, “Yoga helps you gain insight into how your own mind works and in doing that you become a little more compassionate. Also your sense of humour improves. (Laughs). I think that's how it works actually” (Macgowan, 2008).
224 A9. An Eight-limbed Path
Last week while I was reading in preparation to write this piece, I had one of those moments of looking up from my work with the wide eyed amazement that comes when we finally get something we have heard a million times. Of course, when we try to communicate the content of these moments, not only do they never come across as insightful as they feel, they actually sound a little silly and obvious. Ah, the limitations of language. For what it’s worth, my insight was something like this: Everything we need—wisdom, compassion, humour, understanding—to move out of our own patterns of suffering and discontent is already present in us. What we are looking for is not only already here, but always has been.
Wow. What if we took this very seriously, just for a moment? What if we stopped looking to others, to our projections and strivings of the future, to books and ideas, to food, entertainment and self-improvement books (of course, there is nothing wrong with any of these things in and of themselves!) as ways of resolving our discontent, and really thought about the idea that everything we need is already here, right now. What does that mean? If everything I need is already here (and always has been), and I just can’t see it yet, how can I see it? For me, this question evokes pure confusion, not-knowing, and a little vulnerability. The discomfort evoked by this question is almost enough to make me want to go back to these things that have worked for me in the past or begin to philosophically debate whether this statement is true. Almost. This is a great place from which to explore the paths of yoga, as it reveals their practicality. Perhaps this is a grassroots approach to yoga: starting, very practically, from the bottom up. We put ourselves in the same position as other great yogis, with the same dilemmas and the same potentials, and from here begin to explore the maps they have left us. One map of the practice, outlined in the Yoga Sutras, is called ashtanga yoga. In addition to the name of the practice we have engaged in for the past eight weeks, ashtanga refers to the eight-limbed (“ashtau” = eight and “anga” = limb, like the limb of a tree) path of yoga described by Patabjali, which is as follows:
Yama, or “ethical principles”, defines the quality of the way we relate to the world around us. Cultivating the yamas allows us to be open and loving in relationship rather
225 than preoccupied, closed, or perceiving others as separate. The five yamas, which we could consider practices of relationship, are as follows: • Ahimsa, “non-harming”: both to ourselves and to others, forming the foundation for each of the other yamas. • Satya, “honesty”: being as true and honest as we can be with ourselves and with others and acting upon that. • Asteya, “non-stealing”: in addition to its literal translations, it could also refer to not taking things that are not freely given to us. Asteya moves us away from seeing things as “ours”, which is to perceive both ourselves and the world as separate and independent entities. • Brahmacharya15: a wise use of our sexual energy, and energy in general. • Aparigraha, “non-acquisitiveness”: addresses our habits of accumulation, whether it is clothing, food, books, ideas, concepts or stories about ourselves. It also directly speaks to relinquishing our habits of identifying with particular things (ideas, politics, self-image) and not with others.
Niyama, or “personal principles”, refers to personal practices that create supportive conditions, intentions, and orientations for the practice. The five niyamas are as follows16: • Shauca, “cleanliness”: both inward and outward personal cleanliness, as well as keeping our surroundings clean. • Santosa, “contentment”: practicing just being happy without a need to change anything, get anywhere, feel anything different, or be anything different. • Tapas, “austerity”: the heat generated when we commit to staying with our present experience. Here, it refers to cultivating the discipline and patience to stay in situations from which we would normally distract ourselves.
15 I have chosen to provide a description rather than translation of brahmacharya to support its exploration. 16 In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali lists tapas, svadhyaya and isvara both as kriya yoga, and three of the five niyamas.
226 • Svadhyaya, “self-reflection” or “meditation on the self”: refers not only to understanding ourselves in a western psychological sense, but also refers to a deep questioning of the nature of the self, in reference to the yoga texts and traditions. • Isvara, pure awareness, or the inner teacher in the heart of all of us. Isvara orients us toward our path, with trust and devotion to an ideal of pure awareness.
Asana17, can literally be translated as “seat” or “to sit”, and in asana, the body becomes a comfortable seat in which we observe our experience. Although asana composes the main thrust of yoga in the west, only 2 of 196 sutras are dedicated to postures. Patanjali describes asana as embodying the qualities of sthira meaning “grounded or stable” and sukha meaning “happy or easy” (Freeman, 2010, p. 177). When these qualities are both present in postures, Patanjali claims that our effort ceases, and “one is unconstrained by opposing dualities” (Stoler-Miller, 1998, p.56). Another way of translating asana is “to sit with”, indicating that as we place our body in various positions, we sit with the sensations, thoughts and emotions that arise (Stone, 2008a, p. 116). Pranayama, are breathing exercises, where “prana” refers to the life-energy that rides on the breath, and “ayama” means “to remove the controls or restrictions.” When the body has been worked through asana in a way that allows it to hold a stable and comfortable posture, we begin to practice regulating the breath in a way that allows the breath to move fully and deeply. Understanding that relationship between the breath (prana) and mind (citta), some of the deep patterning of the mind are also touched through the practice of pranayama. The first four limbs of the practice — yama, niyama, asana and pranayama —are often referred to as the “outer limbs” in that they are limbs that you actually “do”. The following four limbs—pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi—are referred to as the
17 It is interesting to note that we tend to start with asana in the West: we don’t have to commit to an ethical lifestyle and no one comes to check our rooms before we can take a yoga class. Postures are also a wonderful place for us to start, as they fit within our culture, and we cultivate the yamas and niyamas as we meet obstacles in our practice.
227 contemplative limbs, with the final three collectively called “samyama”, meaning “to draw together”. Pratyahara marks this transition from the “outer” to the “inner” limbs and is typically translated as “withdrawl of the senses”, but literally means “to not eat, to not consume.” Typically, the mind “consumes” or reaches out to colour the objects we perceive, but when these habits and energies of our likes and dislikes have been seen and worked with in the first four limbs of practice, the attention turns inward as the mind settles and the senses drop away from external objects. Dharana is often translated as concentration, or “tying one’s attention in one place.” The practice of dharana is similar to the practice of mindfulness meditation, where the mind is continually brought back to an object of meditation until the “field of awareness becomes singular and focused” (Stone, 2008a, p. 45). Dhyana, is translated as “meditation” or “absorption”, and dharana naturally moves into dhyana as our concentration deepens, and our attention flows into one field of awareness. Samadhi, can be translated as “integration”, although it is generally left untranslated so that we can discover its meaning within our own experience. As dhyana deepens it flows into samadhi, the mind opens into the present moment the inherent interconnection is directly perceived and there is no longer a distinction between subject and object. These eight limbs of the practice—yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi—form the path of raja yoga, or the “royal path” of yoga. When we look at these limbs from a very practical, grassroots perspective, we might see them as obvious stages if we were to just sit down and try to figure out how to become free from our own discontent. First, we would have to settle our relationships with others, as they would be our biggest distractions: the mind is incredibly active when we have hurt someone or have lied. Then, we would have to eat a meal we could comfortably digest, clean up our space, giving up trying to get everything perfect before we start, and orient ourselves towards the task at hand with discipline, intention, and trust. Then we’d have to start with the body, moving it around, stretching out some sore spots, and getting ourselves comfortable. When we were sitting comfortably, we would start working with
228 the breath to begin to settle all the turnings of the mind. And as the mind settled, our attention would begin to move away from external objects, and we could focus on the natural movement of the breath in the body. With time, this focus would move from slightly distracted, to steady and focused only on the breath, right until our conceptual labels of ourself and the breath dissolve and there is just breathing. Then, practically speaking, we would have to get up and make dinner. So, it is also important to place the context of yoga practice in the world (unless of course we go off to be a yogin(i)18 in a cave!). This is one of the reasons it is so important to have a number of different limbs: it reminds us that our practice is really involved in nearly every aspect of our lives, not just in a yoga class. Richard Freeman (2010) described the importance of having multiple limbs of practice beautifully: The only way to truly attain yoga is to have many limbs, or to approach the teaching from multiple angles and to cultivate the insight from various aspects of awareness. Trying to pedal down a path on a unicycle is very challenging, especially if you come to an obstacle....The Yoga Sutra describes a vehicle for insight that has eight limbs, something like a spider. So, when you come to an obstacle in yoga we are able to approach it from many different points of view — from its physiological viewpoints, its psychological viewpoints and its philosophical perspectives. The different limbs of yoga allow us to consider the problem of existence and to cultivate a sense of insight into truth in a diverse, comprehensive, and grounded way. (p. 172)
The eight limbs of practice continually inform our understanding of the other limbs. So although they are described linearly here, this is not how they manifest as we practice. We continually cycle back and forth between the various limbs as we move throughout our day, allowing them to inform, nuance, and receive from the others, allowing our understanding and experience of yoga to continually deepen and widen. One of my most valuable insights from doing this research has been the change in how I see yoga as a practice that permeates every aspect of our lives. We often talk about how yoga translates into the rest of our lives, or our work as counsellors, in a fragmented way, as though it’s a technique we can apply in various situations. However, when viewed from the perspective of these entwined eight limbs, each time we practice in any
18 A yogin is a male yoga practitioner and a yogini is a female practitioner.
229 one area of our lives, whether it’s postures, watching our breath, cooking a meal, or in our interactions with others, we are always practicing. And each time we practice, we create an opportunity to cultivate insight, which itself changes us, and thus changes how we see and act in the next situation. Thus, the boundaries between different aspects of our lives, both inwardly and outwardly, begin to dissolve and, as they do, we begin to embody wholeness.
230 Appendix B. General Consent Form September 8, 2010 ACADIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CONSENT FORM
Title of Research Project: Pathways to Wholeness: Exploring the Contribution of Yoga to Counsellor Practice and Development
Principal Investigator & Project Director: Supervisor: Sarah Pittoello Dr. John Sumarah Graduate Student (902) 585-1363 School of Education, Acadia University [email protected] [email protected]
Purpose of Research: The purpose of this study is to describe the contribution of yoga to counsellor development and practice as experienced by students in a graduate-level counselling education program.
Description of Research: The contribution of yoga to counsellors will be explored through an eight-week yoga course with members of the 2010 cohort of the Master’s of Education Counselling program at Acadia University. This general consent form is regarding the yoga course and series of focus groups that will be taking place between September 20th and November 30th. The dates, times, and frequency of the yoga classes and focus groups will be negotiated with participants at the orientation session. Other aspects of the research, including pre- and post-study surveys, in-depth interviews with three participants, and optional journalling and home practice will be discussed during the orientation session and specific consent forms will be provided for each one throughout the process.
Eight-week Yoga Course: Over eight weeks, participants will attend a seventy-five minute yoga classes, either once or twice a week, at a date and time of their convenience on the Acadia campus. The classes will be designed and modified to an appropriate level for this particular group by an experienced yoga instructor and practitioner. Ashtanga vinyasa yoga will provide the foundation for the practice, and each class will focus on asana (postures), pranayama (breath control), and meditation. Participants may choose to continue their practice at home between classes and will be provided with the supports necessary to do so.
Focus Groups: A series of six 45-minute focus groups will take place during the eight weeks: an opening focus group prior to the first class; a focus group every second week during the last 45 minutes of the yoga class; and a closing focus group following the completion of the data collection. The focus groups will take place at Acadia University in the same space in which we
231 are practicing. The focus groups will follow a semi-structured format and reflect a theme of the research.
Potential Harms: The possible risks for participants in this study include physical discomfort or injury due to the practice of postures, and sensitive issues or experiences that may emerge throughout the process. Many steps will be taken to create a safe, comfortable, and positive learning experience, thus reducing the probability of any harm occurring.
To minimize the risk of physical injury or discomfort:
• participants will have the opportunity to inform the instructor of any injuries or sensitivities • the course will be taught by a well-trained and experienced instructor • participants will be encouraged and reminded to work skillfully with their limitations and practice self-care • only gentle adjustments will be provided with the participant’s consent
To minimize risk of sensitive material emerging in the process:
• participants will be provided with a context in which to understand and normalize their experience • the researcher will be available, as a trained counsellor and yoga teacher, for immediate support and referral to further support if necessary. • peer support will be offered through the focus groups and the option of journalling • participants requiring counselling have free access to individual counselling services at the Acadia Student Resource Centre and at Acadia Student Health Services on the Acadia Campus:
Acadia Student Resource Centre Acadia Student Health Services ASU Students’ Centre, Old SUB West End, Dennis House 30 Highland Ave. Acadia University Wolfville, NS 22 Horton Avenue B4P 2R6 Wolfville, NS (902) 585-1246 B4P 2P4 [email protected] (902) 585-1238 [email protected]
Potential Benefits: Participants are likely to experience a variety of benefits from the practice and the process, which may be physical, cognitive, emotional, and/or spiritual in nature. These benefits may impact both their personal lives and their work in counselling. As contemplative practices—the two most common being yoga and mindfulness—are being widely explored the popular and academic psychotherapeutic literature, it may benefit counselling students to have the opportunity to gain
232 familiarity and understanding of these practices through first-hand experience. This research also provides free access to yoga classes that would have a value of approximately $100 in the community.
Exploring the impacts of a yoga practice on counsellor practice and development has the potential to contribute to a number of areas in the counselling literature including: counsellor self-care, establishing therapeutic relationships, counsellor self-awareness, and counselling and social justice. This study also holds the potential to consider the broad implications of yoga, not only to the field of counselling and counselling education, but also to other health-related and helping professions.
Alternatives: If subjects choose not to participate in this study, the researcher respects this decision and they will not be disadvantaged in any way.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality will be respected. No information that discloses a participant’s identity will be released or published without their specific consent to the disclosure. Only the principal researcher will have access to identifying information, and one colleague will review the audio portion of the videotape and transcripts of the focus groups to increase reliability. Quotations from the focus groups may be chosen to be used in the research, and although participants will be provided with the opportunity to verify that they are being accurately represented, the researcher may use these quotations anonymously without their verification. Participants’ identity will be protected with the use of numerical codes during the data collection and analysis.
Although research participants will be asked to keep what is shared in the yoga classes and focus groups confidential, the principal researcher can only guarantee their own confidentiality and cannot guarantee that other participants will observe each other’s privacy.
All research notes, tapes, videos and transcripts of the focus groups will be kept either in a safe, locked cabinet or in password-secured folders on the researcher’s computer. The raw data and research records will be destroyed three years after the completion of the study.
Publication: This research is for the completion of a Master’s of Education program at Acadia University. The research will be presented orally and in written form to an academic supervisor and a review committee.
Participation: Participation in this research is completely voluntary. Participants have the right to discontinue their participation at any time and remove their data from the study at a later date if they chose to do so. Participants have the ongoing right to withdraw from this study without consequence, coercion, or prejudice. This research is NOT a part of Acadia University’s MEd. Counselling program and will not affect your grades in any way.
233 Participants with any range of experience with yoga or meditation practice will be welcome. Information about your medical history will be collected during a pre-survey to allow the instructor to best tailor the practice to each individual and create a safe practice environment. Given the medical history, particularly for those who are pregnant or have major joint or chronic pain, it may be recommended that some participants do not proceed with the research, or do so only with the approval of their physician. If you have any questions or hesitations about your ability to participate in this research, please contact your physician.
Commercialization and Conflict of Interest: This research will not be commercialized and there are no known conflicts of interest.
Consent: Any known potential harms and benefits of this study, as recognized by the researcher, have been explained above. I, ______understand the information provided in this consent form. I recognize that yoga involves physical exertion and I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known or unknown, which I might incur as a result of participating in the research.
If at any time, I have any questions about this research, I understand that I am very welcome to ask. My signature below indicates that I have entered into this research voluntarily, have had my questions answered to my satisfaction, and know that I can withdraw from the study at anytime, without penalty, should I choose to do so. I know that a copy of this form will be made available to me. In providing my signature below, I agree to participate in this research.
______Name of research participant PLEASE PRINT
______Signature of research participant Date
______Signature of researcher or research associate Date
234 Appendix C. Specific Consent Forms
C1. Pre-Study Consent Form
ACADIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CONSENT FORM
Research Project: Pathways to Wholeness: Exploring the Contribution of Yoga to Counsellor Practice and Development
Principal Investigator & Project Director: Supervisor: Sarah Pittoello, Graduate Student Dr. John Sumarah School of Education, Acadia University (902) 585-1363 [email protected] [email protected]
In addition to the information provided in the general consent form for this research project and your consent to participate in the yoga and focus group aspect of this research, the following form provides specific details regarding the pre-study survey.
Pre-Study Survey: This survey will be provided to research participants following the opening focus group. The survey will take approximately fifteen to twenty minutes to complete and participants will be asked to return these surveys one week later at the first yoga class. An electronic option is available, and participants can email [email protected] to receive an electronic copy and return their copy to the same email address at a time of their convenience prior to the first yoga class.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality will be respected. Only the principal researcher will have access to any identifying information. No information that discloses a participant’s identity will be released or published without their specific consent. Quotations from the surveys may be chosen to be used in the research, and although participants will be provided with the opportunity to verify that they are being accurately represented, the researcher may use these quotations anonymously without their verification. Participants’ identity will be protected with the use of numerical codes during the data collection and analysis.
All research notes and surveys will be kept either in a safe, locked cabinet or in password-secured folders on the researcher’s computer. These records will be destroyed three years after the completion of the study.
Consent:
235 Any known potential harms and benefits of this study, as recognized by the researcher, have been explained in the main consent form and the specifics of this aspect of the research have been explained above. I, ______, understand the information provided in this consent form. I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known or unknown, which I might incur as a result of participating in the research.
If at any time, I have any questions about this research, I understand that I am very welcome to ask. My signature below indicates that I have entered into this research voluntarily, have had my questions answered to my satisfaction, and know that I can withdraw from the study at anytime, without penalty, should I choose to do so. I know that a copy of this form will be made available to me. In providing my signature below, I agree to participate in this research.
______Signature of research participant Date
______Signature of researcher or research associate Date
236 C2. Journal Consent Form
ACADIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CONSENT FORM
Research Project: Pathways to Wholeness: Exploring the Contribution of Yoga to Counsellor Practice and Development
Principal Investigator & Project Director: Supervisor: Sarah Pittoello, Graduate Student Dr. John Sumarah School of Education, Acadia University (902) 585-1363 [email protected] [email protected]
In addition to the information provided in the general consent form for this research project and your consent to participate in the yoga and focus group aspect of this research, the following form provides specific details regarding the participants’ journals.
Participants’ Journals: For those participants it would be of benefit, journalling about their experiences will be encouraged as a means of processing and understanding their experience with this research. Participants who do keep a journal may choose to discuss insights from their journals with the researcher and have segments of their journal included anonymously in the research.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality will be respected. Participants’ identity will be protected with the use of numerical codes during the data collection and analysis. Only the principal researcher will have access to any identifying information. No information that discloses a participant’s identity will be released or published without their specific consent. Quotations from the journals may be chosen to be used in the research, and although participants will be provided with the opportunity to verify that they are being accurately represented, the researcher may use these quotations anonymously without their verification.
All journals and research notes will be kept either in a safe, locked cabinet or in password-secured folders on the researcher’s computer. These records will be destroyed three years after the completion of the study.
Consent: Any known potential harms and benefits of this study, as recognized by the researcher, have been explained in the main consent form and the specifics of this aspect of the research have been explained above. I, ______, understand the information provided in this consent form. I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known or unknown, which I might incur as a result of participating in the research.
237 If at any time, I have any questions about this research, I understand that I am very welcome to ask. My signature below indicates that I have entered into this research voluntarily, have had my questions answered to my satisfaction, and know that I can withdraw from the study at anytime, without penalty, should I choose to do so. I know that a copy of this form will be made available to me. In providing my signature below, I agree to participate in this research.
______Signature of research participant Date
______Signature of researcher or research associate Date
238 C3. Interview Consent Form
ACADIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CONSENT FORM
Research Project: Pathways to Wholeness: Exploring the Contribution of Yoga to Counsellor Practice and Development
Principal Investigator & Project Director: Supervisor: Sarah Pittoello, Graduate Student Dr. John Sumarah School of Education, Acadia University (902) 585-1363 [email protected] [email protected]
In addition to the information provided in the general consent form for this research project and your consent to participate in the yoga and focus group aspect of this research, the following form provides specific details regarding the interview.
Interviews: Three participants will be chosen for in-depth interviews. These three individuals will be chosen based on perceived diversity of experiences and perspectives, in addition to an ability to be conceptual, reflective, and articulate. The interviews will be sixty minutes in length, following a semi-structured interview format. The interviews will be conducted in an office at Acadia university, at a time of the interviewee’s convenience, and will be audio-taped.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality will be respected. Participants’ identity will be protected with the use of numerical codes during the data collection and analysis. Only the principal researcher will have access to any identifying information, and one colleague will review the audio tapes and transcripts anonymously to increase reliability. No information that discloses a participant’s identity will be released or published without their specific consent. Quotations from the interviews may be chosen to be used in the research, and although participants will be provided with the opportunity to verify that they are being accurately represented, the researcher may use these quotations anonymously without their verification.
All research notes, tapes, and transcripts of the interviews will be kept either in a safe, locked cabinet or in password-secured folders on the researcher’s computer. These records will be destroyed three years after the completion of the study.
Consent: Any known potential harms and benefits of this study, as recognized by the researcher, have been explained in the main consent form and the specifics of this aspect of the research have been explained above. I, ______, understand the information provided in this
239 consent form. I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known or unknown, which I might incur as a result of participating in the research.
If at any time, I have any questions about this research, I understand that I am very welcome to ask. My signature below indicates that I have entered into this research voluntarily, have had my questions answered to my satisfaction, and know that I can withdraw from the study at anytime, without penalty, should I choose to do so. I know that a copy of this form will be made available to me. In providing my signature below, I agree to participate in this research.
______Name of research participant PLEASE PRINT
______Signature of research participant Date
______Signature of researcher or research associate Date
240 C4. Post-Study Consent Form
ACADIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CONSENT FORM
Research Project: Pathways to Wholeness: Exploring the Contribution of Yoga to Counsellor Practice and Development
Principal Investigator & Project Director: Supervisor: Sarah Pittoello , Graduate Student Dr. John Sumarah School of Education, Acadia University (902) 585-1363 [email protected] [email protected]
In addition to the information provided in the general consent form for this research project and your consent to participate in the yoga and focus group aspect of this research, the following form provides specific details regarding the post-study survey.
Post-Study Survey: This survey will be provided to research participants following the opening focus group. The survey will take approximately twenty to thirty minutes to complete and participants will be asked to return these surveys within one week to the Department of Education office. An electronic option is available, and participants can email [email protected] to receive an electronic copy and return their copy to the same email address within one week of receiving it.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality will be respected. Participants’ identity will be protected with the use of numerical codes during the data collection and analysis. Only the principal researcher will have access to any identifying information. No information that discloses a participant’s identity will be released or published without their specific consent. Quotations from the surveys may be used in the research, and although participants will be provided with the opportunity to verify that they are being accurately represented, the researcher may use these quotations anonymously without their verification.
All research notes and surveys will be kept either in a safe, locked cabinet or in password-secured folders on the researcher’s computer. These records will be destroyed three years after the completion of the study.
Consent: Any known potential harms and benefits of this study, as recognized by the researcher, have been explained in the main consent form and the specifics of this aspect of the research have been explained above. I, ______, understand the information provided in this consent form. I agree to assume full responsibility for any risks, injuries or damages, known or unknown, which I might incur as a result of participating in the research.
241 If at any time, I have any questions about this research, I understand that I am very welcome to ask. My signature below indicates that I have entered into this research voluntarily, have had my questions answered to my satisfaction, and know that I can withdraw from the study at anytime, without penalty, should I choose to do so. I know that a copy of this form will be made available to me. In providing my signature below, I agree to participate in this research.
______Name of research participant PLEASE PRINT
______Signature of research participant Date
______Signature of researcher or research associate Date
242 Appendix D. Recruitment Script
Hello, my name is Sarah Pittoello and one year ago I was sitting exactly where you are now. I have finished my coursework for this MEd. Counselling program and I am currently doing my thesis. I would like to thank Ron for allowing me to come in to take a little bit of your time today to talk to you about my project and invite those of you who are interested to participate.
The subject of my thesis is to explore the contribution of yoga practice to counsellor development and practice. So, although there are all sorts of ideas and definitions about yoga out there, in this research I am considering yoga in a broad sense as a practice of entering into a deep, open, and intimate relationship with whatever is going on—whether it is physical, cognitive, or emotional patterns in a yoga posture, or in our relationships with others. I am really curious about what the experience of students in a counselling program is with a yoga practice and how it might contribute to your experience in this program.
I will be doing this through an 8-week yoga course that will be offered here on campus, and will include an opening focus group, pre- survey, a number of short focus groups to explore our experience together as a group, based on diversity of experience I may choose 3 participants for one-on-one interviews at the end of the process, and at the end of the process we’ll have a short focus group to close the process and a post-survey to allow you to reflect on your experience. So, whether you have never stepped foot onto a yoga mat before, or if you have been practicing for twenty years—you are all very welcome!
My intention is that this program will be of benefit to you and that together we can enhance the understanding of the space between counselling and contemplative practices like yoga. My hope is that it will provide a good compliment to what you are currently learning in this program and will provide some scheduled time for physical activity and a chance to relieve a little stress that you an do together as a group.
However, I would like to make it very clear that participating in this research is absolutely not a course requirement and it will not in any way affect your grades or evaluation in the program. I certainly appreciate how demanding this program can be, and thus the frequency, dates and times with which we’ll meet for the yoga practices and for the focus groups will be negotiated during the orientation session.
So, speaking of which, if you have an inkling of interest in participating in this research project, I will be holding an orientation session in one week here in this classroom, at this time, where I will provide more specific information about the research and the larger context of this research, answer any questions you might have, review the consent forms, and do some negotiating around the times and dates of practice and focus groups to establish a schedule for all of us. After that time, you can take the consent forms home and decide whether or not you would like to participate in the research, return the consent forms to me, and then we will begin a week later. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer them now, and otherwise, I would love to see you at the orientation session in a weeks time. Thank you!
243 Appendix E. Pre-Study Survey Questions
1. What, if any, is your previous experience with yoga and any other contemplative practices? 2. How would you describe the practice of yoga and its purpose? 3. What, if any, is your previous experience of counselling? 4. What are some of the delights and some of the challenges you may be experiencing as a counselling student and beginning counsellor? 5. What might be some of the personal benefits of practicing yoga for you? 6. Could you identify three hopes and three fears you might have about this 8-week yoga course? 7. How do you think that the practice of yoga might relate to your work as a counsellor? 8. Do you have any medical issues, joint pain, or any other personal information that it would be helpful for the yoga instructor to know about? 9. Please use this space for any other thoughts/comments you would like to add.
244 Appendix F. Focus Group Protocols
Opening Focus Group
The following questions facilitated the participants’ reflections and sharing in the opening focus group:
a. Their name and previous experience with yoga and counselling.
b. What is yoga?
c. What are the challenges and delights of beginning counselling?
d. How might yoga be helpful to their experience in the counselling program? What
might the relationship between yoga and counselling?
Second Focus Group
This focus group was less structured than the opening focus group, offering only the key question of the research—what is the contribution of yoga to counselling education— to guide the focus group.
Third Focus Group
At the beginning of the third focus group, I reminded the group again of the phenomenological foundation of the research and the emphasis of describing their experience. To support them in describing their experience, I created a distinction between their expectations and their experience by asking them to reflect on what has surprised them from this experience thus far and what has happened in the way they had expected.
245 Closing Focus Group
My intention with the final focus group was to both provide an opportunity to reflect on their experience and bring some closure to the group. As such, the two aspects of the focus group were:
a. to reflect on the central research question
b.to share one thing they intended to take with them from this process.
To guide the reflection on the research question, I offered specific questions to guide their reflection—has yoga helped them to approach learning in the program in a new way, whether it was the ideas and material, how you listen and speak in class?—although I also reminded them that anything that stood out for them about this topic was wonderful and “the first things that comes to mind might be the best thing to share.”
246 Appendix G. Post-Study Survey & Interview Questions
1. Can you describe any changes in your personal life that you have experienced over the past two months that you may attribute to the yoga practice? 2. Has your understanding of yoga changed since the beginning of the course? If so, in what ways? 3. Has the yoga practice contributed to your counselling education and/or your counselling practice? In what ways? 4. Has your understanding of the purpose and/or the process of counselling been influenced by the practice of yoga? In what ways? 5. Do you see yourself integrating yoga into your clinical practice or career plans, and if so, how? 6. What have you learned over the past eight weeks of practicing yoga that has been significant for you? 7. What are some of the challenges that you encountered in the practice? How did you work with these challenges? Is this the same or different from how would have worked with them in the past? 8. Have there been any negative outcomes or consequences of being in this yoga class for you? 9. One thing that I have been particularly interested in is how each of our narratives (i.e. the way we talk about ourselves or the practice) have changed over the eight weeks we have been practicing together. Is this something you have noticed about yourself? 10. Is there anything else that has been significant for you, in terms of your personal experience of the practice and its contribution to counselling, that we haven’t explored yet?
247 Appendix H. Debriefing Form
Thank you!
Upon the completion of the data collection aspect of this research study, I wanted to extend my warm gratitude for your participation in this research. Your effort, time, and energy have been deeply appreciated and has made a valuable contribution to furthering our understanding of the contribution of yoga to counsellor practice and development.
So what were we doing again...?
My intention with this research was to provide counsellors in training with an opportunity to experience a contemplative practice, to gain a first-hand understanding of the variety of benefits from the practice and the process, and to explore whether and how these benefits impact both their personal lives and their work in counselling. We explored the contribution of yoga to counselling through the direct experience of the practice and a reflection on this process through the pre- and post- study surveys, focus groups, journalling, and in-depth interviews for some of you. More broadly, this exploration of the impacts of a yoga practice on counsellor practice and development has the potential to contribute to a number of areas in the counselling literature including: counsellor self-care, establishing therapeutic relationships, counsellor self-awareness, and counselling and social justice. This study also holds the potential to consider the broad implications of yoga to other health-related and helping professions.
Where are we now?
At this point in the research process, we have completed an opening focus group, pre- and post- study surveys, an eight-week yoga course, a series of focus groups reflecting on our experience of the practice, three individual interviews, and a closing focus group. Wow, we have done so much over such a short time! Thank you all again for your engagement and generosity with your time and energy.
What’s to come?
At this point in time, the data analysis process and the writing of this research will continue over the next four months. During this time, you may be contacted during the data analysis process to review transcripts or to provide feedback at various stages of the data analysis process. My purpose for contacting you is to ensure that you are represented as accurately as possible in the data analysis. Your participation in this stage of the analysis is both brief and voluntary, as I understand the time constraints of
248 the counselling practicum. As described in the consent forms, I will be still using anonymous quotations from the surveys, focus groups, journals, and interviews even if you choose not to verify the data. My intention is to provide you with the opportunity to provide feedback, should you choose to do so.
Upon the completion of my dissertation, I will invite you to an optional one hour session to share with you my findings and conclusions and celebrate our work together.
If you feel that you require further support to process your experiences from this exploration of yoga and counselling, or feel that you would benefit from a deeper exploration of your experience, free counselling is available through the Acadia Student Resource Centre and at Acadia Student Health Services on the Acadia Campus:
Acadia Student Resource Centre Acadia Student Health Services ASU Students’ Centre, Old SUB West End, Dennis House 30 Highland Ave. Acadia University Wolfville, NS 22 Horton Avenue B4P 2R6 Wolfville, NS (902) 585-1246 B4P 2P4 [email protected] (902) 585-1238 [email protected]
If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].
With deep gratitude and warm wishes,
Sarah
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