Category Archives: Treatment

Breathwork, Meditation, Mindfulness, Stress Management

10 Minute Evening Breath Practice

(Ideal for beginners or those building their practice.)

How to Practice:

  1. Settle In (1 min)

Sit back in your chair or lie down on a mat.

Let your eyes close or soften your gaze.

  1. Body Scan with Breath Awareness (2 min)

Inhale gently through the nose, noticing the rise of the chest or belly.

Exhale slowly, feeling your body relax.

Mentally scan from head to toe, softening any tension you notice.

  1. Box Breathing (4-4-4-4) (4 min)

Inhale through the nose for a count of 4.

Hold for 4.

Exhale through the nose for 4.

Hold for 4.

Repeat for 6–8 rounds.

  • Cooling Breath (Shitali or Sitali) (2 min)

Curl your tongue into a tube (or keep lips in an “O” shape if that’s easier).

Inhale through the mouth, feeling a cool sensation.

Exhale through the nose.

Repeat for 8–10 breaths.

  1. Closing Gratitude (1 min)

Rest hands in your lap, palms facing upward.

Think of one thing you’re grateful for today.

End with a long, slow exhale.

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Breathwork, Meditation, Mindfulness, Stress Management

10 Minute Morning Breathing Practice

(Good for beginners or those who are building a practice.)

Purpose: Stimulates energy, clears morning fog, and prepares you for the day.

How to Practice

  1. Find Your Seat (1 min)

Sit comfortably with your spine tall, either on the edge of your bed, on a cushion or in a chair.

Rest your hands on your thighs, palms facing down.

  1. Gentle Centering (2 min)

Close your eyes.

Take 6 deep breaths in through the nose and sigh out through the mouth.

  1. 3-Part Breath (Dirga Pranayama) (3 min)

Inhale first into the belly, then the ribs, then the chest (like filling a glass of water from bottom to top).

Exhale in reverse: chest, ribs, belly.

Keep the breath smooth and steady.

Practice 4 breath-cycles/rounds

  1. Alternate Nostril Breath (Nadi Shodhana) (2 min)

Using your right hand, close your right nostril with your thumb. Inhale through the left.

Close the left nostril with your ring finger, exhale through the right.

Inhale right, close, exhale left. That’s one round.

Continue slowly, 6–8 rounds.

  1. Closing (2 min)

Place both hands over the heart.

Take 6 deep breaths and set a gentle intention for your day.

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Stress Management, Uncategorized, Wellness topic, Yoga

September Focus – Anxiety Relief

“Pose” of the Week – Cat/Cow Flow

How to Do It:

  • Come to hands and knees with shoulders over wrists and hips over knees.
  • Inhale: arch your back, lifting your chest and tailbone (Cow).
  • Exhale: round your spine, tucking chin and tailbone (Cat).
  • Continue flowing with your breath.

Why It Helps:
This gentle movement synchronizes breath and body, helping to release physical tension while calming the nervous system.

Time: 1–2 minutes

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Treatment, Yoga

Yoga Therapy vs Psychotherapy

Over the past pretty much 10 years I’ve been slowly but surely working toward getting my Yoga Therapy Certificate with the International Association of Yoga Therapists. I finally completed that task last month. I had finished up my training with an absolutely wonderful studio out of San Francisco, Purusha Yoga School. I met some amazing people and learned so so much. I am actually sad that it is over more than excited about the certificate. Anyway it has always been a dream of mine to incorporate more yoga into my mental health practice. This has been difficult because my profession is Clinical Social Work and there is a very strong business model for a therapy practice that utilizes insurance and out of pocket. The clients I see need to be able to use their insurance and I don’t want to be so boutique that I can’t cater to the average working person whom is most likely not going to pay my hourly rate weekly. Some can and will because of the benefit, but most of us want to use our insurance if we have it.

So the challenge has been how do I work in yoga therapy since insurance doesn’t cover that. Well through this last training I have received so much insight how this all could work and finally decided to take the jump and transition my practice to something much more holistic. It is very exciting for me.

I think understanding how yoga therapy and traditional psychotherapy are similiar and different is really good to keep as a fore front as I chart this next course. Here’s a brief comparison of the two:

Both Yoga Therapy and Traditional Psychotherapy are the same in the following ways:

Both

  • Work on rewriting negative thoughts/experiences into something more positive that helps get a person unstuck and to move toward  optimal wellness.
  • Work on understanding where a person is  on their journey toward wellness and meet the client where they are at.
  • Are confidential
  • Use skills of motivational enhancement therapy and cognitive behavior therapy
  • Set up SMART (specific measurable, attainable, relative, time sensitive) goals for treatment.
  • Teach mindfulness and relaxation skills
How Yoga Therapy and Traditional Psychotherapy are different:
  • Traditional Psychotherapy uses predominantly talk and utilizes one or more of the many models of psychotherapy available to Licensed Counselors.
  • Yoga therapy uses the framework of the 8 limbs of yoga to build a treatment plan.
  • Yoga therapy uses Sanskrit terminology to identify and explain concepts while traditional psychotherapy uses western medical terminology.
  • Yoga therapy uses the chakra system to assess health and to inform treatment planning.
  • Yoga Therapy  follows ayurvedic principles to guide treatment.
  • Most traditional psychotherapy is covered under insurance; yoga therapy is not.

As you can probably see they do have a good bit that overlaps. So the plan is for the business to focus primarily where the two overlap. The majority of Yoga Therapy can be billable with insurance as long as it follows psychotherapy models. I still plan to offer classes that are geared more on teaching versus therapy and those would be out of pocket.

So it’s a new chapter for Grounded for Peace. We start off the transition this summer with offering more specific yoga therapy individual sessions and some small therapeutic groups that incorporate specific strategies in Meditation, Breath work, and Relaxation. As times goes and when I am able to add more staff, we will begin offering more targeting therapeutic groups for anxiety, addiction, and trauma.

If you are interested in knowing more about upcoming groups, click on “Contact Us” at the top and leave us a message.

Change, Mindfulness, Stress Management, Uncategorized, Wellness topic

Renewal

Spring seems like a great time to start back up with my blog posts. This Spring we are all in desperate need of some renewal. So far 2020 has been challenging. We are all experiencing something quite unique for our time. Humanity of course has seen and endured other pandemics but enduring a pandemic in the informational age is filled with easy access to ongoing death tolls and news that makes the calmest of us a little on edge. It is also, however, filled with easy access to all sorts of positive resources. After a week of seeing clients since schools and restaurants were ordered to close I have been able to gather suggestions from clients of things that are helping to keep them renewed and not drained with all the alarming aspects of what they see online. Here are some of the ideas I have heard this past week.

  1. Yoga with Adrien is a continued recommendation from my clients, https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithadriene
  2. limiting social media to only an hour a day
  3. Having friends call up and give them the news instead of hearing it on line.
  4. You tube projects
  5. Pinterest projects
  6. Online parties and meetups with friends
  7. Looking up old friends online and catching up.
  8. Starting an Etsy shop
  9. Getting rid of clutter by selling items on Ebay
  10. Online yoga classes and fitness classes that are being offered for free through gyms and places like yoga journal
  11. Online free virtual tours of museums
  12. Replacing 30 minutes of social media time with a podcast
  13. Finding online support groups via NAMI and local hospitals
  14. mindfulness courses and meditation through apps like “Insight Timer” and “Head Space”

This is the current list and I will continue to collect ideas and do a follow up post on this later. As we try to follow guidelines and stay safe, I ask you to take a moment to ground yourself and try to find some positivity for the day. It does appear that this may be a long haul for us and we are going to need some ongoing renewal as we keep moving forward.

Take Care and wishing you peace.