222 Integrating Polyvagal Theory With Yoga: Interview With Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Chris McDonald: Are you ready to transform your therapeutic approach by integrating applied polyvagal theory with yoga practices? In our next episode, we'll explore how polyvagal theory can deepen your understanding of the nervous system and enhance the healing potential of yoga in clinical sessions. Learn how utilizing subtle yoga practices can help clients be guided towards a place of safety, connection, and calm.

All through the integration of gentle yoga movements, breath, and mindfulness. My guest is Dr. Arielle Schwartz. She'll be guiding us on this journey and is a recognized expert in trauma informed care. She will be here to give you some important information on the ethics of integrating yoga and sessions and how to create that bridge between yoga and psychotherapy.

You will also experience a phenomenal yoga practice that you don't want to miss. So grab your mat, settle in, and let's delve into this fascinating discussion with Dr. Arielle Schwartz on today's episode of Yoga in the Therapy Room podcast. Stay tuned. Welcome to Yoga in the Therapy Room, the non traditional therapist's guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice.

I'm Chris McDonald, licensed therapist and registered yoga teacher. This podcast is here to empower therapists like you with the knowledge and confidence to bring yoga into their practice safely and ethically. So whether you're here to expand your skills, enhance your self care or both, you're in the right place.

Join me on this journey to help you be one step closer to bringing yoga into your therapy room.

Welcome to the Yoga Therapy Podcast, the nontraditional therapist's guide to integrating yoga into your therapy practice. I'm Chris McDonald, your host. And on today's episode, we're exploring a topic that is so near and dear to me and something I love, which is polyvagal theory integrated with yoga. So if you've ever wondered about it and how this could really help your clients, this episode is for you.

This was developed by Dr. Steve Porges, and it offers a profound framework for understanding the nervous system and its role in our emotional and physical well being. And by pairing this theory with the grounding practices of yoga through movement, breath work, and mindfulness, we can create a holistic path to healing for clients.

Here to guide us today is Dr. Ariel Schwartz, a renowned clinical psychologist, somatic therapist, and an expert in trauma recovery. She specializes in applied polyvagal theory, which focuses on addressing imbalances within the autonomic nervous system that underlie most mental and physical health conditions.

She is also author of Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga. In this episode, we'll explore how yoga can support nervous system regulation, enhance resilience, and foster deeper connections within ourselves and with others. So wherever you are in your yoga journey, you will be sure to walk away with tools and insights that you can use right away.

Welcome to the Yoga in the Therapy Room podcast, Dario.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Thank you, Chris. It's just a treat to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So I thought we'd start, can you share with listeners how you first discovered yoga?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: I can. So yoga actually discovered me. How's that? When I was, when I was a child, uh, my stepfather came into my life when I was five or so brought yoga into our childhood home.

Experiences of incense filled rooms and music and receiving Shakti pop from Mukta Nanda when I was seven. So a lot of that's amazing. Really? It was amazing. Was amazing and somewhat overwhelming because it was just a huge sensory experience. Some of the things that really stand out to me were especially at Kripalu being in the meditation room.

And even as a child, I remember feeling the most profound calm. And mind you, all of this was happening after my parents got divorced, around that same time, we had a fire in our house. We had, we were displaced for three months because, um, our house had to be completely gutted and rebuilt in a sense. So there was a lot of disruption in my life that had happened in my young, you know, in, in those first, 10 years of my life and yoga became this little respite and a place to, um, to find a sense of calm or play.

It just resonated. Then I became a teenager and I walked away from it all. I was like, this is not my thing. And then I, because of a lot of the early trauma that I had as a young child around my parents divorce and other related challenges, I had a lot of anxiety. Starting in my late teens, early twenties, and I want to say at about the age of 19 or 20, a friend of mine just kind of dragged me to a yoga class and it was immediately resonant, immediately brought me back to that calm.

And then I would go once a week, I was like, okay, well, I like that. Then I would want to practice several times a week. Well, the next thing I know, by the time I was 20, I had a daily practice because it became my medication in a sense. Like it became this path to finding a sense of ease and connectedness or home or calm, regulation, whatever word you want to use.

And I just, I needed it. It was a lifeline.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. A lifeline. That's a beautiful story. I love how you gradually just like, a little more, let's do a little more. Yeah.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah. And I've had my daily practice ever since. 30 years. Cause I know

Chris McDonald: you're pretty dedicated. I know that your retreat I went to, I know you talked about that.

So do you, what do you do for daily practice?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: My daily practice. theories and ideally I have about an hour and a half to two hours, but there are some standard elements. I have a daily seated practice, a meditation practice. I love the pranayama. I love the breath work. If there was one pranayama that I would use in every practice, it would be alternate nostril pranayama and that kind of brain integration grounding.

And There are several standard elements to my daily practice that maybe don't always look like your typical yoga practice, but because I incorporate the applied polyvagal theory and the work with the vagus nerve, I have a lot of vagal toning practices that I bring in at the beginning of every practice, and then I do a lot of joint rotations and very simple exercises.

fluid movements to warm up the spine, warm up the joints of the body. Then I might add some sun salutations. Then I might add some warrior poses, some stronger standing poses, and then closing it out with some forward folds and some quiet.

Chris McDonald: Who at first interested you in polyvagal theory? Let's see.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: I might even back up a little bit from that question just to like how I even got there.

So, All of the experience of yoga and what that brought for me was this curiosity about this body mind connection, like what is really happening here and why does changing how I'm breathing or changing how I'm moving my body help me feel so good, right? And so I just started to go on this. kind of like deep intellectual curiosity hunt of trying to understand some of the science behind why it feels so good.

And that whole journey also took me into somatic psychology, body centered psychotherapy, and really studying the body mind connection. So I was doing a master's degree in somatics, somatic psychology here in Boulder, Colorado at Naropa University. And we had a class that was taught by the founder of that department, Christine Caldwell.

And it was The, uh, I think one version, I had different, different names over time, but the version, the name that I remember was the Neuroscience of the Body Mind Connection. And basically we just did this deep dive into trying to understand really deeply what is happening here. It like, I just kind of felt like I was on fire in that class.

Chris McDonald: Deb Dana is a little easier.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah. This was pre Deb Dana, right? Or there was a translator in a sense into our therapeutic world, but I was getting enough nuggets to know that there was something really.

And I had, we had, uh, with a colleague of mine, Barb Mayberger, we had created several courses. on the somatic approach to EMDR therapy, which eventually became the basis for a book that we wrote together. And as we were teaching that, I kept bringing in the polyvagal theory into how we were teaching somatic EMDR.

How are you tracking the nervous system? And so, you know, for anyone listening here of like, wait, wait a second, what is polyvagal theory? Yeah, let's go there. I know it's a whole

Chris McDonald: course,

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: but it's a whole

Chris McDonald: podcast to summarize a little bit.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: That the summary for the podcast is it's looking at the connection of the vagus nerve and our nervous system states.

And I'm just going to speak more specifically to applied polyvagal theory is how do we utilize awareness of the nervous system is ways to create a foundation of. regulation from which we can support our mental health, our physical health, our emotional well being. And polyvagal simply translates to poly meaning multiple, vagal meaning vagus nerve, multiple circuits of the vagus nerve and that's Steve Porges work of really studying that we have, the vagus nerve is always about our parasympathetic nervous system.

It's always about slowing down and coming out of the sympathetic nervous system, which is our go, go, go system. But that the polyvagal theory suggests that the vagus nerve slows that sympathetic system down in two different ways, sometimes with a very. soft, refined break, a very kind of flexible, malleable way of really fine tuning our nervous system so that we can be calm or be a little bit more alert.

And sometimes we have a much more hard, fast break system that can lead to what we call a vasovagal syncope or a faint response or a collapse or just being stuck in malaise and fatigue. It's a lot of words. I'll pause it

Chris McDonald: is so absorbing all that listeners. Yes, there's a lot to it, but I know you said applied.

So was there a difference between the theory and what does it mean when we apply it?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah, so we have all the science, right? There's the raw data of what's happening with the vagus nerve and the vagal break and the mobilization of the sympathetic system and our fight flight system. So that's the data, right?

When we apply polyvagal theory, we're essentially. Learning how to work with the nervous system to create wanted outcomes, right? So if we think about psychotherapy and when we set goals with our clients, I want to be less anxious, or I'd like to feel less depressed, or I want to feel less agitated when I think about that traumatic event that happened to me, I want to find a greater sense of hope for my future.

You know, if we look at any of the core reasons why we come to therapy, it's because in some way we're feeling anxious, we're feeling depressed, we're feeling uprooted, we're feeling destabilized or dysregulated in some way or another. And when we look through the lens of applied polyvagal theory, what we're seeing is that the root cause Of any of those, those mental health conditions is very often the dysregulation of the nervous system.

So to apply polyvagal theory, rather than treating the thoughts or even necessarily going towards the memories of events in the past, we go towards treating the nervous system. And how do you create a greater sense of felt experience? In the moment of ease, calm, okayness, safety, if that's a digestible word, right?

Peace. Love, compassion, all of those come about when we access this calm state in the nervous system. And when we work with the vagus nerve, we can enhance that nervous system regulation.

Chris McDonald: And in your book on yoga for trauma recovery, I know you talk about the three phases for trauma recovery, and I think it fits in well with Pali Vant.

Can you share what those are? Yeah,

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: yeah, absolutely. And in fact, like a lot of what I'm speaking to right now would be phase one, right? Yeah, the phase one of trauma recovery is stabilization and safety, right? We're really trying to build in a sense of. groundedness in our nervous system, resource within our nervous system, a greater sense of control about where our mind might jump into the future or ruminate on the past, and it allows us to be more present centered.

So stage one is about stabilization, and that's accessing that calm, that ease, that care, that gentleness, right? That allows us to be softer with ourselves. Phase two of trauma recovery. Is a deeper dive. It's like here. Now I've got an island of of sanity from which I can step into the waters that might still have sharks in it, right?

Like, okay, it's It's scary when I go towards the anxiety feelings, or scary when I think about the traumas that happen to me, or I'm scared if I attend to that grief, I'll get stuck and it'll never end. And so we learn how to move toward the areas of distress, kind of enter into those waters without feeling like we're going to drown there, or we're just going to get swept away.

So we have tools that allow us to attend to the kind of deeper wounds that we all carry within us, whether they're developmental or attachment or significant life events, you know, big T traumas or accumulated ongoing stress. We gain the tools to attend to our wounds. In a way that doesn't leave us feeling at risk of being overtaken or over identified with them.

And then the third phase of trauma recovery, and this all comes from Judith Herman's triphasic model, the third phase of trauma recovery is About how do we integrate new insights and a sense of self is more capable, more worthy, um, enough, calm, how do we integrate those new experiences into our overall sense of identity?

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Thanks

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: for sharing

Chris McDonald: that. And in this book, I know you talk about mindful mobilization, which was new to me. So can you share what that means for listeners?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah. So once we have that ground of safety, that island of sanity, I'll refer to it again. We can actually start to learn how to embrace and befriend our sympathetic nervous system.

So, so often we think of the sympathetic system as that fight flight system and, you know, the kind of danger, orange light, kind of, oh no, you know, something, something scary might happen. And in truth, the sympathetic system is something that we all need, uh, as Steve Porges puts it, we wouldn't be able to play if we didn't have our sympathetic system.

And so the mindful mobilization is about how to embrace movement and an elevated heart rate and an elevated respiratory rate and to actually kind of have a new experience of that sympathetic nervous system in service of joy and empowerment and playfulness and excitement. And that's such a beautiful thing to know that we can upregulate our nervous system and it doesn't have to be anxiety.

Yoga is so beneficial for this, right? Because we have these so many opportunities to move and breathe in ways that are elevating without becoming alerting. for our nervous system.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And I think it's that empowerment piece. And I know you talk about that in your book as well and, and leading clients there with that post traumatic growth.

Yeah. It's just so powerful. So what are some yoga practices that you bring into your sessions with clients for anxiety? Maybe the first thing

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: that I'll say is that I don't use yoga postures or practices prescriptively. I use them experimentally, because everyone's going to have a different response to the same practice based on your history.

So we might have certain breath practices that we would call calming practices, and If it is calming for an individual, great, golden, they've got a practice that they can go to when they're feeling anxious or panicky that can down regulate their system, right? So for example, a classic calming breath would be emphasizing your exhalation, taking long, slow exhalations, really softening into the diaphragm and the low belly and allowing yourself maybe to go into any supportive restorative shape, right?

And just find a shape that feels nourishing and supportive for you. I'm not going to say go into child's pose because that may or may not be the shape that is going to be restorative for them. I'm also not going to say go find a legs up the wall. Those could be shapes. But in terms of what I offer within psychotherapy, it tends to be more of the subtle practices.

When I'm teaching a yoga class, I'm going to offer a wider range. But in terms of what it might look like in a session, it might simply look like noticing what it feels like to find a slower exhale and to place your hands over your heart and just tuck your chin slightly because As we find even the smallest amount of a forward fold and that small chin tuck and hands over the heart is going to be a cue of a parasympathetic into the system.

It's going to say it's safe enough to draw your attention a little bit more inward. Eyes can be closed if that's comfortable, if not just gazing downward. Hands on the heart, a cue of self compassion and a longer exhale. Signaling to the brain that it's safe enough to slow down and go within so the brain is going to receive messages from the subtle change in posture and the subtle change in breath that says it's safe enough now to come out of that anxiety response and if that works golden, right?

But sometimes, and I love this phrase from Amy Weintraub, she says, sometimes we just have to meet the mood. Right, so if someone's feeling highly anxious, we might need to meet the anxiety before we go into a calming practice. So maybe we stand up and we do a wall push. Maybe we stand up and shake something out.

Maybe we stand up and. Find an empowerment shape like a mountain right just to feel the ground and your legs beneath you eyes wide open taking in the cues that let you know that you are safe here and now. So we're going to meet someone in the state that would be more of a Sympathetic meeting and then maybe from there we walk back down into a deeper calming.

Chris McDonald: I know you mentioned the experimenting. So when you say that, is that checking in with the client to see how they're reacting to whatever subtle practice you're doing and if you need to make shifts or?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Totally. Try this on for size. See if this fits you, see how this feels in your body. You can opt in, you can opt out, right?

All this invitational language that David Emerson is so good at introducing into trauma sensitive yoga. You always have choice, right? Whatever I'm going to offer here is here for you to try on or say, no, I'll pass, right? So that we're always inviting a client to know that they have choice, especially when introducing.

a breath practice or a movement practice. We don't want to necessarily develop a dynamic in which they're being compliant with us because they want to be the good client.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, that you must do this in therapy. That's right.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: It's about do no harm, right?

Chris McDonald: Yeah, exactly. So it is an experiment. Sometimes I think it It does take, it's not always just one practice.

There could be different practices. I love how you also do EMDR and having all these integrative practices is what I found is the key to healing. It's usually not just one thing. Are you a mental health therapist who feels like traditional talk therapy isn't enough? Are you wanting a more somatic approach?

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In this course, you'll learn how to use trauma informed yoga for nervous system regulation. ethical ways to introduce yoga into sessions safely, simple postures and breathwork techniques tailored for therapists. It's time to bring something new and transformative into your sessions. Let's move beyond the limits of talk therapy and offer clients a holistic path to healing.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah, it, you know, for me, I'm very client centered in how I work and I try and be as, you know, kind of non directive as possible. And then if I'm going to offer something from a more directive standpoint. It's always going to be with choice and it's going to be with curiosity. And I think about, you know, do no harm.

I think about non violence ahimsa in our yogic tradition and do no harm as a kind of therapeutic ethic. And that, There's a way in which if I, if I'm going to step into handing a practice over, it's with deep reverence for the power of the practice and the agency of the client. And you know, I don't know if you've experienced this and it's going to be beneficial.

And for them, it creates, you know, worsening anxiety and panic because simply being aware of the breath is. Right? Now I can remember the times in which it was so hard for me to breathe or whatever that that breath awareness taps in. And so to know that we have an array of tools and, and practices. And for me as both a somatic therapist and EMDR therapist, I integrate parts work into my work.

I've had 15 years of gestalt training in my, in my back pocket. You know, I, I love to. attend to the complexity that lives inside of each individual, and I think it's important not to get oversimplified that this is going to make someone feel a certain way.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And I talked to therapists about that as well.

And if it feels good in your body as a therapist, does not mean it's going to land the same way with your clients. Yeah. Cause I've had therapists that learn some of these practices and they're like, I was all excited, but then they didn't want to do it. Or they were more, like you said, more triggered or it just wasn't help.

They're just like, eh, not for me.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: One of my favorite moments of bringing yoga into psychotherapy, and I'll share this story with you. Um, I. Quit quite a few stories, but this one really touched me. It was with someone who was feeling profoundly ungrounded, uprooted in her life. She'd been in and out of foster care.

She had had a lot of early trauma and the at this time she was in her twenties. She didn't really know what she wanted to do with her life. And we experiment a little bit with just feeling her legs underneath her. She had come in also with a little bit of curiosity about yoga, but wasn't ready to go to a class.

She, she struggled with body image and not feeling like she fit into the Colorado yoga lifestyle, which is very fitness. And, you know, like she was like, I, my, my body doesn't look like any of the other bodies. Would you help me create a practice just for me that I can do on my own? How beautiful. Right? So we, Created a short set of practices that included mountain and included tree poses, included a few gentle forward folds, and so I don't remember what else we had in there, but you know, maybe five postures that she could start with felt like a workable starting place for her own home practice, and we did them together in the room, and at one point we were doing tree pose, And she wasn't sure if she would be able to balance, totally understandable, it's new, so we went to the wall and she had a hand on the wall and just lifted the heel of her opposite foot and, and kind of tentatively took her toes up and her opposite foot was kind pressed against the ankle of her standing leg.

And these tears, just this incredible deep release of emotion came through. And as we were exploring it together, she said, I just don't trust that my legs will hold me up. Wow. And simultaneously having this experience. That indeed, her standing leg was right there for her, and she would experiment with lifting her hand off the wall and putting it back on, and the profound quality of, I have legs, these are my legs, and they can hold me up, and they can build root systems deep into the earth.

And this is, this is something I can practice, I can do. And it's so beautiful to bear witness to this, this woman. She's no longer a client of mine, but she periodically gives me little updates on her life. And she went on to get married, have a child, pursue a mental health degree, is working in the field.

I mean, this is again, you know, probably a 15 year journey from when I first met her, but it's so profound.

Chris McDonald: That is. Ah, that does my heart good to hear that. Yeah, those moments just stay with you, don't they? They do. I know you mentioned in your book you have stillness later. And why do you put stillness later in your book?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: I get this question a lot of like, how come your therapeutic yoga is not restorative yoga or just yin yoga? And I think that the mobilization practices are very often a precursor. to the vulnerability that comes with learning to be still, learning to rest in stillness in a way that's restorative. And especially within the context of having a trauma history, sometimes trauma is connected to experiences of no agency, no choice.

There was nothing I could do. I had to hide. I had to be completely still. I had to submit. I had to surrender to what was happening to me. It felt so out of control. And when we have opportunities to rest in stillness on the yoga mat, it might outwardly look the same, but Inside of an individual when stillness is over coupled with memories of feeling powerless or helpless, that's what begins to come through the gates.

And so it's not necessarily restful or restorative, it becomes an experience of feeling trapped, feeling immobilized in the context of threat, feeling shut down, collapsed, fatigued, falling asleep, or dissociating. So we actually need just as much as we need to titrate or build our capacity to move our bodies and tolerate an elevated heart rate and not think of that as a bad thing.

We also need to build our capacity to move towards stillness and to differentiate stillness from collapse.

Chris McDonald: I think that's something for a therapist that want to integrate yoga in their therapy room that we do have to be very careful with our clients that experience trauma because it's, they can't just come to you and just say, okay, let's do a still practice and meditate.

It may not go over. Well, and I don't know if you found this as well that that clients that have a severe trauma history, that meditation is not often accessible to them at that moment.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: That's right. That's right. I like, um, David Treleben's work a lot for the trauma sensitive mind. Yes.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. So I know before we hit record, we were talking a little bit about the legalities and ethics of licensed professionals bringing yoga in the therapy room.

So I know you mentioned that you had some updates on that. Can you share some of that with my listeners? Yeah.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah. I think that we're always looking once again at not only how do we do no harm, but also how do we stay within ourselves? And I know one of the things that you mentioned earlier was training, training, training, right?

Like making sure that we have, that we trust ourselves in what we're bringing in because a, we've practiced it for ourselves, or we have some training in yoga and pranayama in the power of these practices and the history of these practices. So I teach a 30 hour applied polyvagal theory and yoga training.

Obviously there's many, many yoga teacher trainings and therapeutic yoga. trainings that are out there. And obviously you have your trainings. And I think in terms of like so for so many years, cause I did my yoga teacher training 29 years ago. And at the same time that I was at the same year that I started my training to become a psychotherapist.

So these two Hats if you want to think about them have been with me simultaneously for all of this time and for the longest time I was told basically to keep them in two lanes like I teach yoga over here and I do my psychotherapy practice over here, but it just seemed. Like, it was such a disadvantage, especially for my psychotherapy classes, to not be able to share practices that I knew would be so beneficial.

And then when I was doing my doctoral dissertation, I was looking at the utilization of mind body therapies, including yoga and relaxation techniques and, and mindfulness by psychotherapists into their practices. So that's what my dissertation research was on. And one of the things that was actually the bridge was cognitive behavioral therapy because in CBT.

was built in things like diaphragmatic breathing and observing the clashes of the mind. Although it doesn't call it that, but basically observing, you know, the mind and being able to press the pause button on some of those negative beliefs and being able to, you know, kind of be kinder to yourself and compassion.

And then you look at Jon Kabat Zinn's work, right? And you can see the mindfulness based stress reduction, which has yoga. built as a core component of it. And, you know, mindfulness based cognitive therapy for depression. And, and so we can start to look at people that have already been building the bridge between yoga and psychotherapy.

And you realize, huh, there's a whole lot of this. So I had a meeting with the legal team of my malpractice insurance recently, because I just wanted to get a little bit more grounding for myself of like, Am I staying in a lane where I'm protected because of course we want to know as clinicians that we're also being protected.

And he said, Ariel, what's really beautiful about this is that when you look at third wave CBT, it gives you. the grounding to, to know that you're inside of arena of psychotherapy that's already doing this. Third wave CBT is mindfulness based stress reduction. It is the mindfulness based cognitive therapy for depression.

It is the, uh, compassion based work of Kristin Neff. It's it, um, and so it was so helpful for me to kind of heal myself, rest into. the legacies of this work that have paved this path. Another example of third wave CBT is ACT therapy, Stephen Hayes's work, and he writes a whole lot about this. And it brought me right back to my dissertation research, which was showing two things.

One is that people were more likely to bring in. These mind body therapies into psychotherapy, if they had the training, if they had the know how. And secondly, if they had a sense of kind of like normative examples within their colleagues or within their professional environment. that their supervisors would give the green light to bring in, uh, breath practice or that if they brought to a clinical team that they were bringing in some gentle yoga into psychotherapy that no one was going to put up a red flag and be like, Oh no, you can't do that.

So we need these normative examples that you and I are both really speaking to in our work to say, actually, this is a okay and be really valuable. for our clients. It puts them in the driver's seat of their anxiety or their depression or their nervous system in general.

Chris McDonald: And I love what you said earlier too, that it does give them the tools that they can practice these.

And, and I have found that the clients that do these regularly, like you, you have set up your own personal practice. I have clients that really become interested because they notice, Oh, wow, I feel this calm that they want to do this. And they have the most significant gains through therapy because they're doing things outside as well as with me in session.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: I see the exact same thing. And I love sitting down with my psychotherapy clients and creating, um, I call them resilience recipes, but basically like their own personal. yoga practice or a plan for their week of how they're going to integrate these practices into daily life and who's going to watch the kids and when, when in the day is a good time to do it.

So it keeps it very realistic. And I find the same exact thing that clients that are taking their healing into their own hands with their own personal practices make so many more therapeutic gains together.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. So

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: powerful. Can

Chris McDonald: you share a yoga practice today with listeners?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah, very gladly. Well, as I prepare to share it, I also just want to give two really brief stories about the integration in kind of where my lanes came together of being a yoga teacher and a mental health provider and a psychotherapist.

So I was in my doctoral internship for my psychology degree and I had an invitation to do one of my clinical rounds at the Community Mental Health Center's IOP, or Intensive Outpatient Psychotherapy Program, that was primarily DBT based. And, um, so they got lots of skills, lots of mindfulness training, regulation as part of the DBT.

And so we did really simple practices. It was a lot of chair based work to see simple movement of your spine, some simple breath practices that we might do together. And it was so beautiful to bear witness to how receptive this group was to, um, to these practices. And it felt a bit more embodied as a mindfulness practice than simply observing or kind of this very top down disconnected from the body trying to observe it, we get to drop in.

So with that said, uh, one of the practices that I particularly love that is a kind of a mirror of our nervous system is what I call open wing to self hug. And so I'll try and describe this for, for all of you listening, but the invitation is to take your arms wide, like you're just kind of reaching out.

Um, broadly to the sides of you and let that be the inhale and let your spine lengthen. And then on the exhale pattern, bringing your hands to opposite shoulders and curl your spine just a little bit, maybe tuck your chin just a little. That's your exhale. And then finding your rhythm as you open up, lengthen your spine and exhale, curl in.

And as you can continue this rhythmic breath and movement, know that you are mirroring your nervous system. Every time you inhale and give that slight lengthening of your spine, the lift of your gaze, you're meeting your sympathetic system. And every time you exhale and draw everything inward, you're meeting your parasympathetic system.

So with this simple practice, we're building nervous system flexibility, the ability to smoothly transition from different nervous system states without getting stuck in one or the other. And just another breath or two in your own rhythm, open wings

to self hug,

and then when you feel complete, letting your arms rest and just sensing what happens on the inside, a simple practice, a relatively short one. It involves a bit of crossing midline when your hands come to opposite shoulders, we get to move the spine, and then just noticing how does your body respond, your mind, your breath, emotions, energy, hopefully you feel a little more connected.

Yes,

Chris McDonald: very. It feels, I was doing a yoga practice yesterday, it was about balance, it just made me feel more of that connection, balance inside. Very calming too. But I love your practices that you do have a lot of, a lot of it's so simple, accessible with these practices. And I think that's something for listeners to consider is when you think of Young in the Therapy Room, it can be so subtle.

It does not have to be complex. So do you have any We're not trying to

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: put our bodies into pretzels.

Chris McDonald: No, we're not doing a full sun salutation. So it's okay. There's a reason behind this, right? We have intention. To help clients learn to regulate their own nervous systems and teach them these tools. And so do you have any advice for therapists listening that might be hesitant to bring any of these practices into their therapy room?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Yeah, I think that whenever we are going to bring something into the room, we want to start with feeling comfortable with it in our own bodies. to having your own sense of deeply valuing the practice and what benefit it's brought to you. We bring it to others with humility, right? Like with this, you know, it's not me, the expert.

It's not even me, the yoga teacher. It's just me, the person saying, you know, I'm going to share something with you, take it or leave it. But it's been really helpful for me in my own journey as a human. And you might appreciate it too. And I think sometimes when we approach offering a practice from that humble place, it's again, going to reduce the urge on the client's part to feel like they have to comply.

Like I'll always say, you can say, no, you can say that seems really silly, right? Or, you know, sometimes we might even have a client that gets angry, but you're not listening to me right now. Now, if that happens. They're giving you feedback, right? Like, Oh, wait a second. You know what? Maybe you're right. I was jumping in to try and do something to rescue you.

And I wasn't meeting you where you were. Thank you for telling me, but most, I want to say 95 percent of the time, 98 percent of the time, if I've brought in a gentle practice, it is so well received. Agreed. And yeah, and people are grateful and they, and they might come back the next week and say, you know, I did that thing that you taught me last week and it really helped when I was parenting my kids and I noticed that I was getting really angry and I just went into the other room and I did this little practice that we did and I came back out and I was able to handle the moment.

Chris McDonald: Absolutely. What's the best way for listeners to find you to learn more about you?

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Well, I will say that I, hopefully I've made it pretty easy for you out there. A lot of it is just simply under Dr. Ariel Schwartz, so dr. arielschwartz. And so I have a website, dr. arielschwartz, no dot in there. I've got YouTube videos at my channel, which is Dr.

Ariel Schwartz. You'll find me on Facebook, Dr. Ariel Schwartz. Instagram's different. Instagram is Ariel Schwartz Boulder, because you get a lot of photos of nature in Colorado.

Chris McDonald: Yes. And do get her book, Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga. It is phenomenal. I have marked up this book so much and using it in my course and using it with clients.

It's just, I appreciate you and all you put out in the world.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Thank you. One of my favorite resources that I have out there that I'll just put a plug for it. Yeah. the flip book and, and I have a flip book that is written for therapists about how to bring gentle yoga practices into psychotherapy. And the way that it works is that the first 10 pages introduce the client to polyvagal theory and the language of the nervous system.

And then there's I think 18 yoga practices in there, again, most of them on the very simple nature that therapists can bring into your practice. The front of the page has the picture of the practice. The back of the page has the script for you as the therapist.

Chris McDonald: Oh, and where can we find this wonderful resource?

You can

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: find it on Amazon. You can find it on my website. You can find it at PESI. I do a lot of teaching with PESI on applied polyvagal theory in therapy. And the course that I teach, the two day course that I teach with them, and I think my next round of this might be soon, but I teach it pretty regularly.

Um, but that course has a yoga module in it. So we have, I basically teach these same practices within there.

Chris McDonald: That makes me so excited. I love to take all your, uh, trainings and resource as much as I can. So fantastic. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Dr. Arielle Schwartz: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Chris McDonald: Thank you listeners for being with us today. And I hope you got a lot of important tools from this episode and be sure to tune in next Wednesday when another episode drops. Are you ready to bring the transformative power of yoga into your therapy sessions with confidence and ease? I've got the resource just for you.

Introducing Building Confidence and Confidence in Integrating Yoga into Therapy Sessions, a thoughtfully designed checklist to help you navigate best practices and feel empowered as you blend yoga and mental health therapy. This free guide is packed with tools to help you stay ethical. and fully present with your clients.

Take the first step towards transforming your therapy practice. By signing up, you'll also get access to more tips, insights, and yoga practice delivered straight to your inbox to support your journey. Don't wait. Start integrating yoga with therapy with confidence today. Go to hcpodcast. org forward slash build confidence.

That's hcpodcast. org forward slash build confidence. And once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love. Till next time, take care. Thanks for listening to today's episode. The information in this podcast is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal, medical, psychological, or any other kind of professional advice.

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

The Yoga in the Therapy Room podcast is proudly part of the Psychcraft Network.