What Yoga Teacher Trainings Are Missing — And What It Means for Therapists and Clients
I always thought bringing yoga practices into therapy sessions could be so beneficial for clients. I remember receiving my first yoga training, feeling excited and ready to go. I received a script and re watched the online training to learn as much as I could. I paused. I hesitated and felt confusion. The questions kept coming up in my mind, how as a Mental Health Therapist can I bring these practices in my sessions? Am I allowed too? In a session, when can I bring them in as a way that makes therapeutic sense?
Over time as I got more training I developed some ways to bring them in at the start or end of a session and it took some time to build my confidence and competence. Now I bring yoga informed practices often and have found ways to bring them in organically during sessions.
After I finished my 200 YTT in Subtle Yoga, I reflected on the missing pieces for mental health Therapists.
- The How and When to bring them in
- How to bring them in an ethical way within our scope of practice
- How to bring it in a trauma informed way as a Therapist
- What language to use for the treatment plan, clinical notes and informed consent
As more and more Therapists attend yoga teacher trainings from studios hoping to bridge the two worlds, they often leave with tools that don’t quite fit the therapy room. There is confusion, hesitation and uncertainty on how to bridge his gap.
What a Standard Yoga Training Actually Covers
Most Yoga Teacher Trainings curriculum is divided into broad categories: asana (physical postures), pranayama (breath practices), yoga philosophy, teaching methodology, and anatomy. Increasingly, trainings also include modules on trauma-informed teaching.
What’s covered is genuinely valuable:
- How to sequence a class for physical safety and energetic flow
- Basic alignment cues and anatomical principles for common postures
- Breathwork techniques
- High-level concepts from yoga philosophy (the koshas, the gunas, Patanjali’s Eight Limbs)
- General language for trauma-informed teaching: using invitational language, offering modifications, avoiding hands-on adjustments without consent
This is a helpful for teaching group fitness classes. It is not, however, a foundation for clinical work with individuals who carry trauma, personality disorders, anxiety, chronic pain rooted in psychological distress, or active mood disorders.
The Critical Gaps
When therapists complete yoga trainings hoping to integrate somatic practices into their clinical work, they consistently encounter the same missing pieces.
How to sequence for a clinical session, the “how and when ”to bring them into a session
Sequencing for a group class is not the same as sequencing for nervous system regulation for a client in a therapy session. There are some considerations to keep in mind including how to help a client in fight or flight response vs. shut down. As Therapists we want it to make sense and to align with what the client is needing in that moment. Without guidance on this, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable for Therapists to bring in yoga informed practices. Therapists also want to help clients feel comfortable with practices outside the traditional talk therapy realm.
No Framework for Contraindications for mental health concerns
Yoga trainings teach teachers to offer modifications — a block under the hand, a bent knee instead of a straight leg. This is physical safety. But clinical contraindications are a different matter entirely. Most trainings do not adequately address when breath work might be triggering for a client and how to accomodate this. It also does not address when deep relaxation practices (yoga nidra, extended savasana) might feel profoundly unsafe for a client with a trauma history.
Trauma-Informed vs. Trauma-Competent
The phrase “trauma-informed” often is addressed in yoga trainings, but may not be at the depth that Therapists need. Trauma-competent practice — the kind required in a clinical setting — requires understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of trauma responses, the difference between window of tolerance work and dysregulation, how to recognize trauma activation and how to respond therapeutically, and how somatic interventions interact with the therapeutic relationship. A yoga training module on trauma-informed teaching, however well-intentioned, rarely covers this depth.
Scope of Practice Is Rarely Addressed Clearly
Standard yoga trainings help graduates to teach group classes. They do not provide training to graduates on individualized mental health interventions. They do not cover what is within our scope as clinicians (and what is out of scope) as well as what is scope of competence and what we can do to increase our scope of competence with yoga informed practices in therapy.
How Therapists Can Bridge the Gap
If you’re a therapist who has completed a yoga training, or who is considering one, here are the additional layers of learning worth pursuing:
- Develop explicit informed consent language. Before introducing any somatic or yoga-based practice in session, clients should understand what you’re proposing, why, what risks and benefits exist, and that they can decline or stop at any time each time you bring in a yoga informed practice. Standard therapy consent does not cover this automatically.
- Build a clinical rationale. For each practice you introduce, be able to articulate the clinical goal, and how it connects to the client’s treatment plan. “We’re going to try some breath work” is not sufficient. “I know you’ve been struggling to sit with strong emotions, I’d like to introduce a brief grounding technique that may support your window of tolerance — here’s how it works and what to watch for” is a clinical intervention.
- Align your yoga informed practices to clinical theory. This is not covered in traditional studio trainings. It is essential to align what you are doing with your clinical theory like existential, humanistic, psychodynamic, polyvagal, somatic, transpersonal etc. In my experience, both Polyvagal and somatic theories align well with yoga informed practices.
- Know contraindications and safe applications. If you aren’t aware, get training on which presentations warrant caution and potential risks with breath work, movement, meditation and with body-scan practices with different populations and diagnoses. There are safety considerations and ways to keep them trauma informed and these might not have been taught in your yoga trainings or in grad school.
- Process what arises — in session and in supervision. Somatic practices can unlock material quickly. Have a plan for what happens if a client dissociates, becomes flooded, or discloses new trauma content during or after a yoga-based intervention. This is clinical work, and it requires clinical support.
The answer is not for therapists to avoid yoga trainings or to not bring yoga-informed practices into sessions. What matters is getting the right training, developing a thorough understanding of trauma and its neurobiological implications, and building your scope of competence. Understanding how the nervous system responds to trauma allows clinicians to make informed decisions about when yoga-informed interventions are appropriate — and when they may not be.
