Private Sessions

Yoga Therapy offers you a whole-person therapeutic experience. It includes mindfulness, somatic (body-based) practices, meditation and sound healing.

The session is conducted according to the traditional Yoga Therapy framework using the Panchamaya Kosha model to guide assessment and therapy. This model is concerned with the 5 levels of human experience.

We draw on various modalities to meet your specific health and wellbeing needs, including Dru Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Yoga Nidra, Restorative Yoga, Yin Yoga, breathwork, meditation, sound healing, mantra, mudra, compassionate therapies, mindfulness therapies, somatic therapies.

Yoga Therapy may involve touch. We discuss this with you at the first session and only use touch with your written and verbal consent.

Counselling and Psychotherapy are traditional Western mental health therapeutic experiences. They usually involve talking about your concerns, story, thoughts and emotions; this is known as “talk therapy”.

Contemporary Counselling and Psychotherapy incorporates mindfulness and somatic (body-based) therapies. These therapies focus on enhancing self-regulation and awareness through present-focused activities. These activities include noticing your feelings (emotions and body sensations), using your breath to calm stress or overwhelm, and developing skills to track your present experience with less distraction and self-judgment. There is a substantial amount of research to support using mindfulness in mental health care. The research on the benefits of somatic therapies is robust and growing.

The key difference between Counselling and Psychotherapy is the focus of therapy and length of time.

Counselling is appropriate to deal with specific problems and generally takes 6-12 sessions. For more complex concerns up to 20 sessions may be needed.

Psychotherapy is appropriate for complex problems or to engage in long-term self-exploration. The number of sessions may be difficult to determine for complex issues, so we can discuss a number that matches your most immediate goals to start. Psychotherapy can proceed over many months and years.

We discuss whether Counselling or Psychotherapy are most appropriate to your health and wellbeing needs and resources at the first session. If you have concerns or questions please Contact Us to start the discussion before your first session.

Integrative therapeutic practice is fundamental to our services because Lifestyle Medicine is a multi-disciplinary field.

Counselling and Psychotherapy, as practised today, are often integrative. Mindfulness and somatic therapies are common in many “talk-therapy” modalities, including contemporary third-wave cognitive behavioural therapies (e.g. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).

Therapeutic yoga is integrative as it blends traditional yoga philosophy, knowledge and practice with Western biomedical, neuroscientific, psychological and psychotherapeutic research, theory and practices.

Integrative Yoga Therapy and Counselling/Psychotherapy

We give you the option to receive a unique blend of Yoga Therapy with Counselling/Psychotherapy. This blends yoga and meditation practices and approaches with counselling/psychotherapy.

We incorporate yogic philosophy, knowledge and practice with appropriate counselling or psychotherapy modalities. This rests on the foundation of thousands of years of philosophy and practice from the yogic traditions together with contemporary research, theory and practice from the biopsychosocial, psychological and psychotherapeutic perspectives.

For example, we can offer you Yoga Therapy and be informed by counselling/psychotherapy modalities to deepen mindfulness, somatic or self inquiry practices.

Alternatively, we can start with “talk-therapy” using a compassion-based or mindfulness-based modality and integrate a yoga therapy-informed lens to explore your issues through the lens of Patanjali’s 8-limbs of yoga or the Panchamaya Koshas.

If you have a particular interest in therapy style we can discuss what we can offer that is within our scope of practice.

Integrative Yoga Therapy and Counselling/Psychotherapy offers you opportunities to deeply explore of your concerns through various lenses and via complementary appraoches.

Integrative Yoga Therapy and Counselling/Psychotherapy may require more consultations than standard Counselling’s 6-12 sessions.

We are happy to discuss the appropriateness of our integrative therapeutic approaches to meeting your health and wellbeing needs and goals.

Lifestyle Medicine and Yoga are preventative.

You can access our therapeutic services to maintain your health and wellbeing.

In fact, we encourage you to engage with our services when you have no particular problems. At these times we can work on how to maintain your positive health and wellbeing into the future.

Our Courses are one way to maintain your health and wellbeing.

Sometimes you may have difficulty attending our Courses. Perhaps the times offered don’t fit your current schedule.

Perhaps you would prefer the personalised 1:1 experience in Individual Sessions.

Maybe you want to maintain your wellbeing among people you know in Group Sessions.

Private Sessions help you to care for your ongoing wellbeing using targeted approaches.

Here are just some suggestions for how you may engage with Maintenance Sessions:

• after you have completed therapy - this may start with a follow up session 2 months after your therapy concludes

• every year with a quarterly check-in

• once per month to build your personal body and mind resources

• twice a year with a group of friends or colleagues.

There are many more ways to engage with our services to maintain your positive health and wellbeing.

Contact Us to discuss the possibilities with you.