Yoga and Psyche:
Psychological Integration Through Yoga

"I am glad to recommend Dr. Mariana Caplan as an author, spiritual guide/friend, and practitioner. As an author, she has created an impressive body of excellent work. As a spiritual practitioner, she has impressed me with her seriousness, dedication, and rare maturity."
~ Georg Feuerstein, M.Litt., PhD., Author of The Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra and over 50 other books

Upcoming Workshops:

February 11-12, 2012, 10:00-5:00, San Francisco, CA.
The California Institute of Integral Studies
Cost: TBD.

Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodaha. “Yoga is the calming of the fluctuations of consciousness,” writes Patanjali in The Yoga Sutras (I:II). Yet many of us have practiced yoga for years, decades, or more, and those fluctuations still won’t calm down. No amount of sweating, back-bending, returning to the breath, or chanting Om seems to address many of the painful emotions, images, and traumas that live within our bodies, and continue to wreak havoc on our interpersonal relationships, self-esteem, anxiety and depression.

Why
Why is this? Because although in many ways yoga practice transcends culture, time and individual personal history, the widespread importation of traditional Eastern yogic practice into Western culture does not address the complex and unique make-up of the Western psyche. This includes the challenges of childhood trauma, broken families, self-esteem, and the types of anxiety and depression that impact so many of us, no matter how strong our yoga practice is. The spiritual development that occurs through asana practice is distinct from, but profoundly complementary with, the integration that happens through psychological work.

What
The aim of yoga & psyche is to teach yoga students and teachers how to use yoga practice to work with the psychological content that is unique to the Western psyche, and to process trauma that resides in the body. Gentle asana work is used to open the body, and cutting edge techniques in somatic psychotherapy are then applied to work with the psychological material that arises. Our bodies and psyches then integrate more effectively and fully.

How
Practiced in the form of a weekend workshop, or a 6-week series of classes, this curriculum teaches yoga teachers and practitioners to:

• Understand why psychological work is relevant to yoga practice

• Learn techniques from somatic psychotherapy that allow us to perceive and intelligently
   process emotion in the body.

• Learn how to apply yogic technology to work with trauma stored in the body

• Discover how to do “emotional adjustments” during one’s asana practice, and
   learn pointing out instructions for working with students

• Discover how learning to use asana for psychological integration deepens our own yoga    practice, and that of students.

• Deepen our perspective about the nature of yoga, and discover its limitlessness.

I want to number myself among the many admirers of what Mariana Caplan has learned and shared.
~Larry Dossey, author of Healing Words