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Yoga, Psychotherapy and a very short essay on Relational Depth

In 2014 I completed a yoga teacher training course with the Devon School of Yoga. I now teach on the Devon School of Yoga Teacher Training as well as Yoga Therapy courses, looking at the overlaps of Yoga and Western Psychology, as well as helping Yoga teachers enhance their active listening skills.

To give some background to my interest in Yoga, here’s some of my personal experience:

I remember going to yoga at school when I was a teenager; stressed with the business of making friends, studying for exams and finding out who I was in the world and my place within it. I remember finding an hour on the yoga mat like an oasis of pleasure, peace and calm, and left the mat with such sadness that I was leaving that space behind. I couldn’t see how the space could continue in my day-to-day life.

I look back now and wander why I didn’t latch on to the idea that Yoga could have become a way of life for me. I was searching for meaning and identity in life –why didn’t I respond to my discovery of Yoga? Perhaps I perceived it as a discreet hour of exercise and relaxation. On the other hand, maybe the path I took was right for me – that of travelling, teaching and eventually finding meaning through psychotherapy.

Two things happened to me at the age of 40. One was that my body started to show signs of ill health – I could no longer rely on the lightness and resilience of youth to recover from stresses and strains. The other was that I found myself in deep mourning and grief, as well as a state of anxiety about the future.

I started a Yoga class but this time around I did not enjoy the hour on the mat. I despaired at how inflexible my body had become after 20 years of not practicing, and it was hard for me to relax and switch off from my anxieties. My mind was not still but I persevered.

It was worth persevering. The more I practiced in class, the easier the postures became, and my body responded with a sense of lightness and health. I started unravelling the vicious circle I had got into. With a healthier body, I felt lighter and healthier mentally. Other changes became inevitable. What I felt that I knew – that the mind and the body are not separate and are part of the same system – became evident. I was experiencing Yoga – the unifying of the parts of the whole.

“Life does not become easier; we become easier with life just as it is”
Donna Farhi

Carl Roger’s – the founding father of the Person-Centred Approach – became aware in his later life of how his thinking was a bridge between Eastern and Western thought.

The Person-Centred Approach proposes that conditions for growth promote healing. The core conditions are empathy (an ability to enter and see the client’s world), congruence (a genuineness) and Unconditional Positive Regard (an ability to accept the fellow human in front of you). I can see Yoga’s Ethics – called the Yamas and Niyamas – at work within these conditions, offering an ethical foundation for practice and living. Relationships are ethics.

Relationships are also connection. And Yoga means connection. Sometimes I wonder if a moment of connection in psychotherapy is Yoga. Relational depth is seen as something ineffable and hard to define. There are some lovely attempts at describing it – such as “. . . it’s as if there are moments when our souls are touching. . .” Relational depth is seen to occur when the three core conditions work together so well that they could be seen to become one condition. Rogers called this “Presence”. Mearns and Cooper (2005) call this “Relational Depth”. Dave Mearns has attempted to define Relational Depth as “a state of profound contact and engagement between two people, in which each person is fully real with the Other, and able to understand and value the Other’s experiences at a high level” (Mearns & Cooper, 2005, p. xii).

Looking at what happens with the core conditions from a Yogic perspective, I see them as being the antidotes of the kleshas (obstacles that hinder our true sight).

• Empathy is the antidote to asmita – ego. As a therapist we leave our frame of reference and walk in our clients’ shoes.

• Unconditional Positive Regard is the antidote to raja and dvesha – attachment and aversion – we accompany our client without investing in either wanting them or being repelled by them – we are non-judgemental and compassionate.

• Congruence is the antidote to avidya – ignorance, or “non-seeing” – we sit with ourselves in a truthful way – with our channels open to our experiences.

As a client experiences the core conditions, they themselves can allow their kleshas to move out of the way and access their buddhi – their wise mind.

When teaching relational depth to psychotherapy students we wrote a short essay on ‘what makes us human’ – to explore our own personal philosophies (modelled on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show). Having written mine I saw how connection provides the link between Yoga and Psychotherapy.

It is when I open to the “Otherness” of another human being that I experience myself as existing, alive, making choices, finding out who I want to be. Through encounters with others I learn, develop self-awareness and become more fully-functioning in the world. I find myself through resisting the Other, embracing them or contemplating what is revealed before me in the Other.

I think we also learn to accept ourselves if we allow ourselves to not know the other. Levinas talks of “absolute Otherness” – being clear that ultimately an Other is un-knowable. I find this beautiful and at the heart of the Person-Centred Approach – allowing us to sit with difference without needing to know, pin-down or diagnose. We reach out and stretch out to meet the other but can never be the other.

Love is another thing that makes us human, as does our ego, our attachments and aversions, our fears and our knowledge. These are also causes of suffering and choices that can result in acts deemed as ‘inhuman’. What I know is that my own suffering dissipates in true encounter, and my perspective on how to live more fully and to function better in society is enhanced. I learn who I am and I feel connected to more than just the person I’m encountering. To quote the Smiths, “To die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine”. What has always moved me in this song is the idea that when truly in encounter – a kind of deep, open relationship that leaves you utterly present – I have felt afraid of nothing – not even death.

ReferencesMearns, D., & Cooper, M. (2018). Working at relational depth in counselling & psychotherapy (2nd ed.). SAGE.