An Introduction to Integrative Yoga Therapy
Written by: Kim Deshaies
If you’ve practiced at Serenity for any length of time, you probably already know that yoga is so much more than what happens on the mat. You’ve felt it... the way a long exhale can shift something weighing on your heart all day, the way showing up for practice consistently starts to change how you move through life, the occasional savasana that lets you touch something cosmic within yourself.
That feeling is part of what drew me to yoga therapy.
I started practicing yoga and Buddhist meditation while seeking relief from trauma. Discussing my challenges in talk therapy alone did not seem to give me the tools I needed to feel safe enough in my body to deeply transform the suffering in my being, so I began seeking alternative models of healing and experiential tools for dealing with symptoms in my day to day life. This seeking led me to yoga.
I have to be honest, friends: the first time I went to a yoga class, I didn’t get it. I thought it was just fancy stretching and I was bored out of my mind. But coming back to the mat years later with a deeper sense of curiosity and intention shifted things profoundly. I began to realize I could stay with my life challenges more easily by letting my attention anchor to the rhythm of my breath. I began to listen to the signals of my body and started feeling safe in my own skin again. I learned that yoga is a vast tradition, teaching that we are each inherently whole and perfect beings (skeptical glance, what?!), that it is the fluctuations and illusions of our lives that leave marks and obscure our own brilliance from us. Yoga helped me remember this place in myself. I slowly built the capacity to meet myself more fully and stay present with my life. To discern my needs and my authentic self from the person others expected me to be. To reconnect with wonder, joy, and my own spirit.
It’s been a long road of healing, and I continue to walk it. But yoga and Buddhist psychology have taught me the power of my own body, breath, and mind. They reconnected me with the part of my being that was never broken to begin with. This part of my being guided me to become a yoga teacher, to deepen into my training as a yoga therapist, and most recently, led me to enroll in the world’s first graduate level program in Integrative Yoga Psychotherapy. Each new step has been deeply inspired by the intention to offer containers of healing and transformation for others the way years of yoga, meditation and self-study have offered one to me.
With all that said, here’s a common question I get next: That’s great Kim, but what actually is Integrative Yoga Therapy?
Simply put: it’s therapy. With the full wisdom of Yoga and Buddhist psychology behind it.
Yoga therapy is an emerging healthcare profession that applies the practices and philosophy of yoga, including breath, movement, meditation, self-inquiry, to support various mental, emotional, and physical health conditions. The version I practice goes a step further than that.
Integrative Yoga Therapy (IYT) brings together the complete map of yoga, including its understanding of the whole person across body, breath, mind, and spirit, with a wide range of psychotherapeutic tools. In my training, I’ve worked with somatic approaches, trauma-informed frameworks, parts work, attachment theory, depth psychology, eye movement therapies, hypnotherapy, nervous system regulation, spiritual counseling and more. “Integrative” isn’t just a word. It means both that I integrate a wide range of therapeutic modalities and that our time together is in service of your integration, healing, and reconnection to your deepest, wisest Self.
Sessions look more like therapy than a yoga class. We talk. We slow down. We pay attention to what’s alive in the room, in your body, your breath, your words. Practices emerge naturally from what’s alive for you, rather than being prescribed to you in advance as a premade “yoga practice for so-and-so health condition.” Sometimes that looks like breathwork. Sometimes it’s a body-based awareness practice, a guided meditation, or finding a new way to explore something that’s been difficult to sit with alone.
A Different Way of Seeing Symptoms
One of the things I love most about this work, and one of the ways it differs from many conventional approaches, is its relationship to symptoms.
In IYT, there’s no sense of “what’s wrong with you and how do we fix it?” Just as the traditions of yoga and Buddhist psychology teach, we begin with the foundational belief that you are already whole, and that wellbeing is your natural state. We begin with curiosity. Anxiety, disconnection, chronic tension, grief, difficulty sleeping, a sense of being stuck – these aren’t problems to fix. They’re information. Often, they’re sophisticated parts of us doing their best to meet a need, protect us from something, or point us toward something we haven’t yet had the time or space to look at directly.
The work of IYT is about finding the wisdom behind what’s happening in your system, and from there discovering new ways to meet needs or integrate what’s stuck. Gradually coming back to a fuller, more aligned sense of yourself.
This makes IYT particularly well-suited to complex, overlapping presentations. Anxiety that exists alongside digestive issues. Fatigue fueled by unprocessed grief. Chronic conditions that formed through consistently carrying an unspoken boundary or need with you through life. Rather than just working with the body, or just working with the mind, we begin to figure out how it all fits together. One person. Whole.
Who Is This For?
You don’t need to have a yoga practice to work with me, though if you do, we will likely find ways to bring that into our work together. What matters more is a genuine curiosity about yourself, and some willingness to slow down and pay attention. That’s it.
People come to IYT sessions for all kinds of reasons. Some that I work with frequently include:
• Anxiety, chronic stress, and burnout
• Trauma and its effects on the body and nervous system
• Grief and loss
• Difficulty with boundaries or a shaky sense of self
• A desire to reconnect to self, body, or sense of meaning
• Sleep difficulties
• Chronic illness or persistent pain
• Spiritual or energetic experiences seeking integration
• A sense that talk therapy has been helpful, but left something incomplete
• A desire to deepen into the therapeutic benefits of an existing yoga practice
• A general sense that something’s off, even if it’s hard to name, and a desire for a compassionate presence to hold you through the journey of discovery and healing.
If you’ve tried talk therapy and felt like something was missing, like the conversation never quite integrated into your body, or if you’ve used yoga as a coping tool and wondered what it might look like to go deeper, IYT might be a good fit. If you’re just curious to learn more and have a chat about this modality, that’s also a good enough reason to reach out. You can find my contact info below.
I look forward to connecting with you, and to crossing paths on the journey of yoga.
With warmth and gratitude,
Kim
Interested in seeing if IYT might be right for you?
Sessions are available at Serenity Yoga or via Telehealth. I generally recommend weekly sessions at the beginning of our work together, and then there’s always the option to switch to biweekly or as needed once we’ve established a foundation for our work.
If you’re curious whether IYT might be right for you, I’d love to chat. You can reach me at kim@bodhiyogatherapy.com or book a free 15 min intro call with me here. I hold a deep commitment to making IYT financially accessible for those who feel truly called to do this work. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you need financial assistance.