Susi (Gilespie) Amendola, RYT
Therapeutic Yoga focuses on Yoga as a healing journey. Yoga is an ancient practice that brings about integration of the whole person.
During a therapeutic yoga session, techniques and practices from both Yoga and Ayurveda (an ancient healing modality) are used to promote overall health and wellbeing. During a session, a series of practices and lifestyle modifications will be individualized based on your personal needs. Your input and feedback are essential to this process.
Areas of focus include:
Postures (movement) are designed to release blocked energy, and promote circulation, and energy flow. The postures chosen are specific to the physical condition, capacity, and needs of each person. They are also used to bring attention back to the body as a way to listen to the signals and information the body has to offer. When we deeply listen, transformation can occur.
Systematic Relaxation is a practice of learned and conscious, letting go. Through the relaxation practice, we are training to be awake, alert and fully relaxed. The ability to relax leads to better and deeper sleep, lower stress reactivity, lower blood pressure and heart rate. It is through these deep states of relaxation that we begin to heal.
Breathing is the link between the body and the mind. How we breathe affects how we think and feel. How we think and feel affects how we breathe. An intimate connection exists between the breath and the mind. As a result, breathing is one of the quickest and easiest ways to affect stress and anxiety. The breath is also one very important way we access and manage energy.
Guided Meditation teaches us to focus our attention while holding space for our mind to relax and get quiet. When we can witness the patterns of mind without judging, analyzing, or ruminating we start to let go. It is in meditation that the mind begins to loosen its hold over us.
Through the practice of meditation, we have the opportunity to gain awareness, insight and a deeper understanding of our own true nature.
Imagery Uses the mind to heal the body through comforting and soothing images that can create a deep and profound experience and can serve to enhance the healing process.
Diet and lifestyle have a powerful affect on our health. What we eat and how we live determine many of the outcomes that challenge us. Ayurveda and Yoga recognize this important connection. Recommendations according to body type (doshas) are given when appropriate during the sessions.
As a companion to the psychotherapy process, the practice of yoga can assist in accessing feelings, managing difficult emotions, releasing stress, balancing the nervous system, reducing anxiety and depression, and gaining greater self awareness,
The goal of therapeutic yoga is to empower individuals to take responsibility for their own health. It takes a minimum of 3 sessions to teach and reinforce the transformative skills that will be introduced.
First session is 1 hour and 30 minutes
All subsequent sessions last one hour.
Minimum of 3 sessions $375
Advanced training packages are available for those who are interested in more sustained support and enhanced skill building.
AHIMSA love and respect for all beings
February is a month where we celebrate LOVE....In the Yoga Tradition we practice Ahimsa- (referred to as non-harming) where we begin to cultivate love and respect for all beings by developing compassion.
We gently create space for another’s experience. What would it be like to be them? How would it feel to have lived through the experiences of their life, to see things through their lens? Once we can deeply appreciate another’s experience, we begin to feel a connection. The walls of separation between ourselves and others begin to fade and our hearts open.
In this time of great suffering for the people of Haiti, our hearts naturally pour out to those victims of this tragedy. We hear the stories of those touched by this disaster and our hearts ache. We want to help, and we feel deep heartfelt compassion. In these times we can see clearly that we as humans have a great capacity for compassion and caring.
How do we find this same compassion when someone cuts us off in traffic, or our children or friends disappoint us. When others are insulting or uncaring. When someone does something to hurt us.
Compassion may not arise quite so naturally when we are feeling attacked or hurt. This is when we are called on to remember our light and the light of others. It takes remembering and practice.
A Practice of Compassion
Sit quietly and breathe as if your heart is breathing in and breathe out as if your heart is breathing out.
1) Begin to call the image of someone you love into your heart.
2) Recognizing what it must be like to be that person, and to have experienced all they have experienced in this life. Imagine having compassion for all that they have gone through in life.
3)Breathe in and out and let the love that you feel for that person fill your heart.
Practice the same 3 steps with:
a) A person that you are having problems with.
b) Yourself
Don’t choose someone who is very difficult for you, rather someone who you care about but there is some friction or something between you now. It may take a little while to feel compassion but keep sending love and compassion and understanding.
As you are more able to do this you can try it with people that are more difficult for you. Always starting with someone you love and can feel love for easily and ending with yourself.
In time and with practice you will feel more tenderness and love for all beings.
From my heart to yours
With love and blessings
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