Mentoring &
Lifestyle Therapy for Women
Yoga Therapy as Lifestyle Therapy – Live Life Well
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Yoga therapy is inherently a lifestyle therapy—both as a traditional practice (yoga cikitsa) and in more modern terms (lifestyle medicine)—encompassing physical, mental and emotional health, as well as taking into consideration social, spiritual and environmental factors which influence us on a daily basis.
Quality of life and physical and mental wellbeing are closely intertwined, yet our society tends to tease these apart and view them as unrelated. Age-old wisdom has told us that eating for wellbeing, having a sound body, and getting sufficient sleep, are all physical 'prescriptions' for happiness. By the same token, our state of mind directly impacts our perceptions, emotions, and willingness to engage in living at all levels. For women, particularly, the various roles we may occupy during the course of a lifetime can be fulfilling inasmuch as they are often bewildering, exhausting, and challenging.
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A yoga therapist cannot be the change, or make change happen. However, they can be a guide and catalyst for self-reliance, resilience, and finding equilibrium—a balanced state. Each mentoring session, lifestyle therapy session, or yoga therapy session is an opportunity to mindfully step closer to Svastha: being oneself or in one's natural state, and healthy in body and mind.
We provide extended, thoughtful support over months or years, creating a client relationship that adapts and changes as needs change—delving into unhelpful lifestyle habits or patterns of thinking, bringing awareness to daily activities, providing a compassionate, open space for discussion of life, living, and perhaps even dying. Mentoring, lifestyle therapy and yoga therapy sessions may have a focus on these and more:
...and the myriad life-changes and life-challenges faced by women on a daily basis throughout their lives.
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Yoga Therapy &
Support For Women
We recognize that care and support must come at several levels and be sustentative. Second Nature Wellbeing for Life provides therapy which encompasses each woman as a whole, supporting them physically and emotionally.
Inappropriate touching. Overheated rooms. Damaged bodies. Crowded spaces without individualized support. These are concerns we have heard from women over the years in regard to practicing yoga in public spaces. For these reasons and others, we offer yoga therapy for women and not simply yoga instruction for women—providing individualized, appropriate and beneficial yoga and lifestyle therapy in a safe, supportive, and non-commercial environment.
Lack of long-term support, focus only on the physical manifestations of an illness, and sporadic follow-up from an aggregation of specialists in the health system leads many women to feel disconnected from their bodies, with a sense of anxiety and loss of inner wellbeing. Life-changes, health challenges, societal expectations, various roles as woman, wife, mother, professional and / or homemaker—these are tremendous expectations, gracefully balanced by women on a daily basis. They are expected to be gentle and compassionate, yet also resilient and strong; comforter yet also disciplinarian; caregiver for others while not caring for themselves; absorbing the pain, sorrows, and difficulties of those around them while somehow turning a blind eye to the up swell of emotion in their inner-being and the warning signals of their exhausted bodies. Yoga is a simple, sustaining practice, particularly during times of transition and change. As part of individual mentoring, yoga therapy can bring a sense of grounding, self-reliance, and calm to what may otherwise be a time of life which is challenging, or simply overwhelming.
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It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
__Bhagavad Gita
Support is provided within the scope of practice of yoga therapy, nutritional therapy, and licensed bodywork. Mentoring and lifestyle therapy are based in the extensive therapeutic practices of yoga and Ayurveda, provided by an experienced C-IAYT yoga therapist and member of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association. We do not provide psychotherapy.