As Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy professionals, we look to the client’s body to tell its stories, to teach the client about how she lives. Yet if our client doesn’t know her body, if she doesn’t have a healthy relationship with it, how can she expect to trust it enough to listen to it? In Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, befriending  the body is about  building foundation.  It is about building trust.

I have a sensation in my back that has been growing for the past two months. It is warm and irritating and penetrating. If I focus on it, the air in my lungs catches and I find it hard to breathe. I reach an almost immediate edge – my chest tightens, pulse quickens, and I feel uncomfortable electricity, charged for battle, scratching just beneath the surface of my skin. It is just beyond the reach and comfort of any of my limbs, stranded in a sea of skin and bone, muscles, and memories. It is deep and superficial. It is new and lifetimes old. It is tension, apprehension, fear, doubt, exultation, freedom, and the call of potential. It is complicated and so simple. 

This sensation that I have requires attention that I do not always choose to give. It stirs edges that I don’t always want to face. And it ebbs and flows. It is a quickening, a widening, and a rehashing at the back of my heart. It is my heart – speaking, growing, churning. It is uncomfortable, but it does not frighten me. I know it needs attention and care, but not yet. Something still needs to be learned, faced, experienced before I’m ready to attend to it. So I watch, and wait, and listen. I listen for the moment when I am ready to go a little deeper.

Starting With the Body

In his many writings on the subject, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy founder Michael Lee coined the phrase “befriending your body” to describe the process by which we commit to learning about our bodies and listening to their stories in order to be able to respond differently. Turn Stress Into Bliss, Lee’s book on Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy’s 8-week program to reduce stress, helpfully reminds readers, “It is through your body that you will learn the most, and through your body that you will change everything in your life that needs to change. …The only person who can change your relationship to your body is you.”[1]

Lee’s concept of befriending the body is the first step toward learning to go deeper. It is the precursor to awareness, acceptance, and choice. It is what will allow us to stay within resistance rather than run from it or shut down. It is what will ultimately help us hear and actually listen to our authentic truths, to act upon those truths, to let go of what has earned a right to retire, and to move toward transformation. Developing a trusting relationship with the body – one in which we are able to witness thoughts, sensations, emotions, and memories as markers of information rather than dismiss them as fanciful hyperbole, fear, pain, or nonsense – is what Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioners mean when they speak of befriending the body.

Imagine the part of yourself of which you are most critical. Bring all of your awareness to that part and notice what happens to your breath, your body, your emotions. Perhaps you become aware of judgment, maybe anger, resentment, fear, maybe disgust, resignation, or sadness. It’s likely uncomfortable, edgy – sensations that point to flight, denial, or contention.

Now imagine that all that you notice is not simply a collection of thoughts but information your body is trying to share with you.

Listening to a Galaxy

In her book Molecules of Emotion, acclaimed psychoneuroimmunologist and body-mind pioneer Candice Pert details how the intricate network of  “information molecules” (ligands, e.g., hormones and the receptors to which they bind) play a key role in the way that we view and respond to ourselves – the “what” we find when we start learning to befriend our bodies. Binding, occupying, bouncing from and locking into cells, each chemical package that flows in our body combines with every other to create both an in-the-moment reaction and lasting results. Pert states that these are “minute physiological phenomena at the cellular level, [that] can translate to large changes in behavior, physical activity, even mood.”[2]  In other words, at both the micro and macro levels, what we receive on a surface or experiential level sends a chain reaction that reverberates into our core. This also changes how we then react or behave, i.e., action stored as memory, physical pain, repression, etc.

Now imagine that you can listen to this galaxy of information that we continually revise and renew and compound moment-to-moment. If Pert is correct in her assertion that our body speaks to us at all times and that our molecular interpretation of life’s events translates into physical sensations and emotions which we store (and vice versa), then “each of us is a dynamic system with a constant potential for change in which self-healing is the norm rather than the miraculous … [The knowledge that our] body has wisdom … calls for a new kind of responsibility … [We] have the potential to consciously intervene in the system … to take an active role in [our] own healing. [We are] both more powerful and more responsible in creating the health that [we] experience…”[3]

Learning to Explore

The connection that Pert makes between our biology, actions, emotions, and outcome is at the core of why befriending the body is such a valuable tool for self-healing. If we can attune to our body and mindfully witness what we learn, we are poised to take an active role in our own wellness and healing.

Yet when our bodies talk, we rarely take the time to listen, much less interpret and respond. I am a dancer and have been around dancers my entire life. At first glance, they would surely be the ones who know their bodies intimately. They spend hours honing their athletic prowess, years perfecting technique, lifetimes talking to their bodies. But from firsthand experience I can say that using the body, even knowing it intimately, is not the same thing as befriending it.

Befriending the body is a process of learning to explore all parts of ourselves and to develop a trust that helps us cultivate deep, whole body listening. If we trust that the body always speaks in truth, we create space for real questions, real answers, real change, and real healing.

And yet how can we expect to believe what the body speaks if we don’t have a trusting relationship with it?

Even though it ages and changes, the body is our constant companion, absorbing and attuning and sensing motion, emotion, vibration, and sensations around us every moment. If the body is an intricately woven tapestry of our life, each thread represents a moment in time, an experience or sensation, however fleeting, in our personal history. As the threads are woven together, they begin to create patterns. Some are familiar and easy to see. Others may be more complex, difficult to interpret, or even hidden. Like the threads, sensations we feel such as stress, chronic pain, or anxiety are often connected to patterns, behaviors, and issues that are present in our life. Building trust in the body and our ability to listen to it mark the first steps toward using the body as a gateway. Through the body we become aware of what’s happening in the moment:  physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, images. With this, we can step back and gain greater clarity around what’s happening in our life. Nothing in our body is out of place. It may seem to arrive as “news” or feel unwelcome or edgy or shocking, but knowing that everything we hold in our body is valid because it was created from our experiences helps us to create the space to trust our body when it speaks

Building Trust

Certain specific practices help with our building trust with the body. In my experience, cultivating and living out ahimsa, which Nischala Joy Devi describes as “embracing love and reverence” for self rather than the more traditional translation of non-harming or nonviolence, is a first step.[4]  It starts to open up space.

Another key practice is aparigraha, which I like to think of as cultivating balance rather than non-hoarding. According to Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Mattews, there is “an imperative for all living things to balance containment and permeability, rigidity and plasticity, persistence and adaptability, space and boundaries.[5]  In other words, we are constantly trying to find balance within a set of extremes, which gives us parameters for framing what we notice. It sets the stage for our stories. Phoenix Rising deep listening asks us to remain open to a larger, more inclusive balance – one in which all experience is welcome, no matter how we frame it for ourselves. Listening without “hoarding” thoughts or attaching to one extreme over another is a process of learning to witness what’s happening in the moment: our stories, the parameters we are using to frame our experience, or anything else that may arise. The practice of this larger idea of balance allows us to move more fully into the realm of trust. [6]

Let’s be clear – trusting the body is not the same as loving it all the time or being happy with every part of it. Neither is trust the same as acceptance. Befriending the body does not mean that we have to accept everything about it. It does not mean that we have to like what we find or even be able to decipher the messages the body sends. It does mean, though, that we listen to what it has to say.

Like building any relationship, befriending the body is a process, often fraught with setbacks or missteps, but whose ultimate goal is to build a safe container in which trust can grow. In the same way that we can learn to trust our families or lovers or friends to speak honestly so that we can grow, we can learn to trust our bodies as safe arenas to explore and in which we can listen to the truths it has to share.

Cultivating Relationship

In his book Grace Unfolding: The Art of Living a Surrendered Life, Paul Ferrini discusses the importance of cultivating trust in a relationship with others. He asserts that “trust should not be blind. It must be cultivated over time. Then it becomes conscious and reliable. When trust is progressive…each person gradually reveals himself. There is a deepening of knowledge and sympathy.”[7]

What Ferrini says is true of our relationship with the body as well. In essence, befriending the body is a process of forming a relationship with self – or perhaps seeing our current relationship more fully and making choices to reshape that relationship. It is a commitment to learning about ourselves, just as we are, without a need to fix or change. Then, as we become aware of our desires and fears and learn to hold them compassionately, we can more easily and with more trust let ourselves sink down to a place in our hearts of perfect peace. There, we know we are safe regardless of how many fears come up. We know we are worthy, even though we have wants or needs that aren’t being met.[8]

Through spending time cultivating this compassionate and spacious relationship with the body, we gain experiential knowledge that it will speak its truth to us. We come to know it will tell us when to wait rather than explore, when to tread lightly rather than drill into its muscles, when to sit with the discomfort rather than ignore it. We come to trust the body as much as any well-informed advisor, doctor, confidant, healer, or friend. In short, through learning to befriend the body, we’ve learned that we carry inside of us our own wisest teacher.

Finding our Wise Teacher

The most effective teachers are guides. They are those pillars of strength and wisdom that create and hold a safe container in which students can explore, falter, fail, and triumph. In order to help us grow and learn on our own, they may push us past what we believe we are capable of and share only parts of the puzzle to enable us to fill in the gaps with our own experience, taking a more embodied and holistic approach to our own learning.

Though at times we look outside for sources to guide or teach us, somewhere deep inside we know that we must slow down, reconnect with ourselves, and listen to our own inner voice. [9]  The Phoenix Rising approach to yoga therapy understands that each of us is our own wisest teacher. It understands that we already possess all of the knowledge needed to support ourselves in living a healthy, fulfilled life. But, as with any wise teacher, building a foundation of trust is key to being able to unlock that wisdom. And in Phoenix Rising, that foundation of trust starts with befriending the body.

There is an assertiveness in my need to wait that is clear, learned, and often hard won. It’s the product of a long and ongoing journey of cultivating trust with myself. This trust allows me to know that the sensations of my body are both echoes of the past and signposts of the future. In the opening paragraph, I describe a particular sensation as being “at the back of my heart,” not so subtly implying that there is an emotional resonance connected to this physical sensation. I speak of it in this way because my body speaks of it to me in this way. And over the years, I’ve learned listen to what my body speaks. I’ve learned to trust it as a wise sage, a gentle comrade, even an irritating and necessary harbinger of things to come or things that have already been. Even when my body seems like foe, it is always friend. It always reveals what is truly happening to it, while never withholding the wisdom that lets me more fully become who I actually am.

To read more about what you as a Phoenix Rising professional can do to support a client who has little or no relationship with her body, visit the Web Exclusive area of the Professional Portal at www.ijpryt.com.

1. Michael Lee, Turn Stress into Bliss, (Fair Winds Press, 2005), 38, 41.

2. Candice Pert, PhD, Molecules of Emotion, (Simon & Schuster, 1999), 24.

3. Ibid., 262.

4. Nischala Joy Devi, The Secret Power of Yoga, (Three Rivers Press, 2007), 180.

5. Leslie Kaminoff and Amy Mattews, Yoga Anatomy, (Human Kinetics , 2011), 2.

6. This practice moves us more into the realm of trust by freely offering each of our experiences a valid place within the scope of our awareness.

7. Paul Ferrini, Grace Unfolding: The Art of Living a Surrendered Life, (Heartways Press, 1998), 38.

8. Ibid., 41.

9. Michael Lee, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy website, accessed June, 2012.

This morning at breakfast, my husband, Dave, was complaining about the size of the type in a document he had been attempting to read. With frustration he mumbled, “The headlines are always so big, but the message itself is always so hard to read.” And a light bulb appeared over my head illuminating the process of acceptance.

Acceptance is crucial to healing and evolving throughout the twisted turns of a human life. It is a point of entry without which there can be no moving forward – no new way of being with and in the context of our challenging and ever-changing world. The path from willfulness (non-acceptance) to willingness (acceptance) is a unique adventure blessed with both edge and promise. In fact, its promise lies within its edges. Our ways of being with such edges can lead us either toward the entry point of acceptance or back in the more comfortable, yet tiring, position of resistance.

Catching Up With the Words

It has been my experience that acceptance is never an instantaneous event. Even in the moment when I might verbally affirm, “I have accepted this”, the truth is that there are some parts of me that have not quite caught up to the one who said the words. There is more to become conscious of before there is true authenticity behind the declaration. Letting go and letting be aren’t things one does in the
moment. They are the effortless result of the process of gradual discernment, in which it will seem as though nothing was actually done, but rather allowed. I need only to be consistently, curiously aware of the small internal shifts and those opportunities to choose in favor of acceptance that come my way on a daily basis.

Acceptance is a process of moving from a conscious initial awareness toward an embodied, almost unconscious, new way of being as a result of a deep integration of what has been accepted.  Like Dave’s reading material, acceptance starts with a BIG headline, but the small print that follows takes time to discern and absorb.

“ I am so grateful I am an alcoholic!”

These words filled my office one morning with such profound joy. Sarah, the young woman facing me, let them ring out, giving them space and silence enough to be able to bear witness to her life-affirming journey. A journey that has led to an authentic living of life. A journey that has been filled with struggle and growth and much learning how to love herself. And a journey that started with hitting that painful place of rock bottom.

Unlike Sarah, many people with addiction may resent their condition. They may be upset about being “different”, not being able to drink “normally” or play with substances recreationally. They may suffer devastating life consequences, losses of friends and families, and much physical and psychological pain. Most struggle with addiction for years, all while attempting to control their behaviors, to manage their use of substances on their own. They bargain with themselves and others in an ongoing battle between a need to be in charge of their own lives and a powerful force that compels them to return over and over again to self-destructive and harmful choices.

While friends and loved ones often helplessly look on, the person overtaken by addiction continues to live in a distorted reality, fueled by delusion and falling ever more deeply into a spiral of self-destruction.

A rock-bottom moment may provide a real opportunity for change. In such cases, a clear willingness emerges  – a willingness to admit a powerlessness to control the addiction. There is a willingness finally to admit, as the AA adage goes, that “One (drink) is too many and a thousand never enough.” This willingness can lead to a surrender and an embrace of a process of change and recovery as the only authentic way out, the only way to live.

Although Sarah had suffered greatly and struggled for many years of her life due to her relationship with alcohol, she nonetheless arrived at the place of being grateful. From where she was in the recovery process, she recognized that her rock-bottom experience had offered her two choices: acceptance leading to life or denial possibly leading to death. She chose acceptance and the potential for a new relationship with herself. When Sarah finally stopped drinking, she was able to begin to live in a radically new way in order to re-build her shattered life.

Acceptance and Recovery

The process of recovery involves an intimate long-term relationship with acceptance. It calls for acceptance of what is in order to create a healthier relationship with oneself and others. It invites a good dose of “selfishness” from the standpoint of focused self-awareness in order to tend to one’s needs. It calls for acceptance that support is necessary to maintain a certain balance in life, so as not to slip into old patterns of thinking and behaving. When entering this relationship with acceptance, those with addictions enter a new way of seeing themselves and the world. Recovery and acceptance provide them with new life skills and healthier coping mechanisms. Acceptance allows them to begin a necessary journey of self-discovery. This journey is a process of awakening that leads to being present to oneself and choosing to be free from the veil of denial and intoxication.

To many on the journey of recovery, the experience of sobriety can be filled with profound changes. It is often an experience of coming home to one’s body and of developing a truly healthy relationship to one’s self and life. Many treatment programs exist to support this recovery process, including in-patient and out-patient treatment facilities as well as a number of 12-step programs.

Hand-in-hand with one or a combination of the above-mentioned programs, which may also include working with a licensed psychotherapist or addictions counselor, a person in recovery may also benefit from working with a certified Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy professional.

Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is a complementary modality that supports the recovering addict by providing opportunity and safe space not only to explore her current relationship with herself but also to begin to discover a more authentically healthy way to be with herself and in the world around her. Over a number of Phoenix Rising sessions, a client often begins to experience herself in a more compassionate and accepting way. For many people in active recovery, this opens the door to letting go of shame and guilt and their potentially crippling effects. The result is a clearer path to further acceptance, forgiveness, and life-affirming change. 

The Right Time

Given that Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy supports a client in staying aware and present to what’s actually happening in her body in the moment, an important question to explore is the when. When in the process of recovery might be the right time to begin Phoenix Rising sessions?

Most substance abuse treatment programs recommend an initial period of detox. This focuses on freeing the body from the effects of alcohol or drugs. Most treatment programs also recommend that time early in the recovery process be dedicated to necessary adjustments associated with the innumerable physical and emotional changes happening in the bodymind.¹

The Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy training organization recommends that a person in active recovery be at least six months sober before considering Phoenix Rising as a complementary modality to their recovery program.

Phoenix Rising as a Next Step

Two very important aspects of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy are integral to its application as a complementary modality in support of potential clients who may be in active recovery.

The Phoenix Rising concept of coaching the edge is used throughout the entirety of each session.²  During this process, a client is asked regularly to check in with her edge. Doing this provides the client opportunity to maintain awareness of when any experience may become too big either physically or non-physically. When the client’s experience is too big or beyond the edge, the Phoenix Rising practitioner offers the client the opportunity to come out of the experience and correspondingly reduce or eliminate the edge.

How Phoenix Rising practitioners work with the edges of a client during a session brings to light the other essential aspect of the work: client-centeredness. The entirety of each Phoenix Rising session is grounded in the safety of client-centeredness. The practitioner stays focused on the client, often asking the client what’s happening in the moment, then building the session around the client’s in-the-moment experience. The result is that the client stays in control of each session.

The client also gains experiential knowledge that the Phoenix Rising practitioner shows up as a non-judgmental presence, supporting the client as she explores all that moves into her awareness and as she discovers different patterns and insights about her life and relationships.

The process of self-discovery and self-acceptance, the insights and clarity that clients may receive during Phoenix Rising sessions, along with the spacious and safe environment created by the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy professional, all provide the recovering addict with powerful support on the journey of recovery.

My introduction to Dr. Gouin-Young came in the form of a client calling to say that her naturopath had referred her to me. I was pleased to receive the referral but was unfamiliar with Dr. Gouin-Young. With curiosity and gratitude for the referral, I called Dr. Gouin-Young’s office. My intention was to thank her for the referral and offer her more information about Phoenix Rising, while exploring the possibility of a mutually supportive referral partner relationship between the two of us. An invitation for an in-person meeting resulted from this call.

For the meeting in Dr. Gouin-Young’s office, I brought informational articles and business cards. I found that she was well acquainted with Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, having experienced Phoenix Rising sessions herself. “How great is this,” I thought. “Someone who understands the nature of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy and who has received it, too.”

Often the biggest challenge comes in explaining Phoenix Rising to a potential referral partner – educating about what it is and what the benefits are. Many times I offer sessions to potential referral partners as a way of conveying the value of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy. The experience will speak for itself, often creating a fertile base for questions and answers around what Phoenix Rising is and is not, and how their potential referrals might benefit.

Presenting previous professional training or experience that is pertinent to the referral partner’s client or patient population in addition to Phoenix Rising training can serve to build trust. For example, I have a background in healthcare and this supports my own referral partner relationship with Dr. Gouin-Young.

From Dr. Gouin-Young’s perspective, she enjoys working with a Phoenix Rising practitioner who has a healthcare background. “I feel that having some other connection to healthcare,” she explains, “offers insight to some of the conditions my patients are facing.”

Having similar philosophies in each partner’s respective modality is another important aspect in cultivating a healthy referral partner relationship. For example, Dr. Gouin-Young recognizes and affirms the connection between body, mind, and spirit and gives it a key role in her patient protocol. Dr. Gouin-Young adds, “For me, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is directly in line with my goals of empowering my patients and teaching them to better connect with and listen to their bodies.”

This all leads to a synergy between our respective practices that truly can support her patients. “We have separate practices but a mutual goal for our patients. Each of us is able to offer specific skills that together create a synergy for facilitating healing in our patients,” says Dr. Gouin-Young.

Dr. Gouin-Young cares for patients undergoing lab testing and treatments, which can often leave the patient with residual trauma. She finds that her patients, especially after traumatic surgery and invasive testing, have often coped by disconnecting themselves from their bodies.

Dr. Gouin-Young makes referrals when “patients are open to yoga, have a history of physical trauma from a health condition (i.e., breast cancer or surgery), and need help processing life experiences.”

Our professional referral relationship works and remains an excellent example of right relationship because we have a mutual trust for each other as well as respect born out of clear boundaries, open communication, and an understanding of our respective modalities.

While this doing-it-all-alone approach is one way of operating a professional practice, it can certainly have its drawbacks. Some of these drawbacks include experiences of frustration and practitioner burnout. Instead of taking the solitary approach, a supportive alternative is to take the time to cultivate healthy business relationships with others in our community. Developing these types of business relationships can be fulfilling and, at the same time, can help us avoid the frustration and burnout that often accompany the doing-it-all-alone approach to operating a professional practice.

The First Step

An important first step toward developing healthy business relationships is to get clear about intention and then to stay within that clarity as we take action to build our business relationships.

We simply need to understand that a healthy business relationship is essentially right relationship. Then we can easily see our intention: to create business relationships that mutually support our professional practice, the business or business professional we are in relationship with, as well as any potential clients or patients. When this intention of mutual support is honored, a certain synergy is created. This opens space for authentic communication and offers the opportunity to create and maintain healthy, fulfilling experiences for all parties.

A big part of right business relationship involves having clear boundaries. For example, when developing a referral partner relationship, we need to be particularly clear about roles, expectations, and client or patient referral procedures. This is basic. It’s essential. And it’s easy. It would begin simply by our opening up a dialogue with our new or potential referral partner. By having this type of conversation, we would be able to communicate and discuss these elements in order to create real clarity on both parts. This would go a long way in supporting a right referral partner relationship.

Doing Our Own Homework

Here are some good questions to explore to begin to gain clarity around right relationship and professional boundaries as they apply to our business relationships.

1.  Specifically, what do we need to make a business relationship supportive and robust?

2.  What needs to be in place in order for the business relationship to be supportive to all parties?

3.  What are potential or actual stumbling blocks to communication that need to be addressed?

4.  What does a business relationship look like that aligns itself with the philosophy of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, while respecting the core values of another practitioner?

Responsible, professional business relationships can be a very supportive antidote to those periods of frustration, stress, and burnout that often show up when pursuing the going-it-all-alone approach to a professional practice. Professional business relationships can be mutually supportive to all involved. We need only to remember to stay clear in our intention, reach out to professionals in our communities, and then welcome the healthy professional relationships that come into our life as a result.

Visit www.ijpryt.com to listen to an interview with Jaunie Federowicz and Elizabeth Wyatt on business relationships.

Many of us in our Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy community may realize from an experiential point of view the real importance of being happy, peaceful, well balanced, and healthy. Those in the corporate or non-profit sectors may, however, experience dynamics of confusion when faced with these kinds of words.

It’s important for us to realize that the confusion doesn’t necessarily come from any lack of understanding of what these words mean on the part of the individual in the corporate or non-profit world. Rather confusion may show up because of a translation problem.

What are the right words to use to translate Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy language into a language that those making spending decisions in a corporate or non-profit environment can relate to? What words can we use to support clarity on the part of the people we’re communicating with so they can, in turn, justify spending money on our services, given their particular business environments?

Below is a mini lexicon to help with the translation process. Of course there are other word choices that can be found both for these examples as well as others that are not included below. But this mini lexicon will be a valuable starting point to support you as you begin to incorporate the skill of right languaging into your marketing and relationship-building activities.

The previous sentence may not be easily understood if you don’t speak both French and English. If you speak only one of those languages, you may be able to get the basic thought of the sentence. However, it takes some effort. It’s a good example that speaks volumes about the importance of words in the process of communication.

As we Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy professionals move our work into our communities, we need to focus our attention on much more than sessions or classes. In particular, we need to draw our attention to the words or languaging we use in order to speak to others about our work. In doing this, we become aware – and maybe in a very experiential way – of a universal phenomenon: Words can either support effective, clear communication or create confusion and impede or even shut down the communication process.

Rendering Communication Effective

A few years ago, as a newly certified and extremely passionate Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner, I started to talk about the work to non-practitioners every chance I had. Sometimes as I did this, I noticed their eyes glaze over. In some cases, eyes would even roll at the jargon used in my descriptions. Here are some examples: integration of body, mind, and spirit; connection with source; inner journey; inner wisdom; alignment with inner truth; inner peace; bliss. Even the word yoga sometimes created a barrier to further understanding. Clearly something was getting in the way of effective, supportive communication as I was talking about Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy.

It’s important to keep in mind that effective, supportive communication requires language that can be understood by both parties in communication. As noted communications expert John C. Maxwell states, “People respond to the language we use.”¹ And when people can’t understand the words we use, the response will be confusion. That gets in the way of effective, supportive communication.

When we talk about Phoenix Rising to other practitioners or people who practice yoga, we easily fall into Phoenix Rising language – yoga, wellness, and alternative-therapies speak – and communication flows. However, if we talk to someone in the personnel department of a large corporation about adding Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy to part of an employee wellness program, this same Phoenix Rising language may not be understood.

Here’s an important point to keep in mind. When either the setting or the receiver changes and our words don’t change accordingly, the receiver of our words must translate them to try to understand what we offer. During the process, understanding may quite literally become lost in translation. Communication starts to be impaired, maybe to the point of even shutting down altogether.

Matching Language to Context

In the same way we may decide to dress a little more conservatively for a face-to-face meeting with a personnel director, we should also be willing to modify the language we use during such a meeting. It all becomes a question of right-languaging.

Matching our language to the context of the situation is a process known as right-languaging. This process truly supports authentic communication. If we communicate with recognition of and respect for the possibility that the receiver’s language or culture may skew the intended meaning of what we are trying to communicate, then to modify our language accordingly does something incredibly powerful. It re-aligns our intended meaning with how the receiver receives our words. The result? Authentic communication flows.. 

Right Language in Action

Have you ever travelled to a country whose language you do not speak and found yourself surrounded by conversations that were totally meaningless to you? It can be an isolating and disorienting experience.  Now imagine that out of nowhere you hear someone speaking your own language. What happens at that moment? A sudden connection manifests between you, and this total stranger. You are both speaking the same language and the ease with which you are able to understand each other bonds you almost instantly.

Now consider being back in your own country and reaching out to decision makers in a non-yoga-based organization in order to offer your services.  Such organizations are indeed concerned about happy, peaceful, well-balanced, and healthy employees. The “citizens” that work in such places, however, use a different language to speak about these qualities. In a corporate setting, the native language usually involves words like budget and profits and expenses. When speaking to these types of organizations, it truly serves to spend some time becoming familiar with the organization’s native language. Then spend some more time to develop some fluency with it so you can easily translate your Phoenix Rising language into the organization’s native language.

When we modify our language according to the receiver’s context (language, culture, values), we foster opportunity for right relationship. We open up space for conversation, making it safe to explore and discover together. With right languaging, we make it possible for mutually supportive decisions to be made, fulfilling the needs of both parties in the relationship. How? Because we’ve moved past the language barrier and into the world of authentic communcitation.

______________________________________________________________________

1. Maxwell, John C. Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2010), 67.

Words in a Phoenix Rising session give depth and breadth to our perception of the other person, and this holds true for both practitioner and client. Dialogue complements the nonverbal cues we attend to in each other’s facial expression, breath, and body movements. So when beginning a Phoenix Rising yoga therapy session, we welcome the client into this work by already using dialogue tools that both invite him into the experience and educate him about how to receive this work. There is

purposeful engagement in the words we choose. It is never so much about giving the client instructions to follow as it is about supporting him to take a closer look, to appreciate the possibility of what this session may mean for him.

It’s important to note that silence is also incorporated into what we give back to the client in our dialogue. If it were not for the space between words, much would be lost in how we understand what is spoken. In a Phoenix Rising session, the use of silence carries weight as do all other offerings. Silent space reflects the kind of whole body listening that a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner provides his client throughout the session and is in itself a form of dialogue.¹

So words and silence are what we use to facilitate the client’s present moment awareness of what is happening as his body is moved in and out of postures. Words can point to what is being noticed in that present moment.  Words can also extend the offer to look closer, to explore what is beneath the surface of the current noticing. Most important is that the practitioner refrain from manipulating the dialogue to support his personal idea of what should be happening for the client. Instead it’s vital to keep it focused to allow the client to bring his own innate wisdom to identify and evaluate what he’s noticed. The dialogue then takes on the essence of a conversation the client is having with himself.

This is done by speaking from intention. We can use dialogue for beginnings and endings, to gather or provide information, to facilitate exploration on the surface or in the multitude of layers underneath, to navigate transitions from one part of the session to another, and to offer a mirror in which the client can witness himself. Intention is the driving force that enables each of these to happen.

The questions we often use ­– like “What’s happening now?” and “Tell me more” – are not commanding or probing, but offered as invitations. Then what we have is intention combined with invitation: a perfect combination. Simple but powerful tools. Like all other tools and techniques in Phoenix Rising, these invitations arise from clear intention. They are not random queries. They are weighted and purposeful and, at the same time, open to whatever may be revealed by the client.

One basic intention in asking “What’s happening now?” is to bring the client’s focus to the present moment, pointing to the current bodymind experience, asking that it be brought into awareness. The question invites the client to notice aspects of his experience from an inner perspective – not from an idea of what it should be or has been before, but attending to all sensations, thoughts, emotions, memories that are stirred into that moment of awareness. What the client then chooses to speak moves the dialogue forward. If he chooses silence, the space held by the practitioner is in itself an honoring of that response.

The intention of the invitation of “Tell me more” can be to invite a broadening of the client’s current awareness, perhaps a shift in perspective. Sometimes looking at something from a different angle is all it takes to open the door to new insight or understanding. The query itself is open-ended, offered without carrying the practitioner’s expectation or judgment about what it should be.

In some parts of the session the guidance given may be to notice something more specific. It may, for example, pull on a thread of what has been experienced in order to provide information to the practitioner about what to offer next. Though there is more direction in this kind of query, the words are still open and inviting, revealing the importance of yet another aspect of Phoenix Rising dialogue – voice quality and energy. We all know how the content of what is spoken can change according to how the words are delivered by the speaker. Have you ever tried to give someone a compliment or offer an expression of thanks when you’re in the midst of feeling angry? Or perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of a thankless thank you?

So it seems that dialogue may be much more than the actual words themselves. Clearly, a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioner must be fully present to himself and cognizant of his own mood and motivation. Facilitation of the client’s present-moment awareness during a session requires a practitioner who is focused and free from encumbrances. Then, and only then, is it possible to speak from intenion and offer an authentic invitation.

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1. Whole body listening is a phrase used to describe a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy approach to listening that engages more than the sense of hearing. It is an approach that uses the whole body to listen.

For more information on whole body listening, visit www.ijpryt.com and hear Carol Capper’s recorded teleclass on whole body listening.

As the modality of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy continues to grow, we at the Journal thought it important to remain clear about Phoenix Rising’s history, intention, and even some of its core theory. For this important conversation, we asked Phoenix Rising’s director of programs Beth Triano to sit down with founder Michael Lee and explore in detail a most fundamental question: What is Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy?

Beth Triano: Michael, you founded Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy with a very clear intention. Let’s begin our conversation with your working definition of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy.

Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy founder
Michael Lee

Michael Lee:  Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy offers a yoga-based, mind-body, educational process to help people live  their lives more effectively. Phoenix Rising was born from my direct experience of deep yoga practice, inner self-presence, and self-inquiry processes. All human beings are in a constant state of change, and yoga and education both acknowledge and support the process of change. At the inception of Phoenix Rising, I was trying to better understand myself and how I showed up in life. It wasn’t until I engaged my body and experienced what it had to say that I discovered that there are better ways to understand one’s life than trying to “think it out”. The first clue that I was on to something good was when my oldest daughter said, “When you practice yoga, you’re happier.” She was right! This inspired me to go further, to take the physical experience of yoga and somehow integrate it into my life.

The question became: How to offer in a simple and effective way what I was discovering? I realized that first and foremost there must be access to the body; it always tells the truth. Second, there must be a way to support bringing an open and loving presence to the process of listening to what my body is telling me. This is the kind of open and loving presence Carl Rogers spoke about – unconditional positive regard. It’s a way to be present to others without judgment or agenda. And third, there needs to be a way of integrating and connecting what I learn through my body’s wisdom with my life experience.

BT: Speak more about Carl Rogers’ influence.

ML: As a pioneer in humanistic psychology and education, I greatly admired Carl Rogers in the way he related to others. Its essence was very yogic. He could be present without needing to do anything or make anything happen. He could create the space for people to do their own learning from their own unique experience of themselves. This approach fit with many of my own deep yoga experiences during which I was able to connect back to my life experience.

Another humanistic educator who greatly influenced my work was Malcolm Knowles. His educational approach was based on a model (andragogy) similar to the inner guru concept in yoga. I believe the most significant contribution to the application of yoga that stems from Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is this andragogical approach to therapy. It totally recognizes the innate wisdom that dwells within all beings. Phoenix Rising doesn’t tell clients how to “fix” things. We help them discover their own unique solutions to their own unique situations.

BT: So what we end up with in Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is a modality that is traditionally yogic yet uses compatible modern educational processes.

ML: That’s right. Our focus with Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is on education from the inside out. We help people use their bodies to bring awareness to areas in their lives that they might want to change. Then we support them as they learn to listen to their own inner wisdom in order to effect that change.

BT: There is a lot of talk right now about what constitutes yoga therapy. How do you define yoga therapy?

ML: Yoga therapy is a broad and inclusive term. Within its scope are modalities ranging from those that focus more on the physical body to therapies whose intention is to offer a holistic approach to life enhancement. Some yoga therapies will diagnose or offer to fix a specific problem. And that’s great. Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, on the other hand, facilitates a process that supports people in becoming aware of the changes they need to make in order to create the life that they want.

What is unique about Phoenix Rising is that we don’t tell people how to do this. We create – through body awareness, through simple dialogue, witnessing, and validation – an opportunity for people to connect with and hear their own wisdom and guidance.

BT: So given that most therapies exist to treat or fix a specific condition or problem, you don’t see Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy as serving that role in a person’s life.

ML: We are a therapy. What we do, does affect people. They do change as a result of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy. We don’t promise a specific change, though. We don’t diagnose a condition or a problem and treat it specifically. But we do know from experience that Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy offers the client the potential – the opportunity – for change. And we see those changes happen. In short, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy doesn’t offer a panacea. Instead, it offers a process. That process often leads to change in all aspects of one’s being – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

We are very proud of what we do and the way we go about it. And we are not discrediting any other form of treatment. In fact, we are saying there is a synergy between many of the forms of therapy available today. Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy has its place, as do all other modalities. We are a results-oriented and pragmatic therapeutic modality, and our clients are very happy with the results they get.

If we take a moment and turn to the images in the first half of this issue of the Journal, we’ll find that they convey very yogic principles. A little girl holding a handful of feathery seeds and releasing them to the wind calls to mind non-attachment and the loving presence of witness. The image of a handshake between two people evokes ideas of trust and right relationship. The image of a well-loved baby in the arms of its father reveals expressions of surrender. Images like these really become visual icons for us as we try to convey all the nuances of that all-important spirit we call acceptance. Because of its importance in the role of healthy change, we felt it rightly deserved to be the theme for this issue.

We begin this issue with a thought-provoking article by Elissa Cobb, which launches us on our journey into acceptance, a journey from willfulness to willingness. And we end the issue with another article on acceptance by Daniela Menardi in which she explores a journey of a different sort: a journey to the rock-bottom experience. In the face of this particular kind of experience, we find ourselves choosing either for or against acceptance. In between these bookend articles, we’ve included an article by Carol Capper about the role of dialogue in a Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy session. This leads to further exploration of the role of words in an article by Bev Johnson. She brings into focus the important role that right language plays in our communications with others as we bring Phoenix Rising into our communities. Next we present a real hands-on article by Jaunie Federowicz and Elizabeth Wyatt. They look at the role that business relationships play in our Phoenix Rising professional practices. Finally, in celebration of the entrance into our second year of publication and Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy’s 27^th year, we decided it would be a good time to check in with Phoenix Rising’s founder Michael Lee. Beth Triano sits down for a talk with Michael in order to explore a simple question: What is Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy?

Thank you for all your support during this past year. And we wish you much peace, much acceptance, and much success, however these may look for you, throughout this new year.