Starting Integrative Yoga Psychotherapy training: what it means to me.

I can't quite believe I am saying this, but this September I am beginning training in Integrative Yoga Psychotherapy. For me, this feels less like a change in direction and more like a continuation of something I have been observing for a long time in my work: that human experience is layered, and that no single approach tends to hold all of it on its own.

Whilst most of my current work has been in Yoga Therapy, nervous system regulation, and embodied practice. Over time, I have become increasingly aware of how often people are asked, implicitly or explicitly, to separate mind and body when seeking support. In reality, lived experience does not function in that way. Emotional, psychological, physiological, and relational processes are deeply interconnected.

I see this time and time again when working therapeutically with the body. Patterns that may not fully shift through understanding alone are often held in embodied experience, in nervous system responses, or in habitual protective patterns that persist even when insight is present.

Talking therapies play an essential and valuable role in supporting mental health. The capacity to name, process, and make meaning of experience through language is a powerful and important part of healing for many people. Alongside this, there are also aspects of experience that are felt and expressed through the body, where language alone may not fully reach what is happening.

This is not a limitation of talking therapy. It is a reflection of the different layers through which human experience is processed and integrated.

In clinical and therapeutic settings, it is increasingly recognised that stress, trauma, and emotional experience can be held not only cognitively, but also physiologically and somatically. This can show up as patterns of tension, arousal, fatigue, shutdown, or reactivity that may remain even when someone has gained insight into their experience.

This is where integrative approaches become important. Integrated Yoga psychotherapy brings together psychological understanding with somatic awareness, breath, movement, and attention to internal experience. It offers another way of engaging with the whole person, particularly where embodied patterns and lived experience need additional routes of access and support.

For me, beginning this training also means returning to the role of student. This is something I value deeply. There is something important about not only teaching or holding space for others, but continuing to be in the process of learning, being shaped, and not yet fully formed in understanding. It keeps practice honest. It also keeps it alive. It also allows me to continue doing my own work, which I believe is fundemental to this work.

Whilst all currently committed classes will continue, at present I do not yet know my bandwidth to take on additional events alongside this training. The content element of the training is due to last just over one year, with the ongoing practical integration extending far beyond that timeframe.

If you are organising an event and feel my work may be a good fit, I am always open to hearing from you. At present I am working within a more considered capacity as I begin this next stage of training, but as always, I welcome meaningful enquiries and collaborations.

I do not see this as replacing anything I already do, but rather expanding the lens through which I understand wellbeing. The more I work in this field, the more I see that people benefit from a range of entry points into healing and support. Sometimes that is conversation. Sometimes it is embodied practice. Often it is a combination of both.

What feels important to me is not choosing one approach over another, but recognising where each has value, and how they can sit alongside each other without needing to compete.

Thank you for supporting me whilst I continue to evolve into this deeply fulfilling work.

Naomi Hurst (she/her)