Blog

There are mental health risks as well as benefits associated with yoga. How might ‘talk therapists’ support clients to explore new psychological corners of a long-established yoga practice – as well as helping novice clients to avoid inadvertent triggering or ‘dissociation in disguise’? In the penultimate part of her series, Counselling Psychologist and former yoga teacher Cleandra Waldron shares some useful general questions, and specific cautions for practising yoga when there is a history of childhood abuse.

From working with resistance to understanding the role of integration, therapy and yoga have much to say to each other. In the third part of her series on yoga for ‘talk therapists’, Counselling Psychologist and former yoga teacher Cleandra Waldron shares how yoga has helped her reflect on the function and goals of therapy, the common threads of human distress, the ‘extraordinary powers’ of trauma survivors – and the ‘permission’ from which all therapy clients can benefit.

Ruth Lanius on critical breakthroughs in trauma research, helping dissociated clients to be present with the environment and their bodies – and why we should always begin trauma therapy by honouring our client’s neurobiological adaptive responses.

Arielle Schwartz shares essential insights and mind-body skills for helping clients with complex trauma, from navigating symptomatic overwhelm and phobic avoidance to understanding self-blame, shame and shutdown. Part 3 in our new PESI UK Blog series, Free Clinical Conversations: An Hour With an Expert.

It may be mistaken for dissociative experiences, dysmorphia, even psychosis. But clients who are plagued by existential doubts and ‘what ifs?’ may actually be experiencing a lesser-known form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Dr Karen Cassiday, clinical psychologist and specialist in anxiety disorders, sets out the key differentiating features of existential OCD – and describes some of the disturbing ideas and desperate behaviours we may notice in its presence.