The idea for the “Connections” group was sparked when a physician colleague approached Michelle about running a group for young women living with “emotional regulation” difficulties in their lives. This interest grew from the challenges of working with young women who were dealing with serious problems like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addiction, cutting, and suicide. Our experience at CFT of working with young people who are struggling with eating disorders has taught us that the body and the mind can be so desperately at odds so as to create intense suffering for people.  So Michelle approached her colleague Sue Steindorf, a true believer in the power of yoga practice, to see what they could fashion together that might address the complexity of the problems these young women were having. 

The “Connections” group was structured to highlight both bodily awareness, through yoga, as well as the connections between experiences of the body and participants’ own developing identities as young women.  We didn’t want this experience to feel like therapy in a traditional sense, although we wanted the effects to be therapeutic and life changing. The yoga concepts we have focused on include breath, strength, ?exibility, balance, heart opening, and stillness to help create meaningful connections personally and interpersonally.  Focused conversations about what discoveries these bodily experiences connect to in regards to feelings and relationships take place at the beginning and ending of each meeting together.

We have held three “Connections” groups over the past year with women of all ages.  Michele Rizza, nurse and gifted yoga instructor, and I have teamed up with Sue Steindorf, pediatric physical therapist, and committed yoga instructor, to facilitate these groups.  Our collaboration has itself been another kind of rich connection as our different professional orientations have created a truly unique context in which wellness and healing occur. As a personal trainer and family therapist, this group births a dream I have held about creating ways to integrate mind, body, and spirit in the healing process. Here are just a few of the comments that group participants have made along the way:

I am able to be me now. I cry with happiness - everyone has noticed. This has helped me connect my body and my mind.

I’m so much happier now, before I was crying all the time because of how sad I was, now I’m able to let feelings go.

I am a more open person, which is not easy to do. I am more confident and aware of myself. I know myself better and I have opened up to people more. I know that it is okay if people don’t understand me.

Yoga has helped me respond to stress better and I can focus on my feelings. I am connecting my mind and body, and finding time with myself to do the poses at home. I let the emotions go and focus on breath, and then the emotions. This allows me to take a break. I do the poses before bed and sometimes during the day.

I envision my hands holding my heart, and see me for me. I don’t worry as much and I am happy with myself.

Our experience of these groups has been that by blending the arts of yoga and psychotherapy together, openings are created for change that are not possible in either discipline alone. Plans for the future are to offer “Connections” groups for couples and for men.

Kim Delaney

Licensed Family Therapist