yoga therapy, tapas and self practice: a conversation with Ganesh Mohan

We are very happy to invite you as a guest at The Yoga Therapy Conference on May 10 and 11, 2019 in Amsterdam. The topic of this Conference is: “The science of human connection” — What are your ideas about human connections?

I notice that humans are increasingly disconnected nowadays. They make connections through a screen, rather than face to face! They know how to swipe left and how to swipe right but not how to talk to one another. (laughs) If people don’t know how to communicate well, how will they enter into and sustain relationships?

What, in your opinion, is the foundation of a therapeutic relationship?

Consider what we lack in the modern medical system that makes it difficult to forge a good therapeutic relationship with the patient. The first is time. Unfortunately, the system often doesn’t allow the healthcare professional to spend enough time listening to the patient.

By the time you understand what the deeper and broader issues in the person’s life are which are contributing to their health problems, the consultation time is over. It would be nice if there would be a paradigm shift, that we have time (and willingness!) to sit down with a client to see what their issues are, holistically.

The first important requirement, I’d say, is to take the time to be present and listen to the client or patient and not rush over what they share. The second is to always maintain a holistic view and see the person in the broader context of their life rather than as a list of problems to be fixed with a prescription.

Do you have tips on how to establish a therapeutic relationship in yoga therapy?

There are distinctions between professional relationships and personal relationships. The first requirement is boundaries. Without boundaries, there is no safety in the relationship for both therapist and client. Within the boundaries of a professional connection, relationships evolve and grow as the therapy progresses.

When you see a client for 10 sessions over months, you understand that person and their situation with increasing clarity and depth. This growth in holistic understanding for both therapist and client is a process that unfolds over time.

The key to this process is the compassionate, equanimous, guiding presence of the therapist as a mirror or lens for the client to examine themselves and their choices. To see oneself is hard, and it needs to be facilitated.

As a therapist it is important to be kind, to be present, and to listen. To offer suggestions or guidance is a second step. A therapeutic relationship is not about telling people how they should be or how we see them. It is about creating a space for people to see themselves.

In the space of that relationship, guidance, exercises, and more can be offered effectively, but encouraging empowerment and cultivating discernment are keys.

The yoga field needs clarity around this topic. A traditional guru-disciple relationship is not necessarily a format for a therapeutic relationship. It has different goals, commitments, and social and educational settings. If transferred into a therapeutic context in modern times, it can become disempowering to the student. That is why even mentoring in yoga teaching needs to strike a careful balance between more traditional ways of learning and ones more suited to the modern era.

You’ve been at The Yoga Therapy Conference before. What do like about this Conference in Amsterdam?

The people, it was a great crowd! The conference itself was very interesting, and I had some lovely conversations. Anneke Sips (the founder of Network Yoga Therapy) is is doing a wonderful job bringing people together. I’m looking forward to being there.

At the Yoga Therapy Conference, you’ll be talking about self-compassion, tapas, and also self-practice. What does your own practice look like?

When people ask anyone the question, “What does your yoga practice look like?” they often work from the assumption that there is a set of asanas or some fixed practice that you do every day and that is your yoga — because that is how people mostly think of yoga, and that’s how they learned it.

My journey has been quite different. It’s hard to say what exactly is my yoga practice, because there are so many pieces in my life I could call my yoga practice spread over the day. It is too deeply embedded in my life to be viewed separately.

I do some meditation. I do some asana. I do some pranayama. But there is also self-reflection, reading, study on the body-mind and philosophy with my parents and others, different forms of exercise and breath exploration, times when I connect with my body and just sense how I feel, times when I connect with others mindfully, efforts to nurture relationships and support, periods when I stay quiet or when I try to practice mindful and kind speech… and more. Yoga is a “round the clock” practice. After all, Patanjali never mentioned a yoga mat or yoga studio!

What is the place of self-compassion and tapas in yoga?

The topic of tapas and change is the start of Chapter 2 of the Yoga Sutra. Vyasa’s commentary on II.1 starts by saying, “In one without tapas, yoga does not succeed.” 

The way Patanjali looks at it is that the heart of yoga is samskara. Samskara is all the latent tendencies, impressions, habits, unconscious patterns of the body and mind. All those samskaras run most of our lives. Our thoughts, the way we speak, the emotions that arise in us, our posture and movement style — all this is mostly not consciously determined. You cannot choose every single action that you do consciously; it is too complex.

The question becomes, are my samskaras, these patterns that run my life, useful or not?  Do they lead me toward more well-being and happiness in my life? This is what we examine through yoga—we see what comes up in our mind and body because of our samskaras, and we choose to shift them toward actions and patterns that will create more well-being in us.

When we decide to make a change there will be resistance. The nature of samskara is that it is a pattern. It has stickiness because it is the easy path to take. For example: when you decide to change your food habits, or to exercise more, there will be resistance to that change. Because your body and mind hold on to the older habits of the earlier diet you had or the pattern of exercising less. The body and mind hold on to habits for many reasons: to conserve energy, because of survival instinct or stress, desire, fear, other emotions and more.

And so, what is tapas? 

Tapas is to face that resistance to beneficial changes arising from our less useful samskaras. The body and the mind are going to say: “I don’t want to do this,” and find many ways to throw up speed-bumps.

You may not be consciously clear of where this resistance comes from and its nature; it could be in the form of emotions or bodily sensations. Regardless, we must be able to intelligently work with these resistances if we have to facilitate positive change.

Self Compassion

This is where the role of self-compassion and related practices comes in. We must not try to fight with the body or mind, or suppress these resistances when they arise. We have to watch over them with mindfulness, equanimity, and kindness, and find strategies to unwind them or replace them.

Otherwise, they will rebound on us later, throwing up other problems or just reappear after a while if they were suppressed. That is why, immediately after tapas, the Yoga sutra describes svadhyaya or self-reflection.

Wisdom must accompany the effort toward change.