• Check in, centering, balanced hatha yoga set considering contraindications, relaxation (with imagery as appropriate),
• Balanced pranayama considering contraindications, meditation/centering.
• Include at least one suggestion from Karma, Bhakti, Raja, or Jnana Yoga tailored for this client.

Practice breathwalking in nature, which is something that we discussed briefly and agreed upon as a good practice for her. We also agreed that she would aim to practice at least 5 minutes of therapeutic movement and 5 minutes of therapeutic breathing twice a day.

We opened the session with a brief discussion of the koshas and a kosha check in. We then went over the perceived stress scale and measured her stress; she scored a 28 on the PSS-10, indicating high perceived stress. We quickly got into the practices with her as both of us have a tendency to talk a lot at times. We started with a variation of the "librarian breath" in which she kept the lips together while doing a long shhhh-sounding exhale and then a slight pause on the exhalation with a focus on maintaining awareness at the level of the core/lower belly/ diaphragm. with each exhale, she was encouraged to imagine a wave of relaxation cascading down the head, through the jaw and into her neck, shoulders, and then the rest of the body.
We then moved into hatha yoga. As we moved through the postures, I touched on balancing effort and ease and encouraged her to find spaces where she could release tension even while she was active. We started with constructive rest pose with gentle pelvic tilts, and then moved to apanasana, supine windshield wipers, cat/cow into thread the needle and sunbird. We did some gentle neck stretches, chin tucks, and self-massage. The main postures we did today were dynamic low lunge, bridge with open chest and various levels of activation in the upper body including the neck, gentle dynamic sphinx posture, camel with the chair behind her against the wall, supine single leg lifts with strap, reclined figure 4 against the wall (which she had a lot of fun playing with), wide legged hip rotations against the wall (spontaneous), and then viparita karani. She started feeling very relaxed with her legs against the wall so we moved into a yoga nidra a little earlier than I had planned for. I took her through a body scan and then into a nature walk guided imagery.
After Yoga Nidra, we did seated dirga pranayama, brahmari, and nadi shodhana. Meditation was an internal trataka practice focused on the inner flame of the heart. After this, we had a discussion about the general philosophy of Raja Yoga and the first yoga sutra. She expressed a disinterest in spirituality again, which led to us having a frank discussion about the nature of goal setting in her career, focus, emotional regulation, and inspiration. After our plain-language discussion, she said she was more interested in learning more about Raja Yoga.

This client has already progressed in just the first session. She is clearly excited about trying new things and asked to meet again on Tuesday. She certainly has the inner fire that could make her a great yogini.

I felt a bit uncomfortable working with this client as she is a female and I have been working with mostly males so far, but we settled into a decent rapport and the practices went well.

Next session will be similar in terms of therapeutic movements, though we will explore different subtler yet accessible practices like affirmations, and connect that to bhakti yoga and emotional regulation, which is something she said she really wants to work on.