• 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.

Take up some kind of devotion-adjacent practice: loving-kindness meditation, prayer, chanting, and/or a gratitude journal, twice a day, for at least 5 minutes each time, in addition to continuing with daily pranayama and asana.

We opened the session with a brief discussion of the mahagunas and a guna check in. We then went over the perceived stress scale and measured her stress; she scored a 27 on the PSS-10, indicating high perceived stress. We started with some self-massage of the neck and shoulders with a few exaggerated deep breaths to settle in before moving into the "librarian breath" practice that we started with last time. We kept the lips together while doing a long shhhh-sounding exhale and then a slight pause on the exhalation with a focus on a slight activation of the lower core and diaphragm.
We then moved into hatha yoga. As we moved through the postures, I continued to refer back to the idea of sattva in plain language: clarity, balance, peace, equilibrium, activation in rest, relaxation in action, pure, still water. We started with constructive rest pose with gentle pelvic tilts, which we did more dynamically today, moving between constructive rest to butterfly with the option for butterfly leg lifts. we then moved to apanasana to happy baby to single leg lifts. Tabletop came next, we practiced a variation of cat/cow with emphasis on pelvic tilts leading the movement. Then we practiced thread the needle and sunbird. We moved to sukhanasana for gentle neck stretches, chin tucks, and shoulder rolls. The main postures we did today were dynamic low lunge in 3 directions, bridge with open chest and various levels of activation in the upper body including the neck, cobra against the wall, camel with the chair behind her against the wall, a variation of supine single leg lifts with strap and free movement, reclined figure 4 against the wall with an emphasis on stillness and subtlety this time, wide legged hip rotations against the wall (she said she loves this and does it every day now), and then viparita karani. We did a traditional integral yoga tense and release protocol before moving into yoga nidra with guided imagery of a relaxing day at the beach.
After Yoga Nidra, we did seated dirga pranayama, brahmari, and nadi shodhana again, with an emphasis on establishing a pranayama routine . Meditation was a loving-kindness meditation in which we repeated: May all beings be free. May all beings be joyful. May all beings be peaceful. After this, we had a discussion about the general philosophy of Bhakti Yoga and emotional regulation. She was very engaged during this discussion and mentioned several times that she really enjoyed the loving-kindness meditation.

This client already seems to be making progress, they love the pranayama and now really enjoyed the loving-kindness meditation. I have a feeling she will really get into the affirmations and bhakti yoga, and that the practices will provide a wonderful counterbalance to her competitive nature.

This session went well for me, although I did feel a little tongue-tied for a few moments when we were getting into the science of emotional regulation, mostly because i started to wonder if i was going out of IAYT scope of practice by getting into the physiology of the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, vagus nerve, and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Because this session went so well, I am planning to devote one more session to different bhakti yoga practices, including chanting, visualization, the idea of devotion to an ideal and what that ideal might look like for her as a deity, and mantra repetition.