• 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.

Continue to do pranayama and asana at least 5 minutes twice a day, and begin to take notes on when and what bhakti yoga practices are being used: loving-kindness meditation, positive affirmation/mantra repetition, gratitude, prayer, compassion, chanting.

We opened the session with a brief review of the koshas and a kosha check in. She then scored a 24 on the PSS-10, indicating moderate-high perceived stress. We started with some self-massage of the neck and shoulders and then a seated "easy flow" sequence, moving through the anatomical movements of the spine in a gentle way. Then, we did a few deep breaths to reset before moving into the "librarian breath" practice that we have been doing, with the goal being to activate the lower core and diaphragm. We took a few moments to begin a few affirmations: "I surrender what I cannot control", "I trust the rhythm of breath", and "light flows through me effortlessly"

We then moved into hatha yoga. As we moved through the postures, I continued to mention the affirmations we went over, and encouraged her to find relaxation in the body, ease in the breath, and then guide the mind to an affirmation. 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, which we then took to knees-to-chest, after which we straightened the legs, lowered them, and then came to a moment of stillness to completely relax and reset. we repeated this sequence 5 times. Tabletop came next, we practiced a variation of cat/cow that was more dynamic; we were essentially going from a gentle child's pose to a variation of baby cobra. Then we practiced thread the needle and sunbird, which are indispensible movements for this client. The main postures we did today were dynamic, slow low lunge next to a wall for support, bridge with open chest and various levels of activation in the upper body including the neck, slow dynamic cobra on the floor, camel with the chair behind her against the wall, seated wide legged forward fold "water flow" sequence, which entails moving from wide legged forward fold into a ql stretch on each side and then into a forward fold over the leg on the side that we are leaning into, reclined figure 4 against the wall with an opportunity for more free movement, child's pose with long arms overhead, tented fingers, and scapular protraction and retraction, and then viparita karani with the legs up on a chair. We did a traditional integral yoga tense and release protocol before moving into yoga nidra with a chidakasha "mind screen" practice after the traditional yoga nidra sankalpa, body scan, and breath awareness. In the Chidakasha practice, she was encouraged to non-judgementally observe whatever comes up in the space behind the forehead / third eye center while the eyes are closed. Any shapes, images, or colors that come up are to be watched without mental comment, the emphasis is on witnessing and not thinking.
After Yoga Nidra, we did seated dirga pranayama, brahmari, and nadi shodhana again, with another mention of emphasis on establishing a pranayama routine. Meditation was a space-based loving-kindness meditation in which we practiced the following mantras, with the goal being to embrace the feeling of peace, light, and love actually moving throughout the space within and around us in an infinite manner: May peace radiate throughout the world. May every cell be bursting with healing light. May love overflow from all with avalanches of abundance. After this, we reviewed the science that supports the practices of devotion and loving-kindness, which I felt very prepared for as I had notes: love and surrender activate the PSNS, compassion and prayer activate and therefore strengthen the PFC, which strengthens decision-making and emotional regulation, surrender reduces amygdala activation, chanting reduces activity in the default mode network, associated with rumination. We then did a neck stretching sequence and ended on 5 minutes of silent meditation before chanting om namo narayanaya a few times to close.

This client is very intense and a hard worker, so she has been making good progress. She reports that she doesn't do anything halfway, and it definitely shows. She said she feels good about the things she has learned and plans to continue to practice these new techniques every day.

I feel good about the sessions we have been doing so far, although I did forget to go over devotion to an ideal and how that relates to a chosen deity, which is something I really wanted to do this session. I feel that I am streamlining my processes in some ways but there is still a lot of room for improvement to make sure I don't miss anything during the sessions.

Next session I plan to review devotion to an ideal and how that relates to a chosen deity after our standard practices, and then talk about karma yoga as I feel that will be a great transition from bhakti yoga and will be of interest to ITM. I also plan to introduce using a towel to help stretch her neck.