Will offer client key teaching related to Book 1 Sutra 33: By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.

Meet with client for 3 sessions. Offer the teaching of 4 Locks and Keys. Client will be asked to identify times when intervention can be applied over the next 3 days & then practice intervention. Client will be asked to report back at following session.

Client is a 49-year-old male. Client reports diagnosis of high blood pressure, but is healthy overall. He is physically active 5 to 6 days a week. He reports a demanding job and works an average of 10 hours 6 days a week.

I envisioned meeting with the client to hear their needs & access for what key Raja teaching could be offered as an intervention. I thought I would explain the intervention utilizing relatable examples. I would support the client to identify times in which he could practice the intervention & would ask him to keep track of practice & report back.

The IY branch of Raja Yoga was implemented with this client. The key teaching & the goal of this sutra as the intervention was to help bring peace & balance to the client’s mind utilizing a skill that would help calm the mental lake rather than respond reactively towards various types of people & maintain his peace while engaging in daily life.

Client was open to key teaching. He was inquisitive & wanted to fully understand how teaching applies to everyday life to better put into practice. He participated in discussions & was engaged in thinking of his own examples to better understand teachings. In subsequent sessions client was able to report back on specific instances where he applied key teaching. Client appeared open to feedback & was able to self-reflect on teaching. Client was inquisitive & wanted to understand how the four locks and keys look in daily life but was puzzled at times on how there could only be 4 types of people, but then client was able to see that it is possible for an interaction with a person can run the gambit of all four locks. Meaning that more than one key may be needed with the same person. Client reported that utilizing book 1 sutra 33 was helpful in both his work environment & personal one.

Client plans on practicing this regularly to help navigate situations in daily life. Helped support client in thinking of ways to self-reflect & be mindful of his own behaviors to alert himself to be aware of when he is confronted with various types of people & situations in daily life rather than be reactive. Client thought he could keep track of practicing this skill through daily reflection. A suggestion to client is to simply notice when he does well apply the key teaching & not to judge himself. Offered client the practice of self-evaluation by asking himself what he did well & what he could do differently next time. Offered to client that the practicing & self-evaluation is more important than the notion of being perfect. Offered client further sessions to learn pranayama to incorporate into learned key teaching. Client was interested in further sessions.

I was able to apply my intended plan once I met with the client. The goal was to introduce the key teaching to the client via examples presented to the client as well as examples from the client’s own experience to make the key teaching relevant to him. In addition, a goal was to have the client practice the key teaching in his daily life and report back in subsequent sessions which he did.

I did not plan for the client to have so many questions and scenarios that he thought up and could encounter in his daily interactions with individuals.
I learned that it is important to apply the key teaching myself more regularly and to kept track of my own assumptions on how things would go. I also learned in teaching book 1 sutra 33 that individuals are not one “lock” all of the time, but that different “locks” may show up in a single interaction with the same person. I learned this because of the scenarios and questions that the client posed to me. I also had an opportunity to learn what true empathy or compassion looks like towards the unhappy and it is not trying to “fix it” for the unhappy person, rather just be present without judgement. I learned this in discussing the various scenarios the client came up with.

Overall, I would approach this situation with the same plan in regard to accessing the client’s potential needs and then meeting the client where he was at when formulizing what key Raja Yoga intervention to offer. I would continue to support the client in brainstorming how to apply the key teaching in their daily life. I think it was helpful to brainstorm with the client because it made the key teaching relevant to him. What went well was connecting with the client. What I would like to grow on is taking a stance of guiding and offering because there were times I felt I was trying to convince or debate the client. Especially when the client had scenario or questions for every response I provided. I did well in utilizing my own self-regulation skills through breathing practices when I felt myself becoming frustrated with the various challenging scenarios the client came up with.