Welcome to YogaX
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the first entry into what will hopefully become a long list of YogaX blogs, written by me, Chris Brems, Director of YogaX. All of us at YogaX are delighted that you are curious about who we are and what we do.
YogaX’s roots reach back to the early to the 2000s when I completed my yoga teacher training after having been a practitioner for more than 30 years. I began to realize increasingly strongly that my yoga practice and underlying understanding of yoga psychology was deeply influencing my work as a psychologist, researcher, faculty member, and administrator in higher education. Much of this influence was implicit and it became important to me to acknowledge my deep philosophical grounding in the ancient wisdom of yoga and Buddhism alongside my training in research and clinical psychology. I became a yoga teacher, training under an amazing teacher in Anchorage, Alaska (where I lived for 23 years), Lynne Minton. She and her colleagues’ teaching were exactly what I needed to begin to explore yoga wisdom more deeply and provided me the springboard for framing my own conceptualization of yoga as a therapeutic practice that can be profoundly valuable to the delivery of modern healthcare and to under-resourced and underserved communities. I developed a therapeutic yoga protocol and conducted a feasibility trial to test its impact and efficacy. This research-based protocol is now the basis for the 10-series called Yoga for Health and Resilience that forms the backbone of the free YogaX practices on our YouTube channel. We also teach this protocol in our teacher and therapeutic yoga trainings for healthcare professionals. Please try it for yourself (this version of the series is free to you if you read this blog – it is a newer version of the freebie on the YouTube channel).
When I left Alaska after 23 amazing years of work and play in the Last Frontier, I took a position in Oregon, where I met likeminded individuals who joined me in the desire to build a clinical and research initiative around therapeutic yoga delivered in a healthcare context. Our collective commitment to bringing yoga into academic healthcare setting was contagious and in just a few years we grew into a large and committed group of yoga practitioners, researchers, clinicians, and educators.
This emerging therapeutic yoga community became the foundation for what would become YogaX in February 2019, when Dr. Laura Roberts took a leap of faith on the vision to bring yoga into healthcare, legitimizing its role and needs in healthcare and academic settings. Ready to be teachers of teachers and to share our strong commitment to integrating science and spirit with our colleagues in the Stanford Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, YogaX took shape as a special initiative of the Chair, Dr. Laura Roberts. The faculty and staff of Stanford Psychiatry's YogaX now offer specialized therapeutic yoga knowledge and wisdom to support the Department’s dedication to wellbeing and to the capacity for sustainable contribution to each of its five missions of advancing science, clinical innovation and service, community engagement and commitment, educational excellence, and leadership and professionalism.
YogaX, now settled in at Stanford Psychiatry, is grounded in strong ties to the ancient wisdom of yoga as well as the modern insights of science. YogaX work is profoundly guided and affected by ancient yoga psychology and deeply informed by modern neuroscience, social science research, interpersonal neurobiology, and related sciences. The YogaX team, and our students and trainees, continuously refine the team’s and community’s knowledge by staying current with the burgeoning research literature that is documenting the many benefits of yoga for a range of physical, psychological, emotional, behavioral, and relational challenges. Yoga, as taught and practiced by YogaX, is so much more than posture practice. It is an integrated system of lifestyle and ethical practices, breathwork, physical forms and movement, inner practices (such as concentration, meditation, and mindfulness), and commitments to promote thriving for all. Each practice – as well as the synergistic whole that is yoga – has ample research support and our work reflects this evidence base in everything we teach, in how we investigate the effectiveness of our work, and in what we offer clinically or therapeutically.
The integrated holistic yoga (Brems, 2015) that defines the work of YogaX provides access to the many benefits of yoga by:
· inviting practitioners to begin to understand their own complexity as well as their deep grounding in relationships and communities;
· blending ancient wisdoms and modern science, integrating a multitude of practices and interventions;
· inviting everyone into the practice, creating accessibility, equity, and engagement; and
· inviting practitioners to make a whole-hearted and open-minded commitment to a practice that reflects intentional lifestyle choices.
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Integrated Holistic Yoga – A Definition and Commitment
• A practice for accessibility – creating affiliation, solidarity, and belonging; promoting social justice, engaged action, and personal belonging as well collective empowerment
• A practice of intentionality – promising to making the world a better place; living with intention; committing to basic ethical values and practices
• A practice of beneficence – creating access to the health and mental health benefits of yoga via several mechanisms of change; pledging first to do no harm
• A practice of wholeness – addressing the layered experiences of consciousness, biopsychosociocultural context, interconnection, and community in all their complexity
• A practice of integration – embracing the eight traditional practices (aka limbs) of yoga, four ways to glean a deeper understanding of our students or clients, interweaving of science and soul, and interdependence and coregulation
______________________________________________________________________________________________________As you may have gleaned from the YogaX webpage, YogaX is grounded first and foremost in community (or sangha for those who appreciate the original Sanskrit word). It is deeply rooted in meaningful learning from ancient and modern sources of wisdom, knowledge, and insight with a profound commitment to a broad and inclusive psychology that promotes healing, resilience, and thriving. Contributing to the thriving of communities is our guiding principle (or dharma) and our values reflect promise. We honor:
· integration and holism, seeking to understand every human being in context;
· growth, appreciating that all of us continually evolve, transcend, and improve;
· community, creating connection and inter-being in all we do;
· service, offering ourselves to work on behalf of a greater good;
· inclusivity and accessibility, knowing that yoga can benefit anyone anywhere and is to be shared wholeheartedly; and
· inspiration, seeking to remain inspired ourselves and kindling inspiration in others.
In the spirit of seeking to inspire, support, and implement scientifically informed yoga training and therapeutic yoga services that support the wellbeing of individuals and communities, we invite you to join YogaX. Attend a continuing education workshop or a self-care event; enroll in teacher training or come for a few classes; follow us online in our blogs or virtual training events. Your level of involvement can be large or small; long or short. No matter how you join us, we will honor our commitment to inspire, share, and celebrate the yoga journey together.
With great joy about what is ahead for all of us,
Chris
About the Author:
Christiane Brems, PhD, ABPP, E-RYT500, C-IAYT, is the Director of YogaX, a clinical psychologist, registered yoga teacher, certified yoga therapist, certified imagery guide, and Buteyko breathing method instructor. She has practiced yoga for over 40 years. You can read more about her on the YogaX Team page.