4 Ways to Learn Self-Advocacy With BLISS Therapy™
Since opening my healing arts practice in 2017, I have been so blessed to work with some amazing people struggling with real life challenges - everything from chronic health problems, mental and emotional wellness, Spiritual discontent, life transitions and day-to-day stress.
One thing I have heard from clients again and again is how our integrative therapy, coaching and mentoring helps engage their self-advocacy super powers in ways that other interventions do not.
Think of some examples when we need self-advocacy:
Setting boundaries, honest expectations and communicating our needs with with children, parents and partners
Speaking up for yourself with co-workers, bosses, or clients
Communicating and sticking to a schedule for the most efficient day
Advocating for yourself in an institutional setting like a hospital or mental health services
Ensuring services are covered for things like insurance
Getting help with service providers whether it is the gym, personal trainer, yoga class or the like
Self-advocacy with the SELF when negative or limiting beliefs surface
Our ability to advocate for ourselves is impacted by many things including how we were raised, if we suffered an adverse childhood or adulthood experience, and the internal reality that exists within our mind in terms of how we see, think, and percieve the world around us.
One of the biggest challenges we might face when we can’t advocate for ourselves is being unable to set healthy boundaries. I wrote a post last month on boundaries and self-care if you want to check it out. I believe that boundares are a vital part of our self-care and mental health plan.
Today, I want to talk about five ways that my work as a yoga therapist can help someone develop self-advocacy skills.
Tender Actionable Awareness
Sometimes it feels like the work I do is so easy. Help someone feel their feet on the ground? Their heartbeat? Their breath? Aren’t these things we interact with everyday? And yet, I find time and time again people forget to breath, even when they are “supposed” to be relaxed. I also find that we are conditioned as a society to look at the “big stuff” especially when it comes to pain, but sometimes it is the small sensation that requires our attention and has much to say. The point of pain is often not where the resolution needs to take place.
Body-based therapy, while it does involve some level of therapuetic dialogue, the intention is to get people into their body as deeply as possible and it is less about talking unless it is for purposes of exploring sensations. The body truly loves to talk and we can give it a voice. I help create a safe, quiet space, where someone can really drop into their body and feel connected to the moment-to-moment sensations. Whether it is a tingle in the ear, a stretch in the calf, a rumble in the belly, we can pay attention to all sensations and then decide which ones is the loudest and is asking for our attention.
What is challenging about awareness of the body is that many people have avoided their body for years due to an adverse experiences in childhood or adulthood. We actually go out of our way to avoid uncomfortable sensations often using substances, food, television or other distractions. The body keeps the score over the years of hurt, trauma, neglect, unexpressed emotions and these manifest as discomfort or dis-ease in the body.
When we drop into the body, and give our body a voice, we have to be ready to listen, and feel safe sitting with that discomfort. I invite people to go beneath the surface sensations and tell me more about it. It could have a temperature, a color, a shape, a movement or perhaps it has a sound or thought associated with it. Everything is welcome.
Awareness is truly a super-power because once we are able to notice our body, feel safe noticing our body, our body becomes a tool for transformation instead of a suit to carry us through life. With the tool of awareness, I invite in the spirit of tenderness for whatever may arise, and I want someones awareness to inspire an action toward the change or transformation they desire.
How This Helps: I have found that when people can feel safe in their body and truly aware of their body they are able to more easily communicate their needs to others especially with respect to their body whether it is an intimate partner or a doctor.
interoceptive awarenesS & literacy
Do you actually know what is happening in your body? Can you name the sensation? Can you feel your body? I like to add mindfulness into therapy sessions to support what is called “Direct Experience”. In a therapuetic experience it is common for the mind to wander to the past or the future, and depending on the emotion, thought, and memory that is triggered, the body can also wander back to the past.
I use a method I call “Notice. Name. Claim”. Noticing speaks to our ability to become aware of what is happening in and around our body. When we can name something it does two things. First, it gives us clarity and self-literacy about what emotions we might be feeling, and to connect how our body responds to our thoughts and memories. Second, it can give the sensation more or less power than it had before depending on what the clients wants (we’ll talk more about this in item #3 below).
For example, I was working with a client recently and I used the word DIET (a word I personally hate), and she commented later that word is very triggering for her. We talked about how naming the word and its effect on her can overtime lessen its power. An example on the flip of this is women I work with on self-confidence and empowerment who are running their own businesses. I place them in a particular posture as they repeat mantras and self-affirmations again and again and name the feelings they want to embody while in a shape that helps them feel that way. It is so simple yet fascinating and works at the neuroscience level to create change. I’ll talk about “claim” in the item three below.
How This Helps: I have found that when people can name what they are feeling in their body they gain self literacy, somatic literacy and emotional literacy. They also notice the impact others have on them which I could classify as energetic literacy. They can more easily identify emotions, thoughts, memories, and self-regulate especially if those elements are triggering. They can also identify and name pain, discomfort, injury or other sensation that may be necessary when working with a health care practitioner. This is all particularly helpful for self advocating in our most important relationships.
Acceptance vs Resistance
In my “Notice. Name. Claim.” method I invite people to notice what they are feeling, name it, and then claim it which is really an exploration in the dance between acceptance or resistance. When something is uncomfortable it is normal to move away from that discomfort, but sometimes if we stay with the discomfort amazing insight and transformation occurs. So we can notice, name and claim a sensation, thoughts, emotion and in that process notice if we are willing to accept it or if we contiue to move away from it.
What aspect of “acceptance” that I had to understand and what I now express to my clients is that acceptance does not mean we approve of what may have happened, what has been said or done. Through acceptance we choose not to let that “thing” hvae power over us anymore. We befriend our suffering and in so doing we minimize our suffering.
As mentioned above, naming something, giving it a word, takes away its power, or gives it more power depending on the desired outcome. Claiming something also impacts the power level. When we say “I am sad, this is where I feel it in my body” and give it time to be there, it creates space for healing and developing a deeper level of communication with the self and the body. When we can’t claim something then we can notice the resistance which is also very valuable in the healing process.
When resistance shows up this is the time to breath, feel and notice what is happening. One question I ask probably more than my clients like to here is “what’s happening now” and it is an invitation to come back to direct experience or NOW. So we may start with claiming our resistance and that is an excellent place to start.
How This Helps: I have found that working with clients on acceptance versus resistance helps to quickly uncover what is really standing in the way of healing and transformation. What we resist persists. Clients learn self-advocacy because whether they are ready to accept something or they want to continue to resist it both experiences are welcome and valuable and there is never any rush.
Choice
The final way that yoga therapy helps clients begin to flex their self-advocacy super powers is through the use of informed choice. Whether it is me placing my hands on their body or noticing the way they respond to their body int he various shapes, postures, breathing and activities we do. Clients are always in choice about how they move their body, how they touched, and what we do. For example, when someone feels discomfort I check in and ask “Can we stay here or should we listen to the body.” I also invite people to take three breaths before they come out of the posture and notice if their mind or their body is guiding the choice.
For the first few sessions people may move away from a discomfort - what we refer to as “edge” - but oftentimes it is the mind that is pushing them away. There is a disconnect and/or lack of trust in and with the body. This is very normal. But as clients move, breath, and connect with themselves on a very deep level again and again, the trust comes and it is amazing when it does. Clients realize just how amazing their bodies are.
For many clients they are coming into yoga therapy feeling a lack of choice in their life, as if they are constantly doing what is expected of them. To be in a setting where they are in complete choice about what to do is very empowering and they learn to slowly notice choice, control, and how to communicate that to others.
How This Helps: By offering clients choice they develop self-advocacy skills to speak up for their body, and give their body a voice (especially over the mind) while also realizing how amazing their body is which inspires compassion, gratitude and self-love - three things that are so important to the healing process. This also inspires people to speak up for their desires and choices in general and LEARN this skill if it has been absent before.
CONCLUSIONS
I hope this article has given you some ideas on how yoga therapy can help you activate your self-advocacy skills. Whether it is communicating with your partner and discussing intimacy or dinner plans, navigating the office or getting the help you need from physicals and services providers, self-advocacy is a very important tool to have in your mental health toolbox.
