The Wellness Within Approaches Series: What is Integrative Yoga Therapy?

One of our team members, Kim Deshaies, is an Integrative Yoga Therapist and the author of this week's piece!

Integrative Yoga Therapy: A Whole-Person Approach to Healing

You’ve likely heard that yoga is good for stress. Maybe you’ve gone to a class, downloaded a meditation app, or been told by a well-meaning friend to “just breathe.” Maybe it did help some, but it probably wasn’t enough to address your full experience or offer the lasting relief you were looking for. Integrative Yoga Therapy (IYT) offers a way to bridge that gap. 

What Actually Is IYT?

Integrative Yoga Therapy is an evidence-based approach to mind-body healing that combines the tools of yoga and meditation with a depth-oriented, somatically based model of psychological integration. Grounded in Yoga Therapy and informed by fields including somatic psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and contemplative science, IYT supports whole-person wellbeing across five dimensions: physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spiritual.

That’s a mouthful. So, said another way: IYT takes your whole being seriously. Not just your thoughts and memories, but your body, your breath, your emotions, your energy, your relationship with the world around you, and your spirit, too, should that word resonate with you. It’s not a yoga class. There are no sequences to follow (unless you’d really like one!), no poses to “get right”, no prior yoga experience required. Sessions often look more like therapy than something you’d find on a yoga studio schedule.

IYT Follows You - Not a Protocol

One of the things that makes IYT distinct from a one-on-one yoga class is that it doesn’t hand you a generic “yoga practice for anxiety” and send you on your way. The work is collaborative and responsive to your unique mind-body processes, honoring whatever is most present for you as you arrive to each session.

Sessions often begin with conversation. Maybe something has been weighing on you, or a pattern keeps showing up that you can’t quite think your way out of. As that unfolds, your body is treated as a source of important information. The tightness in your shoulders, your posture, the knot in your stomach — each of these experiences form a story that perhaps you haven’t been able to articulate yet.

From there, the session follows what emerges. Therapeutic tools are introduced when they arise naturally from what’s present, not assigned to you in advance. Sometimes the work stays largely conversational. Sometimes the body takes the lead. Either way, what happens in the room is genuinely tailored to you, your history, your pace, and what feels meaningful to you.

Why Bring the Body In At All?

Because a lot of what keeps us stuck doesn’t live in our thoughts, but in the nervous system. Stuckness can show up in our patterns of bracing, breathing, numbing, or feeling unsettled that have been there so long they just start to feel like part of us. Insight is certainly valuable, but for many people, insight alone isn’t enough. You can understand something completely and still feel it in your tight shoulders, or racing heart every morning.

IYT works at this deeper level. Mindful movement, somatic tracking and embodied awareness support the brain’s capacity for lasting change. Breathwork, meditation and other gentle practices regulate the nervous system and build resilience. Slow, gentle engagement with body sensation can help process experiences that were too much to metabolize in the moment they happened — without having to relive them.

The goal isn’t relaxation, though that can be a welcome side effect. The goal is integration: something shifting not just in your thinking, but in your body, your breath, and in a more full and authentic sense of who you are.

What a Session Might Include

Every session is different, because every person is different. Depending on what’s present and what’s needed, we might work with:

∙ Grounding and nervous system regulation 

∙ Breathwork tailored to your system

∙ Therapeutic movement or restorative postures

∙ Mindfulness, meditation, or deep relaxation practices

∙ Sensation tracking and emotional processing 

∙ Subtle body practices utilizing visualization, sound, or boundary work

∙ Conversation that supports insight, meaning-making, and your own inner knowing

∙ Home practices to carry the work with you between sessions

IYT Tends to Resonate With People Who:

∙ Are highly self-aware but still feel stuck in the same patterns

∙ Are navigating trauma, anxiety, burnout, or rumination

∙ Are in the midst of significant life changes, grief processes, or inner transformation

∙ Live with chronic conditions, pain, limited mobility, or fatigue

∙ Feel disconnected from their body, their boundaries, or their sense of self

∙ Want a space where spiritual or energetic experience is welcome

∙ Already have a yoga or meditation practice that they would like to integrate into deeper therapeutic work

No yoga experience needed. No particular beliefs required. Just a willingness to show up and explore what’s present and true for you.

Integrative Yoga Therapy doesn’t ask you to leave any part of yourself at the door. It’s an invitation for all of you — mind, body, emotion, energy, spirit — to be part of your healing.

Try It Out at Home: Bhramari Pranayama (Bee Breath)

Here’s a simple breath practice you can try right now.

Bhramari Pranayama is one of yoga’s many tools for calming the nervous system and settling the mind. As a bonus, humming also supports the immune system by stimulating the release of nitric oxide in the sinuses, a molecule with natural antimicrobial and antiviral properties.

Find a comfortable position, either seated or lying down, wherever feels best to you. Begin by simply noticing the natural rhythm of your breath. No forcing, just a gentle invitation for the breath to slow and settle. 

After a few easy breaths, take a natural inhale through your nose, and on your exhale, hum. Long, smooth, unhurried.  Continue like this: slow inhale, soft humming exhale.

For a deeper experience, gently cover your ears and notice where you feel the vibration in your body. And if you’re feeling playful — experiment with pitch. When you hum a higher note, where does the vibration live? What about a lower one? What shifts, if anything, in your mind or body?

There’s no right answer. Just explore and notice your experience. Continue for 2-3 minutes or as long as you would like!

Kim is currently offering 6 free sessions of Integrative Yoga Therapy for you to try it out! If you're a current client and interested in this opportunity, reach out to your therapist about it. For interested NEW clients, click on request an appointment, and select "Kim Deshaies" as "Preferred Practitioner." Check out Kim's profile here if you're interested in learning more about her approach!

This blog post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional mental health treatment, diagnosis, or consultation. Reading this content does not establish a therapist-client relationship. If you are experiencing distress or need support, please reach out to our practice or another licensed mental health professional.

Cover photo by Deniz Altindas on Unsplash