“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” - Seneca

This week, I am coming to the end of an 18-month relationship with my therapist For our final session, she asked me to find a picture symbolising what this process and our partnership have meant to me.

Here it is. When I look at this picture, I imagine it's me on the rock. I’m alive, I am natural, I am nature. I am wide open and free. Even though I am alone, I don’t feel alone. There’s definitely someone behind me - maybe they are taking or looking at this picture, sharing in my joy.

In handstand, I trust my ability, the strength of the body and mind, to stabilise me. I’m shit scared, on the edge of a cliff, but I’m more fearless than ever. Despite the risk, I chose this place and moment to turn the world upside down, and happy I did. Strangely, even if I fall off the cliff, I know everything will be okay—even if it results in my death.

If this is a snapshot of my first journey in therapy, how did I get here?

Thinking Makes It So

While doing my job, I’ve always been curious about therapy and wanted to give it a go. People’s unique psychologies pervade every consultation and how they present in my room. Knowing the theoretical benefits of therapy, I’ve recommended it to countless patients and received all sorts of feedback about it for years, but I’ve never tried it myself until now.

For context, I’ll mention that the type of therapy I had was psychodynamic, although there are many others. I don’t currently suffer from a condition like anxiety or depression, for which therapy is most commonly prescribed. Still, like most humans, I go through difficult times, crossroads and dilemmas which can be helpful to talk through with an objective party.

I’m glad I asked another mind to help me decipher a few things about my own, for this entity is the most powerful narrator of our reality - our thoughts, feelings, behaviours and habits. The fact that our reality is so reliant on the mind and, therefore, highly subjective (and subject to change) is an observation I’ve realised through years of yoga practice.

Finally, I’ve had the opportunity to satisfy my curiosity about what therapy entails. Now that I’m a little more informed, I’d like to share some things I learned.

Lessons from Therapy

1. Awareness. Where it begins. Through lots of talking, questions, and answers, stuff rises to the top and has a chance to surface from hidden depths. The unconscious can be made conscious, and the reveals can be surprising. Saying something out loud and bringing it to your and your therapist’s attention means, inevitably, you are compelled to investigate it.

2. Permission. With dedicated space to tell your story, there’s permission to take time to speak - a precious allowance. There’s permission to feel all the feelings—shame, fear, anger, regret—without judgment. Nothing will shock your therapist—much like a doctor; they’ve heard it all before.

3. Hard Work. Therapy isn’t always pleasant, easy or enjoyable. Retrospectively, the things I didn’t want to hear have been the most useful. Therapy is not a blame game where you bitch about all the things and people you don’t like and have the therapist agree with your point of view. Instead, your therapist will be mindful not to collude with your particular ways of thinking. You will be encouraged to look at the part you play in your own life with compassionate challenge.

4. No Guarantees. It’s amazing how many people tell me they had a few sessions and were disheartened that they didn’t feel any better. There’s no money-back guarantee in this transaction. If there’s progress, it’s non-linear and maybe quite random. Changes may or may not come, and probably not in the order, pace or ways you imagined when you started. You might feel worse or disappointed. It takes a leap of faith to persist without expectation.

5. Relationship. Ultimately, I feel this is why anyone ends up going to therapy: to investigate the relational dysfunctions that show up in life—with yourself and others. The relationship you build with your therapist mirrors these relationships. Some personal examples: I’ve wanted to please my therapist, lied outright, avoided my appointments, and skirted around specific topics. Telling.

6. Healing. Therapy is unsurprisingly…therapeutic. There’s a lot of crying (maybe just me), catharsis, and release. Staying with your humanity in all its raw honesty in the presence of another helps to process past griefs and sound out future worries. It feels like small healings are taking place.

7. Value. Therapy is expensive, whether you pay for it yourself or get it ‘free’ on the NHS. The expense reflects the value of the supportive skill of the person before you. Paying with time and money reflects your attitude about investment in yourself, your fellow human and your most important asset - your health. I grappled with the cost for ages before realising it’s worth it, and so am I.

8. Reprogramming. In therapy, you inevitably end up visiting the child you were and the significant milestones in your emotional development or stunting. Your past helps you understand better your conditioning and why you are the way you are. You might learn to forgive the past even if you cannot forget. You realise that you are an adult now with choices that perhaps you didn’t have as a child, including how to reparent yourself in the ways you would have liked.

9. Beginning, Middle and End. You learn that there are natural beginnings, middles, and endings, and how you navigate them is an integral part of therapy. As I come to the end of my formal support and assimilate what I've learnt, I realise I have to put it into practice for real. I'm always beginning again.

Yoga is My Therapy

I did wonder whether yoga and psychological therapy would be compatible. I had worried that therapy might make me more identified with my mind and fixated with thought than ever before, putting me at odds with what yoga has so often taught me - to quieten and subdue a mind that’s implicated as the root of all suffering.

Whilst I will always turn to yogic practices to settle the mind and soothe my nervous system, these days, I find myself taking the position that the mind is as much part of our entire experience to own as our body; it doesn’t always have to be vilified, shut out or even ‘fixed’. Therapy has taught me that I can love, accept, and work with it in the here and now. And I still understand that my mind is just one part of me, not the whole of me.

I’m struck by how many themes from therapy are paralleled in yoga. Just like therapy, yoga is an awareness practice, surprising you with its transformative effects. As in therapy, yoga teaches you to be compassionate with yourself while investing in your growth. It asks you to lean into the places of resistance with curiosity and live with intention rather than stay on autopilot (especially if the pilot is taking you in an unhelpful direction).

With so much overlap, it is no wonder yoga is sometimes called therapy. Both are ways to know yourself better. And from that place, anything is possible. I’m all for it.

Let’s practise.