Enriching Group Counseling Through Integrating Yoga Concepts and Practices

Abstract

Integrating practices from yoga with group counseling offers many creative paths of therapeutic learning. While yoga emphasizes the increased sense of connection with the self, group counseling emphasizes the increased sense of authenticity in relationship with oneself and with others. Common aims of both yoga and counseling are liberation from suffering through greater awareness and increased integration. Greater clarity of living and deeper sense of relation can lead to more positive behaviors and reduced negative consequences. Examples are offered regarding the use of yoga principles in various types of groups, including a Native American healing group for adults with significant physical afflictions and for Indian psychology graduate students in training.Yoga has been gaining more research attention in recent years. Yoga theories developed and researched over thousands of years provide beneficial insights with respect to current group-work practice. Yoga itself is very scientifically designed as it is based on structured practice and careful observations of the results. Each practitioner of yoga is invited to test out these practices, and then examine the results to see whether they are

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