MHA's First Mega Yoga Event: A Mega Success!

June 21, 2012--It was the summer solstice. It was hot, it was light and it was a celebration. More than 500 people streamed onto Court Street in White Plains on Wednesday night, June 20^th for Get On Your Mat For Mental Health, The Mental Health Association of Westchester’s very first mega yoga event ever to take place in the county.  As participants rolled their mats out, the music of the band, House of Waters drifted through the air.  Soon, MHA CEO, Dr. Amy Kohn welcomed the crowd and introduced White Plains Mayor Thomas Roach who expressed his amazement at the transformation of the busy city street into an island of calm.

Yoga Haven founder, Betsy Kase, led the opening meditation, inviting everyone to connect to their breath and then leading all gathered in a giant “OM”, ushering in summer together.  Then celebrity yoga teacher, Gwen Lawrence, enthusiastically took the stage, promising she’d “go easy” on everyone, given the record-breaking heat.  Moments later, the only thing visible was a forest of arms moving through the air to Gwen’s instructions. Later Gwen would say, “I wish you could see the view from up here! Just amazing.”

MHA’s Dr. Kohn, who had a front row mat and participated in the class, said: “I am deeply delighted by the outpouring of support for this event. There seems to be a smile on every face.”  Lauri Nemetz Yoga Teachers Association co-President commented: “It was amazing to see the diverse crowd, packed in tightly mat to mat, happy to practice and be together.   Even in the middle of White Plains, all of us gathered in both sweat and stillness, in a blissful evening for mental health!" After the class, there was one last treat in store. 14-year-old Mike Sabath, of Katonah, NY, asked everyone to stand and clap as he sang the song he wrote especially for MHA, entitled, Talk About It.  Sabath wrote the song to raise awareness of the stigma associated with mental illness. Available on iTunes,  Mike is donating all the funds raised to MHA.

MHA event manager, Constance Moustakas, was elated, “When we began to plan this event, we had no idea what the response would be, only that there is definite synergy between yoga and other holistic approaches to health and mental wellness.” With more than 40 Westchester yoga studios participating and the success of the event, this summer solstice celebration is no doubt the first of many to come.

MHA is a community-based mental health agency that has been helping Westchester County residents for 66 years through direct services, professional and community education and advocacy. MHA supports 20,000 individuals annually through a comprehensive array of mental health services for all ages at licensed mental health clinics, and to best meet each individual’s need, at home or at a community location. MHA strives to help each individual to achieve their personal goals and to lead an independent, healthy and successful life in the community. For information on critical mental health issues and MHA services, visit www.mhawestchester.org or MHA on Facebook and Twitter.

Learning To Be Present: Yoga's Great Gift

by Laurice D. Nemetz     

Lauri worked with MHA post 9/11 on the Project Liberty grant  as a creative arts therapist during her FEMA days.  As current co-President of the YTA (Yoga Teachers Association), Lauri helped with the initial planning of this special event.

The practice of yoga is a great gift as it teaches us how to be present.  I tell my private clients that showing up and arriving on the mat is probably the most important part of the asana practice.  What comes out after that, whether messy or glorious, really is not as important as being able to arrive.

The yoga asanas or poses can be fun to work at, but ultimately, exploring where one is in the present moment is the most fascinating part of a yoga practice.  Having worked for over twenty years in the mental health field, I find the same is true for those clients as well.  While, as a therapist,  I am looking to increase the range of possibilities for the client, where a person is in the present moment is interesting and relevant.  Just as trees bend and grow differently according to environment and myriad other reasons, where we are at the moment is shaped in part, by the way we have reacted to the world.  In yoga we talk about samskaras, our patterned reactions.  The wonderful thing is that although samsakras can be strong, they still have the possibility of being changed, particularly when we focus ourselves to the present.

Working in the anatomy world, I’ve been fortunate to be with a number of great minded thinkers who choose to see what ultimately has been going right in a body/mind/spirit rather than pointing first to what has not.  Even in dissection lab, we note that on the day a person dies, despite the reality of death, there were still so many wondrous things going well.   That is not to say we sugarcoat the experience of pain or illness, both mental and physical, but we look towards the strengths first.  We look to see where the individual is in this moment.

Yoga is a place where we can learn to fall while also learning to get back up again, no matter what our associations may be in the past with perceived imperfections.  While as a society we want to protect our children and loved ones against disappointments, I’ve learned as both a therapist and parent, that learning how to cope with challenges and breaking our patterns of reactivity is ultimately more useful than trying to disappear all difficult experiences.  This helps us to ride those waves of ups and downs with more ease and grace. 

Finally, yoga, especially on this upcoming event day, is about community.  Having a sense of universality and connection to more than our isolated selves can help us all function in a healthy way.  As Amy Weintraub noted in her recent post, “Research has shown that we are lowering the stress hormone cortisol when we practice yoga, and we are raising GABA levels, a neurotransmitter that protects us from anxiety and depression.  We are also raising oxytocin levels, the ”bonding” hormone that allows us to feel more connected to others.”  Beyond the reality in the science of it, this just makes great basic sense.  When we lower stress, we can connect.  That really is what yoga is all about.  The Sankrit word yuj that yoga comes from literally means to yoke or join together.  When we are together, we become more supportive of each other, and collectively stronger.

So show up on your mat for mental health.  It is amazing what just being present can do.  There is a well-known Sanskrit poem, attributed to the Classical poet Kalidasa, called “Salutation to the Dawn.”  In essence, it says that we should look well to this day, because this is essentially life.  Yesterday is a dream and tomorrow is only a vision.  This moment is the perfect moment.  As one of my own dear yoga teachers likes to say, “this is the magic moment”.  Be present to the magic moment on your mat and in your world.

Laurice D. Nemetz, MA, BC-DMT, ERYT, LCAT is a certified and registered experienced-level yoga teacher, a member of the Academy of Dance/Movement Therapists and a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist. She is co-president of the YTA (Yoga Teachers’ Association),  an adjunct professor at Pace University and guest at the College of New Rochelle. Lauri teaches yoga at Club Fit in Briarcliff.  She has been influenced by many teachers and traditions and is particularly grateful to Karin Stephan, David Hollander, David Lipschutz (Enoch Dasa) and Kim Schwartz. In addition to teaching yoga and anatomy and working as a dance/movement therapist, Lauri leads yoga and kayaking trips on the Hudson River, in Canada and Costa Rica.  She is the author of "A Place of Balance: Yoga Practice for the Kayaker" (Sea Kayaker Magazine, Oct. 2010) and has also published writings on movement therapy and yoga in several books and journals.

Lauri has degrees from Wellesley College and a Master’s degree in Dance/Movement Therapy from Goucher College. She is currently an associate teacher Tom Myers’ Anatomy Trains® , anatomy director of two yoga teacher training programs in NY:  Ananda Ashram and Sage Yoga.  She lives with her husband and her two boys in Ossining New York and enjoys art, music, and sea-kayaking and of course, movement!

Website information at:  www.wellnessbridge.com and www.ytayoga.com . 

Amy Weintraub on Yoga For Depression

MHA is  honored to share Amy Weintraub's response to our request asking if she would contribute to the Get On Your Mat For Mental Health blog. We are so honored to include her offering. If you are new to Amy Weintraub, scroll down to read more about her and her pioneering work and book, "Yoga For Depression".

The practice of yoga can help us stay connected with ourselves emotionally.  If we’re paying attention to our breathing and to sensation in the body as we practice, yoga becomes a portal into what we are truly feeling.  The practice allows us to witness what is arising in the body-mind, with less reactivity, so we are able to respond to life’s challenges without reacting to them.  

Yoga helps support overall emotional health.  First, there’s the cultivation of what the yogi’s call “witness consciousness.”  This sense of witnessing helps us realize that yes, we have emotions, but we are so much more than the current mood, so much more than the self-limiting beliefs we may have about ourselves or the world.  Yoga, including yogic breathing called pranayama, begins to clear the constrictions we may have around the every day challenges we face.  We feel more expansive and spacious within, and more connected to others without.  It’s not surprising that we have this subjective experience of reconnecting with ourselves and with others, because that’s exactly what’s happening bio-chemically.  Research has shown that we are lowering the stress hormone cortisol when we practice yoga, and we are raising GABA levels, a neurotransmitter that protects us from anxiety and depression.  We are also raising oxytocin levels, the ”bonding” hormone that allows us to feel more connected to others.  

Although there are specific poses that a beginner can do that can help us keep emotionally balanced and connected it’s hard to isolate poses out of the context of a breathing and centering practice.  I would recommend a class or an instructional DVD—some type of formal instruction for a beginner. But in general, a simple forward bend is calming.  Back-bending poses are more energizing.  A simple supported backbend, combined with deep yogic diaphragmatic breathing through the nostrils, extending the exhalation longer than the inhalation can both lift the mood and calm the central nervous system. 

In my own life, to stay balanced, wherever I am (and I travel quite a bit!) I practice every morning, usually at sunrise, and wherever I am, I try to be outside as the sun rises to practice some pranayama breathing and some standing, strengthening poses. Throughout the day, I may stop for a moment to shift the energy with a smile breath.  I begin by closing my eyes and breathing deeply into the bottom of the lungs.  Next, I drop my chin to my chest as I exhale. Then I lift the corners of my mouth, lift my head, inhale and open my eyes.   It’s a five-second lightening-up mood elevator. Smile breath creates a real paradigm shift in my mood.  Before I get out of bed, I start my morning with yoga nidra, which means Yogic sleep.  Yoga Nidra is a guided meditation that reminds me of who I truly am, beneath the current mood or the morning stiffness in my body.

Amy Weintraub, MFA, E-RYT 500, founding director of the LifeForce Yoga Healing Institute, the author of Yoga for Depression (Broadway Books, 2004) and Yoga Skills for Therapists: Effective Practices for Mood Management (W.W. Norton, 2012), has been a pioneer in the field of yoga and mental health for over twenty years.  She offers the LifeForce Yoga Practitioner Training for Depression and Anxiety to health and yoga professionals and offers workshops for every day practitioners. The LifeForce Yoga protocol is being used in residential treatment centers, hospitals and by health care providers around the world and is featured on the LifeForce Yoga® CD Series and the first DVD home Yoga practice series for mood management, the award-winning LifeForce Yoga® to Beat the Blues, Level 1 & Level 2. She is an invited speaker at conferences internationally and is involved in ongoing research on the effects of yoga on mood. She edits a bi-monthly newsletter that includes current research, news and media reviews on Yoga and mental health.

Amy leads workshops and professional trainings at academic and psychology conferences internationally at such venues as the Boston University Graduate School of Psychology, the University of Arizona Medical School, the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium, the Integrative Mental Health Conference, the Cape Cod Institute, Kripalu Center, Omega Institute, Sivananda Ashram, Yogaville, Esalen, Patanjali University in Haridwar, India and Yoga studios throughout the United States.

Amy’s recovery from depression began more than thirty years ago on her meditation cushion, but it wasn’t until she began a daily Hatha Yoga practice in 1988 after her first visit to Kripalu Center that her mood stabilized. In addition to her Hatha Yoga studies in the US and India, Amy has been trained in Advaita Vedanta Nondualism, iRest Yoga Nidra, psychology and Internal Family Systems Therapy. Richard Miller is her mentor.

Amy has won numerous literary prizes for her short fiction, including national prizes from Writer’s Digest Magazine, Explorations and Wind. Her novel-in-progress, and her film documentaries have received awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, San Francisco State University, and many other national competitions. She also edits books on spiritual psychology, including the much-praised Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope (Bantam). She holds the Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, Bennington College and currently lives in Tucson.