Yoga+Therapy

A typical yoga therapy session at Heart Work begins with time to get to know you and understand your story, sometimes over the course of a full session. From there, the session is tailored to your needs, including a custom yoga flow designed to bring awareness and openness to specific areas of the body such as the chest, throat, back, or hips.

This is followed by a restorative or yin practice, where you’re invited to notice what’s arising in your body and mind. As different emotions or “parts” of you come forward, therapy is gently integrated into the process. Sessions close with rest and integration, including savasana with supportive props, calming music, and grounding sensory elements.

Yes. Stress, anxiety, and past experiences can be held in the body as patterns of tension, discomfort, or emotional reactivity. Yoga therapy combines movement, breathwork, and mindfulness to help bring awareness to these patterns and support their release over time.

At Heart Work, sessions are tailored to your needs, using a custom yoga flow to gently explore areas of the body where tension is held. As these areas are accessed, we slow down, reflect on what’s arising, and integrate therapeutic support to help process emotions and create space for change.

Not necessarily. Yoga therapy is guided by your comfort and pace, and you are always in control of how sessions unfold. For many people, this sense of choice and agency is deeply healing, especially if they’ve had past experiences where their body didn’t feel fully respected or safe.

At Heart Work, sessions are grounded in trauma-informed practices, gentle pacing, and attuned support. The goal is not to push intensity, but to help you feel more at ease in your body while engaging in meaningful therapeutic work.

It can be. In therapy, “shadow work” often refers to exploring parts of yourself that are less visible or harder to access, such as emotions, memories, or patterns that have been pushed aside over time. Approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Jungian-informed therapy work with these “exiled” or protective parts.

In yoga therapy, this exploration can also include noticing how these experiences show up in the body. You may have heard the question, “Where do you feel that in your body?” This is one way of gently bringing awareness to these deeper layers. At Heart Work, we approach this process with care, curiosity, and respect for your comfort level, supporting you to explore and integrate these parts at your own pace.

That’s completely okay. Yoga therapy sessions are always booked separately from regular counselling sessions, so nothing will ever be introduced without your explicit choice.

Consent is a central part of somatic and trauma-informed work. We never push, rush, or pressure you to engage in anything you’re not interested in. If you book a standard therapy session, our work will take place through conversation, no yoga required.

Yoga therapy is a personalized experience that integrates movement, breathwork, and psychotherapy. Sessions are tailored to your needs and may focus on specific areas of the body where you hold stress or tension, while also exploring the emotional patterns connected to those experiences.

In contrast, regular yoga classes are typically group-based and designed for general strength, flexibility, and relaxation. While they can support nervous system regulation, they don’t usually include individualized attention or therapeutic processing.

Yoga+therapy is the same price as a regular therapy session. You can claim it on your insurance, too.