Congruence/Incongruence

3/3 Exploration of the Person Centred Approach in Accessible Yoga Spaces

Hello and merry xmas and happy new year, and let’s face it almost happy easter :/

Yes that’s really how overdue this message is.

Had I been writing to you in December as planned, I would have said thanks for being here, reading my sporadic messages to you over the year and especially to those of you who attended my yoga classes in 2024. Thank you, Thank you. I appreciate you.

Had I been writing to you in early January, I would have said, you are so gloriously enough as you are right now, you don’t need a diet or any new regime/plan/resolutions to be worthy of love and acceptance and reverence.

Now that I’m writing to you in mid/late January, and before I get onto my final installment of my mini series, I feel compelled to catch you up on why I’m so behind schedule and what’s in the pipeline for 2025.

December was filled with much joy (my birthday spent in a Shepherd’s hut in Perthshire, xmas gatherings and cozy nights in) and an essay assignment that made me seriously question my life choices.

Above: Image of my solitary library days during the holidays.

I have also began my counselling placement and am currently on a week long course residential. It never stops and the sacrifices I knew I’d have to make in order to undertake a post grad while working full time became ever so apparent over the holidays. While often feeling grumpy and resentful, I also feel really grateful to have the opportunity to sink deeper into this training with the most incredible people around me.

With that said, I’ve taken the tough decision to pause on Gentle Yoga for the time being. I will still however be teaching at Lila Yoga once a month for Queer Yoga Edinburgh if you fancy joining me there.

I also decided back in November to come off social media, which has been an interesting experience. I sometimes miss out on what’s happening in the world and in my friends’ lives but for the most part I find I have a less cluttered mind and find I’m more intentional in seeking out news and other ways to connect with those I love.

I’ve also taken down my website. Needless to say I haven’t found the guidebook that gives me a step by step on how to rebrand your business when your business was your name and then you change your name (or in my case reclaim your name) so it just feels like I just need to burn it all down and start again.

If you’re willing to stick around during this transition, I’d be really grateful. What will re-emerge and when I don’t know, but I feel more confident than ever in my own process, sharing it when I can, even when it feels messy and non descript.

This is probably a good segway into the final installment in this mini series I started back in October around the therapeutic core conditions of the person-centred approach and how this relates to accessible yoga spaces. The final condition I’m speaking about today is ‘congruence’.

Generally this is defined as when a person's actions, values, and beliefs are in alignment. In the person centred approach to counselling it means something more specific, described by Carl Rogers as “within the relationship he is freely and deeply himself, with his actual experience accurately represented by his awareness of himself”.

In the person centred approach and unlike other therapeutic modalities, we don’t learn techniques or interventions that we impart on our clients. Instead our training is about “the preparedness of the counsellor” so that we can fully embody the values of the therapeutic conditions, believing that these when exist in relationship with another that they provide fertile soil for healing and change.

As a coach I often relied on technique so this has brought up lots of feelings of ‘not-enoughness’ which are incredibly confronting and exposing and without doubt represents my biggest challenge. I don’t think I’m alone. Surely it’s a life’s work to strive to become more of yourself.

When considering how congruence shows up in yoga, I think firstly about the word ‘yoga’ and its translation from Sanskrit to mean ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’ whilst the practice of yoga itself being to unite body, mind and spirit.

This genuine and rigorous pursuit of congruence within one’s self is what I believe separates teachers who walk the walk and those who talk the talk.

Here are some examples of incongruence I’ve experienced/noticed as a yoga teacher (I’ll leave you guessing which ones belong to me):

1. Buying into a thinner, bendier, and more Instagrammable persona despite knowing that none of these things have a bearing on the quality of teaching.

2. Shying away from ‘being political’ despite feeling strongly about social justice and anti-oppressive practices.

3. Feeling shame for not having a rigorous daily yoga practice despite knowing there’s more to yoga that mat based asana.

4. Feeling pressure to be an anatomy expert despite knowing it’s more important to understand the students unique experience.

5. Marketing classes as ‘everyone welcome’ despite not having adequate training to meet everyone’s needs.

6. Putting on a soft ‘yoga voice’ because you’re embarrassed about your rather loud scottish accent.

7. Assuming the role of ‘nutritionist’ on yoga retreats despite having no education or credentials to do so.

8. Engaging in spiritual bypassing despite knowing that it’s a deflection or denial to challenging or complex emotions.

In yoga as is in life when these tensions grow between who we think we are and what it is we’re actually experiencing, we might at best just come off as phoney or inauthentic but at worst we might experience this as distress or disturbance.

Only when we can begin to expand our sense of self to incorporate all of our experiences can we find more peace and acceptance in who who we are, what we stand for and how we show up in the world

.Sending love and solidarity,

Gillian :)