Question: What if someone is NOT like your case study person but is someone who wants to practice yoga when they are with you, but when they are away from you, they just can’t. How do you get over that hurdle?

Barbara: There’s no set answer for this because everybody’s different so if somebody says “I love this practice but I’m really struggling to implement it myself” then we think about what can we do to make it easier for this person to do it – maybe you reduce the practise time or prepare something very short so that they can find time to do it. It might be that you suggest meeting more often although there’s obviously a cost implication to that. Overall there’s no set answer.  

It’s helpful to talk about what time is available and when that time is available in their day because if that is left too open, a practice can easily get lost in somebody’s day. We can’t do the practise for someone but we can make it easier for them to set up this new habit.

Sabine:  I would broaden it out and say OK at that point the person wants to do this -they’re coming to the sessions so there is a sense of I want to do this and then there’s some kind of obstacle in the way of them practising at home on their own. So in that scenario you start looking at what’s in the way; it might be the time, it might be the length of the practise, there might be other things so in a way that obstacle then becomes part of the practise or part of work.

Question: Based on that you could potentially be moving into a kind of emotional space?

Sabine:  It can often be the case that there is some kind of emotional block about making that change. The emphasis is then to find a way around it; where we can work without the obstacle, to open out that space for actually making a change.