Sonera a psychotherapist in mumbai, likes to refer to her practice as Psyche-Therapy.Integral Psyche-Therapy facilitates the integration of mind, body, soul and spirit.
Bhūta vidya is the balancing of our body, mind, senses and consciousness and it can be understood as the knowledge of the five elements that constitute us – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Bhūta or the pancha (five) maha (great) bhūtas (elements) in Sanskrit refers to the five primary states of matter – agni (fire), vāyu (air), jala (water), ākāśa (ether) and pṛthvī (earth). They are the prima materia of everything in the cosmos. In Vedic thought, the combination of the five elements gives rise to multiple and unique variations of infinite forms in the universe including our body-mind. We can develop vidya or knowledge of the bhūtas that constitute us energetically by balancing them through Āyurveda, Jyotiṣa and psyche-therapy or all three. When one balances the panchmahābhūtas, one directs oneself to a state of harmony and wholesomeness – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Mental Health today is a very expansive concept and there are a plethora of ways to work with the mind ranging from psychotherapy to mantra meditation to herbs to mindfulness ,pranayama and yoga to exercise to nutrition to hypnosis to entheogens to reiki to quantum healing to dance therapy to sound therapy etc etc etc…. the list goes on.
Its therefore no surprise if we get overwhelmed and fall into something called decision fatigue where we don’t know the best way forward for us. Also within the list above there are many nuances and sub types of all the methods listed….for instance in therapy we have somatic therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, psychoanalysis, Hakomi…under yoga we have power yoga, Ashtanga yoga, Iyengar yoga, the choices and types are ever growing . . .there are thousands of medicinal herbs and substances that are being marketed from açai berries to moringa powder as well as numerous schools and modalities of meditation from Vipasana to Kala chakra empowerments . . . . so what’s the best thing for us?
Often taking care of the Self requires a multifactorial, holistic approach which stimulates us on a mental, emotional, physical and spiritual levels. So one would need to work with oneself in a balanced and disciplined way that is intelligible to one’s own psychophysiological constitution. What I mean is the right type of exercise, the right type of meditation, right type of food, right amount of rest etc. for oneself . . Otherwise our efforts are counterproductive and we have limited results. As we say in Ayurveda that one can eat like a king, but digest like a beggar if one’s gut flora or digestive fire, known as Agni is not working properly. What is meant by this is that one can avail of the best groceries, trainers, yoga studios but if its the wrong type of practise for us in whatever field, we will not be able to contain it in our bodymind and will not receive the benefits from it. So if a very skinny person decided to do an intense cardiovascular work out then it would be extremely destructive for their nervous, endocrine and immune systems . . . similarly if someone who intellectualises and rationalises defensively undertook solely CBT they would not learn to recognise, feel and work with their emotions in the body. Hence it is extremely important to see what suits us . . . so this leads us to exploring our Prakriti or constitution. I now mandatorily conduct Prakriti analyses with my clients in order to complement their therapeutic process by giving them the sui generis nutritional, lifestyle and self care advise that is suited to them.
Therapeutic interventions for anxiety, depression, anger management, mood disorders and the whole gamut of DSM 5 disorders, in essence, should be multifaceted. Since the human being is a complex process, psychotherapy is enjoined upon a deep inquiry into our fight and flight responses, our childhood history, our subconscious minds, our lifestyles, our diets, our social relationships, our dreams, our movement patterns and our energy levels. In short, to work with anxiety and depression or any DSM 5 disorder effectively, the therapist should take a holistic approach that engages the subtle and gross aspects of the self. So where would one start in this jungle?
The body. The body is what holds the various strands of our life experience together. Working any psychological issue demands a deep delving into the mystery of the body. Since the body is the subconscious and storehouse of repressed memories, thoughts, emotions and experiences. The body is pregnant with implicit meaning. Life literally inscribes and imprints itself on our bodies through our posture, our gestures, the tone of our voice, the quality of our eye contact and the grip of our handshake.
The body is the temple of our consciousness, the ground of our experience and the barometer of our felt sense. We know ourselves and the world through our bodies. We experience pleasure and pain through our bodies. Since its inception, somatic psychotherapy has emphasised the import of the body mind connection. Today we are reaching even more subtler understandings of the interconnected nature of the psyche soma in the world of psychotherapy, where Cognitive Behaviour therapy and other talk therapies are acknowledged to not be as effective as body oriented modalities. Ground breaking discoveries in contemporary medical research regarding the enteric nervous system, the gut -brain connection, polyvagal theory and psychoneuroimmunology have underscored that we have more information coming from the body to the brain then from the brain to the body. Bearing this in mind, any psychotherapeutic modality that does not take the body into account is limited in its efficaciousness.
I teach all my clients how to settle, ground, feel and reconnect with their bodies and to bring psychological awareness to their muscles. Somatic awareness in combination with Dialectical Behaviour and Cognitive Behavioural techniques along with insights from Existential, Psychodynamic and Transpersonal psychology influence my therapeutic repertoire. Ultimately, I believe that psychotherapy in itself is an art form at the end of the day and is not a one trick pony phenomenon. Different individuals have different needs as one size does not fit all. Having said that, I have found, in keeping with current understandings of the body-mind, that for most clients, the first place to begin is by engaging the physiology of our bodies so as to facilitate the unleashing of the power of the unconscious. Working with the body is a powerful phenomenon that facilities the client in their own healing process. Ultimately, when clients can begin to feel their bodies more they get more insight into their histories and experiences and in turn improve their cognitive, behavioural and relational outcomes.
Sonera writes on diverse issues in her blog that ranges from cognitive behaviour therapy, Somatic experiencing, online counselling, psychotherapy, jyotisa, ayurvedic diet lifestyle, relationship astrology, depression, stress, anger management and various other topics.
By understanding your Āyurvedic constitution, you are learning how to manage the subtle bio-energies that comprise your body-mind and consciousness. As one develops an awareness of the elemental structure of oneself, one simultaneously becomes skilled at balancing one’s health, vitality and immunity. Moreover, ensuring the prevention of lifestyle-related illnesses, accelerated ageing and chronic stress. This workshop teaches participants how to identify their Āyurvedic constitution, learn about their innate tendencies towards imbalance and create holistic self-care regimes for optimally maintaining themselves in a stressful and polluted world. Ultimately leaving clients with a clear sense of their bioenergetic processes and how to harmonize them.
Conscious Eating
Our gut is our second brain and our digestive health affects our mental health as much as emotions affect our metabolic processes. In today’s pressured world, we are eating unconsciously, as eating has become a life activity fraught with one’s emotional states and stress levels. Obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease stem from unhealthy eating habits. By learning how to eat consciously from an Ayurvedic standpoint, participants will appreciate the relationship between their well-being and food. Participants will be guided to observe how their cravings for a particular taste such as sweet or salty reflect the state of their bio energies and being-in-the-world. Further, the nuanced relationship to hunger and the many different kinds of hunger one experiences will be highlighted. Emphasis will be placed on the practice of mindful eating skills and becoming aware of mindless eating to ensure better digestive, immune and mental health.
Mindfulness and Stress Management
Mindfulness is the antidote to the stress response. Mindfulness is an ancient meditative technique and can be understood as the art of being nonjudgmentally present. Practised regularly, mindfulness can alleviate stress levels, blood pressure, improve sleep, moods, memory, concentration and sharpen one’s cognitive processes. In this workshop, we will learn how to work with and deactivate the stress response through mindfulness. Using the breath and body as tools of self-awareness, we will learn what stress is, how to identify and work with the stress responses in our body-mind. Instruction and exercises will integrate contemporary understandings of the body, mind emotions and evolutionary theory. Participants will leave the workshop with mindfulness practices that can be done anywhere and anytime.
Balancing your Chakras
Chakras are vortices of bio-energies that affect us on multiple levels and their imbalances can be felt in our emotions, instincts, desires, illnesses, habits, behaviours, cognitions, social interactions and relationships. When our chakras are out of balance, we experience disturbing feelings and feel dissatisfied with dominant areas of our lives like work, health, finances and relationships. To ensure that one remains happy, present and relaxed, it is important to know how one cycles and expends energy in the world through one’s chakras. By integrating ancient Yogic and Tantric understandings of the chakras with contemporary psychotherapeutic insights, this workshop guides participants to balance their chakras. Participants will hone their self-awareness about what is distressing them subconsciously and consciously and be empowered to practically initiate changes in these areas.
Jyotiṣa or Vedic Astrology is the study of ‘Jyoti,’ which, means light in Sanskrit. Jyotiṣa, then, is a quest to understand how the light of the sun, moon and stars illuminate the self through the lifespan.
Light illuminates us and is simultaneously obscured from us at the time and place of our birth. The celestial light on our nativity has a profound bearing on us throughout our lifetime and informs the attitudes we will take in our life to wealth, desire, ethics and spirituality. The positions of the celestial luminaries in the sky at the moment of birth influence our body, mind, health, intelligence, relationships, family, finances, career choices and religious preferences. As such, “we are born at a given moment in a given place and like the vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born” (Jung). Jyotiṣa kindles our self- awareness to our subconscious patterns and the archetypes we are embodying and offers us remedial measures to balance the bhūtas within us to ensure we face the mysteries of our lives with harmony. As an esoteric science, Jyotiṣa has traditionally always concomitantly been practised with Āyurveda to restore the balance of the bhūtas that inform the well-being of the mind, body, senses and consciousness. Jyotiṣa readings
I draw on Jyotiṣa as a powerful tool to support the atma jñāna or self-knowledge of my clients. Jyotiṣa is an essential adjunct to the psyche-therapeutic process as it illuminates subliminal tendencies clients have but are not aware of. Moreover, in keeping with tradition, Jyotiṣa is an indisputable source of diagnosis to any Āyurvedic treatment. I do not use Jyotiṣa as predictive, hoary or electional astrology, instead, I elaborate and emphasize the archetypal foundations of my clients psyches’ making them aware of the unconscious habitual predispositions that inform them and how planetary movements affect them personally. In essence, a Jyotiṣa reading is an unraveling of the subconscious mind as the astrological chart is map of the psyche and the way it works.
Āyurveda is an ancient form of mind-body-spirit healing that originated from South Asia. ‘Āyur’ means life and ‘Veda’ is knowledge.
Āyurveda is the knowledge for the maintenance of life. Āyurveda integrates the individual and the cosmos in its definition of well-being and holds an alchemical understanding of the body-mind as it is constituted by the five elements or bhūtas. Āyurveda is for anyone who is interested in self-care and wishes to empower themselves with the alchemy of preventative and behavioural medicine. It is a form of medicine that counteracts the body from pre-maturely decaying, ageing, falling victim to diseases and propels one towards a state of svastha (i.e. to be established in oneself mentally, physical, emotionally and spiritually). Chikitsa
Āyurvedic therapy or chikitsa is intensely personalised and recognizes that no two people are alike as each individual has his or her unique bio-energetic signature. The body-mind is understood as a bioenergetic system with tangible and intangible layers whose health is premised on the vitality of the digestive fire or agni . The myriad layers of the self get out of balance and are disrupted by stress, bad lifestyle, industrialised diets, negative thought patterns, travel, harmful radiations and environmental pollution (in short, by almost everything that underlies the digital times we inhabit). The focus in Āyurveda is to holistically heal the body from the core to the periphery, from our digestive processes to every other part of our being. Thousands of years ago, Āyurvedic wisdom recognized that the health of our gut lining is vital for our mental and overall health. Mental health and digestive health go hand in hand and conversely, our psychological imbalances are mirrored in our digestion. By taking care of our microbiomes, we simultaneously nurture better digestive health and calmer nervous systems.
Psyche is an ancient Greek word translated as mind, soul, spirit, prana, chi or consciousness. Psyche is what animates us and breathes life into us and helps us make sense of the surrounding world. Conversely, the psyche is also what can trouble and disturb us. Psyche-therapy, then is a therapy that soothes the distress of the mind, body, senses and consciousness and equips an individual to skilfully navigate their internal landscape and external world of social relationships and professional responsibilities. By confronting one’s inner malaises, intruding memories, disturbing emotions and traumas, one moves beyond a state of being plagued to that of harmony. Working with the psyche is an alchemical process where one transforms the dark lead of one’s pain to the wisdom of illuminated awareness symbolised by the philosopher’s stone. The psyche-therapeutic process
My practise blends eastern wisdom traditions, such as Yoga, Āyurveda and Jyotiṣa with my repertoire of western psychotherapeutic approaches such as Hakomi, Somatic Experiencing, Integral Somatic Psychology, Existential Psychotherapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. I believe that without the balance of the bhūtas of the body-mind, an individual cannot reach their optimum well-being. Psyche- therapy integrates personalised nutrition, lifestyle, movement and contemplative practices in therapy for the individual to catalyse a holistic healing process.
Sonera jhaveri specilise in psychological counselling and Psychotherapy. Contact us for Integral coaching & therapy to enhance abilities towards your goal and quality of life.
Integral Psyche-Therapy, Integral Coaching & Psychotherapist in Mumbai, India 