Many people begin yoga for one reason and then they continue because of the mental health benefits they find through that. Learn more about yoga and meditation and how they are solutions for mental health. President of the nonprofit Geneva Yoga, Beth Williams talks about her company and why she would like to reach people who are interested in accessing yoga and meditation as a way to grow their inner stamina, mental ability, and mood regulation.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Mental Health Solutions Through Yoga And Meditation With Beth Williams
My guest is Beth Williams, President of the nonprofit Geneva Yoga. Beth, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
I’m curious. Tell me about Geneva Yoga.
Geneva Yoga is a nonprofit that I started. I’m hoping to reach teens and kids and anybody else who’s interested in accessing yoga and meditation as a way or a means to grow their inner stamina, their mental ability and their mood regulation, anybody who is seeking the kinds of mental health benefits that can be achieved through yoga and meditation.
I know it’s highly recommended for stress management and relaxation.
Among all of my friends who do yoga, many of them come for injury prevention and for flexibility. Many adults specifically begin a yoga practice because they are interested in long-term physical health benefits. From my experience with them, the feedback that I get is that many of them stay doing yoga because they have found that they are able to process emotions and stress through their yoga practice. Many people begin yoga for one reason and they’ll continue because of the mental health benefits they find through it.
I know that it can certainly benefit the parents of children with special needs. Parents have a stressful job, but especially if their child has special needs, the challenges are greater and more numerous. What are the benefits for people with disabilities with special needs?
The benefits for people with special needs mirror those of the normative population. Yoga is a form of meditation. For anyone who participates in it, they will find increased muscle tone, increased ability for flexibility, as well as an ability to regulate their breathing and achieve a better level of deep breathing, and the relaxation that comes from that. For some special needs populations, we know that hypotonia is an issue and so through yoga practice, people who have hypotonia can find better muscular strength. It also helps with spatial awareness and body awareness. Many people I know, whether they have a developmental disability or physical disability or not, will feel that they are not necessarily connected to their body, that their head is one entity and their body is another.
Our belief systems influence how we experience life through our body. The way our body feels influences how our brains are working. Share on XI read a statistic that people consume three times as much information as they did in the ‘60s. Whether or not that we are so smart and we’re all reading New York Times articles or whether we’re watching cat memes, you can see how we use our brains much more than we did in the ‘60s. More of our work is done in our head versus manual labor from decades ago. There’s this trend throughout the world of people using their heads more than their bodies. There’s more energy that is consumed in your head versus that which is consumed through the rest of your body. Someone who engages in yoga practice gains an increased ability to experience their life through more of their body.
For example, before I begin my yoga practice I used to feel not in tune with my body at all. I would have panic attacks and think to myself, “I don’t know how this happened. What is going on?” I had no idea about the body and mind feedback loop that there were thoughts that I was thinking and ideas that I believed in that were affecting my body and I wasn’t aware of it. Yoga has this amazing ability to even out the energy use throughout your body. It’s not that 95% of your energy is consumed by your brain. You’re also able to experience things in your lungs and in your stomach. You’re able to bring your awareness all the way to your toes and your fingertips. When people have those kinds of experiences, they find a greater sense of wellness and peace. It’s the same as needing a balance between work, play and rest. We also need to balance out the energy in our bodies between our heads and the rest of our body. If we are spending all of our time-consuming media and thinking and playing video games and all of that stuff, it’s not the worst thing you could do, but it’s not necessarily a balanced experience through your whole body.
For people with special needs, we find that as they move into a posture and breathe through it, they bring their attention to the sensations in their body through to the stretches. Sometimes when you do an intense stretch, you might find that there is a little bit of pain even. As they bring attention to various parts of their body, as they’re in a yoga pose and transitioning from one post to another, that increases spatial awareness. We know whatever we focus on grows, whatever we focus on heals, whatever we focus on comes to pass. I will talk to my meditation students and say, “If you are spending all of your time telling yourself, ‘I’m such a loser. I’m so ugly,’ you’re bringing those experiences about in your body and in your life.”
If you are spending all of your time saying, “The world is supporting me. All of these people are showing up for me in these wonderful ways,” you tend to see that happen as well. We can see that there are the same benefits that come from yoga. When you sit on the couch all day or you’re in a desk at school all day, that’s great. Also, you need to balance it through movements. When you spend time tuning into and becoming aware of different parts of your body and breathing into those areas in your body, you find a greater sense of calm and peace through this balanced life. Also, as you focus on those areas, they grow, strengthen and heal.
I also hear that vital connection between mind and body. Is that a correct description?
Most people would agree with this idea. It is reported in science that there is a mind-body feedback loop. The things that go on in our thoughts, our belief systems influence how we experience life through our bodies. The way our body feels influences how our brains are working. If we are having a horrible depressed day or we are filled with anxiety, we might also physically feel that we are exhausted. If we have the flu and our body is worn out and exhausted, we might also find that our thoughts and our brain feels a little bit exhausted too.
There is a connection between our minds and our body. When we tune into a yoga practice, when we bring our awareness to different parts of our body, it’s a way that we are saying, “I’m paying attention to you because I do think you’re important.” I’ll talk to my kids when we’re doing stretches in our hips. I’ll say, “Don’t we want these to work when we’re still 65 years old? We don’t want to need a hip replacement when we’re 50 years old.” We want to care for our bodies by bringing attention to them, by focusing on and becoming aware of the sensations and the benefits that we gain from this joint or this part of our body.
That engenders self-body awareness, but also I would say self-love, an appreciation for the ways in which our bodies are serving us day and night. Whether we think it’s a beautiful body or not, our bodies continue to serve us. Our lungs keep breathing every day, our heart keeps beating every day. Our brain nourishes us by helping to regulate all the processes of our body. I feel there’s an endless list that we could tap out about how yoga benefits anybody and even those in the special needs populations.
There's more energy that is consumed in your head versus that which is consumed through the rest of your body. Share on XAs you’re talking, it makes me think it could explain why some people recover more quickly from an illness. Also, why you can see two people both in their ‘80s, one is still active and fit and the other one is always talking about their ailments.
The world’s wisdom traditions like many ancient religions regardless of where it is in the world have talked about the idea of our bodies as temples. These are amazing vehicles for our souls. There are many people who’ve been skeptical for decades, but science is emerging that the way that we treat our bodies affects us so much. The most enriching aspects of our life include taking care of our bodies, bringing attention to our bodies and being in connection with other people.
What made you want to start Geneva Yoga?
I was working my dream job as a special ed seminary teacher. I have always loved working and being around people with special needs. It’s one of the highlights of my entire life. I had my degree and I worked in public schools for many years as a special ed teacher. For the last six years, I worked for the LDS church through their seminary programs teaching high school kids with special needs. I loved it. I was so happy to have that awesome job. I had two students in particular that their situation caused me to pause and think. I had two students who both unrelatedly had fetal alcohol syndrome. I loved them so much and they loved coming to my class. They were wonderful kids, but often they were unable to attend my class because of their behavior.
Their ability to process information, process their feelings, their ability to attend to emotional step stability or mood regulation was not in their control. Even though they wanted to come to my class, their behavior precluded them from being able to come. One of my students, in particular, moved from one school that I worked at to another school that I also happen to work at. His teacher said, “You’re not going to go to seminary because your behavior isn’t good enough.” He said, “Please let me go.” He wanted to come, but his behavior wasn’t such that he could even live at home with his family. Neither of these students lives in their homes. They lived in a teen group home because their behavior was too violent.
I also recall the conversation I had with my brother who worked at the prison for twelve years as a nurse. One time we were talking about crime and populations with special needs. He said, “Beth, we have an entire building that is dedicated to people with an IQ of 70 or lower.” With that idea in mind and these students who were great people, I became upset with the idea of where they might possibly end up because of their inability to control their behavior and express their frustrations and experiences in ways that are not destructive. Around this time, I was in a yoga class and at the end of a yoga class, our final posture is down on the mat and meditate to try to quiet your mind. During that time, I had the loveliest thought. It was, “Beth, you could get your yoga teaching certificate and you could teach yoga to these exact students. They would be able to grow their mental stamina and they would be able to grow their ability to regulate their emotions. They would use yoga as a way to process their frustration.”
I thought that was the best idea. I signed up for yoga teacher training and had the intent that I would use to teach yoga to special needs populations at the schools that I was already working at. As I went through my yoga teacher training, I kept having thoughts and feelings that led me to feel it was important for me to quit my dream job and to dedicate all of my time to creating and growing experiences and opportunities for people who would not normally have access to a yoga studio. Most of the people who can afford a yoga membership are of a certain income level. I wanted to be able to provide it to anyone regardless of income, ability, disability or age. Anybody who had the desire to try this out has access to a program that would help them with mental health and stress reduction. I wanted to provide those opportunities. With all of that in mind, so many opportunities and changes have been presented to me and here I am.
I’m also curious about the nonprofit part. It’s not only a yoga practice or business, but it’s nonprofit. Explain how that works.
It started out as an LLC. I honestly felt called to do this. I could easily be a yoga instructor at established studios and be perfectly happy with that. I felt that there was an important work to be done in serving populations who would not normally have access to yoga. It started out as an LLC and it did a great job as an LLC. I felt that there would be an increased amount of trust if we were a nonprofit. We would have easier access to schools and other entities as a nonprofit. I’m not trying to make a lot of money from this. It’s just something that I’m passionate about. I am happy in my role as the president of Geneva Yoga, being someone who helps to create classes and providing wonderful yoga instructors who can fulfill those roles as teachers.
All of us together can be this network to reach out to populations. Many of those populations that I want to serve, kids, teens, those with special needs, they have less access to yoga because of finances and transportation. As an LLC, I have classes that I teach in yoga studios and they’re great. I could see that there were many people who could not come to my class because they didn’t have a ride. Their parents worked until night and they didn’t have a ride over or they didn’t have money to pay, not even $5 for a class to come. I have been working with school districts in the area to begin classes as part of a special needs curriculum.
I could work with occupational therapists to provide curriculum and opportunities to have yoga as a part of their OT Services as well as for the normative populations before school and after school yoga classes. I have the vision that these classes will be community-building. Like-minded people will come together and they will be able to access those peaceful, good feelings that are engendered through yoga practice. By the end of a yoga class, you’ll feel good. You’ll feel relaxed, peaceful, balanced and you come to find that you’re in a class with people who are also seeking those things and accessing those feelings and experiences as well.
Would you need sponsors?
My experience so far, some schools have had funding where they could afford to have a once a week class in their schools that would benefit twenty kids per class. Other schools have decided that they could offer that as an after-school program for kids where they could pay for the semester. That would be affordable. I’m seeking sponsors who can see the mental health crisis in our community and in this nation, who also would like to provide these classes to schools that are in the middle. There are some schools that have sufficient funding that they could bring this yoga class to their school’s population.
There are other classes where the students’ families are wealthy enough that they could afford to pay $3 a week for their students to attend an after-school yoga class. There are a lot of kids in the middle of those two points where they are falling through the cracks. We are hoping that through sponsorship, through people’s desire for their own kids, their own grandkids to grow their inner stamina their mental wellness. To be able to access those feelings of peace and self-acceptance that they will be willing to donate and sponsor these classes.
Are the before and after school classes taught at the schools?
Yes. They’re on-site. It’s pretty common in most schools that there is an after-school program. Part of that is because there are many working parents that appreciate being able to pick up their kids at a later hour. These after-school programs are also enrichment in many people’s lives that they either get homework help or they get to participate in a ballroom dance class. It often is part of the after-school enrichment programs that most schools offer now.
Someone who engages in yoga practice gains an increased ability to experience their life through more of their body. Share on XAre you working with only public schools or have you branched out to any private schools or other organizations?
Most of the communications that I’ve had have been through public schools. I am open to private schools and charter schools. I also am working with two teen treatment facilities to provide yoga and meditation services there as part of their treatment. One is through Wasatch Mental Health that is state-funded. Most of the kids in that treatment facility have been in and will be in foster care after they leave their treatment. I’m open to all opportunities. I would be so pleased if yoga and meditation were available to anybody who wanted to begin a practice or who might feel that that practice would benefit them.
How do people contact you?
They can contact me through my website, which is GenevaYogaUtah.com. I am also on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. The account name for those is @GenevaYoga.
If they went to your website, you would have all the links there?
Yes. I would love to start a conversation with anybody, whether you are a school administrator, a concerned citizen, or you yourself want to start a yoga practice or you would like to get more information for your own children or grandchildren. I would love to have that conversation. I care about the emotional wellness of people.
I did think of that when you were talking if a parent or grandparent wanted this for their child, but this wasn’t available through the school. Are there any private classes?
I have community kiddie yoga classes in yoga studios. I have teen community classes that are held in yoga studios. I have done my best to keep the tuition as low as possible. It’s much lower than memberships at a yoga studio. I want to offer these to anybody in whatever ways they are able to access these classes.
Whatever we focus on grows, whatever we focus on heals, whatever we focus on comes to pass. Share on XIt sounds like you’re in several locations.
I’m based in Provo, Utah. I have access to teachers all up and down the Wasatch Front. When a need arises, we will create it. We just need four to six students to carry a class to make it so that we’re able to pay our teachers. From there, we allow it to grow because we know from our own experience that once we have those four to six students, they talk to their friends. They grow, learn and feel well from it, and they attract other like-minded people into the classes. Through that, we’re able to share the love of yoga, the magic that yoga can help people to heal and feel well and to grow from the inside out.
I’m wondering if you have any locations in Ogden.
We haven’t gotten that far but as soon as I hear somebody say, “Please help me start this class in Ogden,” I will get on it.
Four to six students, you said.
We’re not trying to make a million dollars. We’re not trying to buy my vacation home in San Diego. We’re trying to help grow people’s ability to access it. It’s amazing.
Thank you, Beth. It has been a delight to talk to you and learn more about it. I hope you have a great day.
Thank you so much for having me.
Important Links:
- Geneva Yoga
- GenevaYogaUtah.com
- Instagram – Geneva Yoga
- @GenevaYoga – Twitter
- Facebook – Geneva Yoga
About Beth Williams
Beth Williams talks about her nonprofit, Geneva Yoga, and how this practice can benefit everyone. She is most familiar with the progress that can occur for people with special needs and is passionate about making yoga available to this population.
She shares more information on her website https://www.genevayogautah.com/.