YM: When and why did Yoga first enter your life?
BF: On my eighteenth birthday, my Dad gave me a copy of Light on Yoga. I was more into sports, so it wound up gathering dust on my bookshelf. Years later, after leaving a high-level administrative position in psychology, I celebrated with a trip to the Sivananda ashram in Nassau. I was sick with tonsillitis, and could barely get on the plane- but recuperating on the beach seemed like a good idea. And suddenly I was bitten by the yoga bug- the physical practice, even the chanting, awakened a whole other person that had been sleeping. It was such a surprise to me- not just the passion for yoga but the familiarity of the postures, the chanting- like something that had been waiting, all that time, to come out. 

YM: How do you integrate being a yoga teacher, integrative yoga therapist and clinical psychologist?
BF:   Yoga therapy, psychology, and the teaching of yoga share a natural synergy- they just go well together. Psychology is fluent in the language of the mind and emotions, but the physical body has traditionally been “forbidden fruit.” Yoga speaks so well to the physical body- and the fluctuating states of mind which torture us much of the time- but traditionally hasn’t had much to do with psychological problems. So really, yoga and psychology fill one another’s “holes”- they naturally integrate.

Being an integrative yoga therapist is something you can do whether you’re working one-on-one in a private session or in a group class- there’ll always be people with physical and emotional issues. Integrative Yoga Therapeutics looks at the mind, emotional body, physical body, nervous system as pathways in to the core of someone. And a class or private session that’s able to find many ways of reaching that core is more powerful- like firing on all cylinders.



YM: Which career came first?
BF: Psychology came pretty early; I started taking graduate classes in my sophomore year in college, had a master’s at 21 and a doctorate at 25. But early on in my career, a sense of dissatisfaction crept in. Psychotherapy began to feel like taking a detour. It was slow going, and I always had a nagging sense that something was missing. I started searching out alternative healing methods, feeling that we could do more to alleviate mental and emotional suffering. When yoga entered my life, there was never a plan to integrate it. I spent a number of years as a “closet yogi,” bringing the practice of yoga into my life but not really able to talk with my colleagues in psychology about it; yoga was seen as a “fringe practice,” and if you did yoga, you were wise to keep quiet about it or risk not being taken seriously by your colleagues. And then I was a “closet psychologist,” not really bringing the psychology background into my yoga studies or teaching- psychology was a bit “uncool” in the yoga world. It took me a few years of doing private work to realize- and in the end one of my clients had to tell me- that I was actually melding the two in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. It just kind of evolved organically.

YM: What is your favorite part of teaching?
BF: Teaching is always challenging- it “stretches” me mentally, energetically, and spiritually. It asks me to find new ways to reach people in the midst of today’s challenges. How can I adapt a Level 3 class, for example, where maybe 30% of people are pushing themselves in counterproductive ways? Or, take our teacher training: our model is longer-term than many others, and this means we get to watch people as they struggle and grow. And I’m “in their face” that whole time. So the challenges here are: How do I encourage a fledgling teacher to find his voice, or a more serious teacher to infuse her teaching with a lightness of being? How do I help budding yoga therapists learn to give one another constructive feedback in a setting that has so much pressure to be yogic and compassionate, and supposedly never critical? And how do I teach growing yoga therapists to sit with the discomfort that comes from saying no so they can set healthy boundaries for clients? My favorite part of teaching is not the didactic part- the form and facts and techniques- it’s the essence behind the form. But wow- is it challenging.


YM: Who and what are your greatest teachers?
BF: For sure, my personal practice, which includes daily yoga and a sitting practice, among other things. Even a day when my practice seems “off” usually leads to something unexpected. Much of what I teach in classes, or in private therapeutics work, arises from this space of experimentation and play, from the intersection of “trialing” and error and non-perfection. 

My students in classes, in teacher training, and on the road are also a source of learning and inspiration. They are an extraordinary gift- any didactic knowledge is always leavened, or matures, through real-world interaction. For me, that’s where the alchemy of yoga really happens. Having a long-term practice and nearly 35 years of experience in yoga and psychology doesn’t elevate me above the growth process. For example, I work with athletes, where you have to distill the concepts of yoga (like bandhas, breath, and drishti, for instance) into language that’s easy to understand, and where the effects aren’t something transcendent but translate directly to performance on the field. That’s yoga, too. And because our teacher training specializes in Integrative Yoga Therapeutics, it attracts a lot of therapists. This means that each year, I need to learn new ways of working with therapists to overcome the incredible taboo against touch, against physically assisting students. One of my tasks is always to find new ways to help aspiring teachers be more present with students in a world which values multi-tasking, which means that our focus is necessarily diffused among many different things, kind of like a collective dissociation. And when I’m really watching, seeing how people take in the teaching- or to what extent- lets me know how effective that portion of the teaching has been.

On a personal level, my greatest teacher was my Dad. He was naturally inquisitive and searching. He wanted to make the world a better place, and really identified with the underdog. He was an advocate for change, and believed that the value of something- even yoga- is how it inspires you to respond when “the chips are down.” He discovered yoga at the age of 80 and was captivated by it. He practiced every day, and went to kirtans with Krishna Das. What an example of the human spirit and of the potential for transformation at any age! 

YM: What is your favorite part of yoga?
BF: No matter what the agenda is, or what is needed, yoga’s benefits seem to occur in the ways that the practitioner needs. Yoga is never predictable; it’s always changing. Something you might think is absolutely true in your practice today is just a passing state of truth; tomorrow it will be different. Frustrating, maybe… but also really cool.

YM: What is Integrative Yoga Therapeutics™ and why is it so necessary?
BF: Integrative Yoga Therapeutics™ (IYT) is the nucleus of all my teaching: classes, workshops, teacher training, and yoga therapist training. It focuses on what I call the Mind-Body Matrix: the intricate network that includes the nervous system, immune system, emotional body, and pain modulation pathways. Integrative Yoga Therapeutics teaches us to participate in and ultimately fine-tune the interplay between the physical, mental, emotional, and energetic manifestations of illness, imbalance, and disease.

The tools of Integrative Yoga Therapeutics (IYT) include active, alignment-based, mindful asana practice, therapeutic “bodywork asana,” breathwork, meditation, and Restorative Yoga. IYT asks a lot of the yoga therapist: rather than being able to use the “safety” of a class structure or psychotherapy session, the therapist is asked to bring a high degree of mindfulness to the emerging awareness of the client, to problem-solve during sessions rather than present a “finished product” of a session, and to look for or solicit active, constructive feedback from the client- as well as using his or her own assessment skills- to determine what works and what doesn’t, and to continue to recalibrate. This process actually mirrors the compassionate, open dialogue that is seminal to a client’s growth and healing.

An integral concept in IYT is that memories, emotions, and experiences are held in the tissues of the physical body, written onto the nervous system, echoed in the mental and emotional bodies, and buried in the deep visceral body. Through the creative use of props as bodywork tools, Integrative Yoga Therapeutics delves into some of the body’s primary “holding areas” with compassion and playfulness. It embraces a practice that is always different; when we practice (and live our lives) in similar ways, we reinforce alignment anomalies, patterns of movement, and ways of being in relationship that can lead to restriction, injury, or emotional issues.

In today’s world where complementary and alternative medicine have become big-ticket items, there’s a tendency to believe that healing is about finding the right doctor, counselor, teacher, or practitioner. Or the right holistic or homeopathic remedy. Integrative Yoga Therapeutics believes that the answer is in the client, and that the integrative yoga therapist is coming in to help that client find the answer. The Mindbody Matrix has the wisdom to rebalance the body, if we learn to remove some of the barriers we put up. The yoga therapist and the client are collaborators, are yoga detectives, in the process of letting those answers emerge.

More and more now, with doctors suggesting that their patients do yoga, it’s important to have that additional frame of reference: how do you teach someone with anxiety in a group class- or privately? What do you do when someone comes to class rehabbing a torn MCL? And Integrative Yoga Therapeutics really speaks to the idea that when you’ve just had knee surgery, there’s a lot going on in your nervous system too- there’s a trauma response there that wants to be spoken to. On the other hand, if you’re coming to class with anxiety, this anxiety is living in your physical body, and the practice can speak to that without needing to verbalize it or engage in discussion around it.


YM: What are the strongest concepts and themes in your teaching?
BF:  One of the guiding principles in Elemental Yoga and Integrative Yoga Therapeutics is that within each student or client lies an organic blueprint for healing. Our philosophy is a bit of a paradigm shift from the yoga therapist as “healer” or as someone who “does something” to the client, to the yoga therapist or teacher as a guide.

One of our strongest themes is that internal awareness, once ignited, can be self-sustaining and self-renewing. It’s just that most of us haven’t had any training in the language of our Mindbody Matrix.  So as the yoga teacher or yoga therapist, we see ourselves as interpreters for clients, helping them to develop the language and dialogue they need.

And rather than presenting them with a “finished product” of a class or private session, our work is collaborative and listens deeply, following the threads of all the bodies and weaving these threads into a yoga practice that can respond and adapt to new patterns. This also helps clients begin to cultivate a playful, experimental, ongoing inner dialogue rather than needing to “fix” something right away.

And the concept that winds itself throughout all this is “compassionate self-awareness”: looking at what we see and just watching, following the roots of a pattern of dis-ease without needing to change anything right away. The drive to fix or change something often results in pulling that thing from the soil without waiting to see where the roots lead. And then it simply grows back in a different form. When we’re willing to observe with a friendliness toward what we’re observing, we can better track the root system so that when the pattern shifts, the entire root system shifts with it.


YM: How does it feel to make people happy?
BF: That’s an interesting question, because people will often attribute the dramatic sense of well-being they get from yoga to their yoga therapist or teacher. I’d have to say that I don’t make people happy! In some ways, integrative yoga therapeutics recognizes that in each of us, there’s an intrinsic happiness, a light that’s been dimmed by a number of things. Rather than have the yoga therapist be the healer, or do something to the client, or make them happy, we believe that each person has within them the seeds of their own natural healing. These seeds just need to be discovered and then nurtured- and germinated over and over again, until a new pathway forms in the mind-body-brain. This might require handing our clients and students back their own power. Letting them know that we’re not the source of their well-being:  it’s the yoga. Often, well-being is what happens when, through the experience of deep yoga, combined with compassionate self-observation, we discover a fluidity and engagement with our vital essence. Yoga can be a vehicle through which we get there, but recognizing that it’s already within us- that it’s not another person that makes us happy or heals us- is empowering.

YM: Thank you for joining us! Where can we find out more about you?
BF: You can visit our website, www.elementalyoga.com, for information on Integrative Yoga Therapeutics, our classes, workshops, teacher training, and travel schedule, along with pictures of our Restorative Yoga Therapeutics poses, and published articles. I teach nationally at Kripalu and Yoga Journal conferences, and will be at Yoga Journal’s New York City and Estes Park Conferences this year as well as the SYTAR Conference in Los Angeles in March.