I Never Got the Yoga Thing — Until I Did
I took my first yoga class in the 1980s. I liked it well enough. But that thing that happens to people — the complete conversion, the mat becoming the centre of everything — never happened to me. I tried classes over the years, on and off. I appreciated the stretch. I left largely unmoved.
It wasn't until I found myself in Bali, almost by accident, that everything changed.
I wasn't on a yoga retreat. I wasn't looking for transformation. I had a gap between work contracts, needed to get away, and picked somewhere almost at random. I ended up at a small, Indonesian-owned studio in Canggu — nothing fancy, nothing commercial, nothing that appeared in any wellness magazine. The teachers were extraordinary. The space was unpretentious. And on my first day, I showed up in my expensive workout gear and discovered that everyone else was essentially in their underwear, considerably more flexible than me, and entirely unbothered about either of those things.
It was the best possible introduction.
What I found there was not the yoga I had been half-heartedly practicing for decades. It was yoga philosophy — the vast, ancient, extraordinarily sophisticated body of thought that Western wellness culture largely strips out in favour of the physical postures. The yamas and niyamas, the ethical and personal principles that form the foundation of yogic life. The koshas, the five layers of the self from the physical body inward to the deepest self. The chakras as an energetic map of how we hold experience in the body. The breath as the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, between the voluntary and the involuntary, between the body and the mind.
I recognised all of it immediately. Not because I had studied it before, but because it was describing the same terrain I had been working in as a therapist for years — in different language, from a different tradition, pointing at the same whole.
Yoga philosophy and depth psychology are not as far apart as they might appear. Both are concerned with the layers of the self — the parts we show the world, the parts we have buried, the deeper self that exists beneath all the roles and adaptations. Both understand that genuine wellbeing is not the absence of difficulty but the capacity to meet difficulty with presence and honesty. Both place enormous value on self-knowledge — not as an intellectual exercise but as a lived practice, something you return to daily, something that changes you from the inside.
The yamas and niyamas — the ethical principles of yogic philosophy — are a particularly rich complement to therapeutic work. Ahimsa, non-harming, applied not just to others but to oneself. Satya, truthfulness, the commitment to seeing and speaking what is real. Santosha, contentment — not as passive acceptance but as the capacity to find ground in the present moment rather than in the perpetual pursuit of something else. These are not abstract ideals. They are practical questions a person can bring to any moment of their life: am I acting from harm or from care? Am I telling myself the truth? Can I find something solid here, right now, as things actually are?
In my practice, I draw on yogic principles in ways that complement rather than replace the clinical work. Breath is one of the most accessible and powerful tools available — the simple act of lengthening the exhale, or working with Nadi Shodhana — alternate nostril breathing — directly influences the nervous system in ways that no amount of talking can replicate. The breath is always available, always honest, always a doorway back into the body when the mind has gone somewhere unhelpful.
I work with the chakras as a framework for understanding where energy is blocked or excessive — not as a rigid diagnostic system but as a set of useful questions. The chakras were not new territory for me — as a Reiki teacher, I had been working with the body's energy system for years. Yoga philosophy gave me a deeper framework for what I already knew. Where in the body is the tension held? What does it correspond to? What has been stored there, and what might it need? The koshas offer a similar map — a way of moving inward through the layers of the self, from the physical to the energetic to the emotional to the intellectual to the deepest seat of awareness.
None of this replaces the relational, the psychological, the somatic work that forms the foundation of good therapy. But it deepens it. It adds a dimension of meaning and practice that many people — especially those already drawn to yoga or Eastern philosophy — find immediately resonant.
If you are looking for a therapist who speaks the language of yoga philosophy, who understands the connection between breath and nervous system regulation, who can work within a framework that honours both the clinical and the contemplative — that is the work I do.
It took me a long time to find my way to this. But I can't get enough of it now, and I don't expect that to change.
If that resonates, I'd be glad to connect.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be healthy. May all beings be safe. May no being suffer.
Megan Shea is a trauma-informed psychotherapist and yoga-informed holistic counsellor integrating yogic philosophy, somatic therapy, nervous system awareness, and depth psychology. She works with adults online across Australia and worldwide.
