Sacred Body Yoga Therapy
with Brian Scrivener

DISCOVERING YOUR BODY’S WISDOM

Sacred Body yoga therapy is a blend of supported yoga asanas, manual-
energetic technique and open-ended dialogue. It is a venture in self-discovery,
rather than in directed healing. It is not specifically intended to be good for any
‘conditions’, because it is not a medical mode of treatment, though improvement
may result from the stretching, touch and dialoguing involved. Sacred Body is
based upon Phoenix Rising yoga therapy, to which I add subtle-energetic
assessment and manual techniques to enhance the effectiveness of the session
for all dimensions of your body.

Sacred Body uses supported asanas to connect what is going on in our bodies
with what is going on in our lives. Different, identifiable, physical, mental,
emotional and spiritual issues focus around each of the body's chakras. Through
events in your life, thoughts, emotions or energies may become blocked or
locked at different chakral levels. Bringing pressure to bear at the chakras
through yoga asanas can trigger spontaneous release of these stored energies,
thoughts or emotions.

Using assisted asanas, I will support your body and move it deeply into the
direction of stretch or pressure until you reach the point beyond which you would
not go further on your own. When you reach this edge, I will hold you there,
firmly and safely. In that position, I will engage you in a non-directive dialogue,
allowing you to explore the sensations you are feeling in your body, as well as
any issues that may arise. It is important to work at the edge, where your
awareness is firmly seated within the body -- not more intensely, because pain
distracts from awareness; not less intensely, because this allows you to revert to
a non-productive mental level of rationalizing. Whereas, when you stay at the
edge, your body’s honesty and wisdom take over.

Sacred Body yoga therapy can yield some of the same benefits you might gain
from practising yoga (relief from tension, increased joint mobility or flexibility of
muscles, tendons, ligaments and fascia). Since I relieve you of much of the effort
in taking your body into the asanas, in a session you may allow your body to go
further than you believe you are able to go on your own. Because of this, it can
lead to greater awareness of your body’s full potential.

When you are practising yoga on your own, you must both do and be, while in
Sacred Body yoga therapy you are freed up to simply be.

Do you need to be an advanced yogi or yogini to benefit from Sacred Body? Not
at all. I have had clients who are yoga adepts and others who have never done
yoga and who have limited experience of physical exercise of any type. For
someone with an extreme lack of body awareness, the first session might be an
extended body scan and guided meditation, perhaps in Sivasana, practicing
breathing, centering, meditative focus, to allow her to experience an environment
in which awareness of and disclosure about her body is safe.

Unlike most forms of therapy, Sacred Body is at the lower end of the ‘agenda
continuum’.  For this reason, it is hard to engage in the sort of mind games that
can inhibit the effectiveness of the therapeutic session. Sacred Body can be a
helpful complement to more traditional counselling, helping to ease through a
point at which dialogue has become stuck. Its intention is to create an
environment in which self-healing is given the opportunity to manifest.

As Michael Lee, founder of Phoenix Rising puts it, “We are definitely not in the
business of fixing. Rather, we are helping people to discover for themselves how
to work with themselves – empowering people to become their own healers.”
Sacred Body
Yoga Therapy
“Pleasant, gentle, yet deeply
eventful.”

“Wonderful, renewed sense of being
my body.”

“For me, it works like a form of
meditation or prayer.”

BRIAN SCRIVENER is a certified Phoenix Rising
Yoga Therapy Practitioner, having completed
training in yoga philosophy, visual-intuitive
assessment of the energetic aspects of the
body and the powerful use of specifically
selected, assisted and sustained asanas. He
is a member of the International Association of
Yoga Therapists. His professional training also
includes homeopathy, craniosacral therapy,
Reiki, healing chi gong and other subtle
manual-energy techniques. His lifelong
passion for Yoga has unfolded through more
than 20 years of practice and teaching. Trained
in the Iyengar method with Lindsay Whalen in
the 1980s in Vancouver, he took his teacher
training with Iyengar national certification
assessor Richard Schachtel in Seattle. He has
been inspired by workshops with such yoga
luminaries as Angela Farmer and Dona
Holleman. His first inkling of the importance of
movement in enhancing the physical body and
awakening the spirit came while studying
contemporary dance with Synergy, led by Linda
Rubin, at the Western Front Lodge in Vancouver
during the mid-1970s.
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT
PHONE ME AT 250-377-7675 OR EMAIL
SACREDBODY1@YAHOO.COM.
VISIT HANDS ON HEALTH,  UNDER THE CLOCK TOWER
IN TUDOR VILLAGE,
SUITE 103 – 1315 SUMMIT DRIVE, KAMLOOPS