Yoga for Emotional Balance: Simple Practices to Help Relieve Anxiety and Depression [Paperback]

Bo Forbes (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 8, 2011

Emotional balance is within your reach—when you cultivate the intelligence of both your body and mind. Bo Forbes, a psychologist and yoga teacher, presents an integrative approach to healing anxiety, depression, and chronic stress. In this book, she offers some of her most important teachings and practices, including:

   • restorative yoga sequences designed to balance anxiety and lift depression
   • breath- and body-centered exercises to calm your mind and energize your body
   • simple ways to understand your emotional patterns
   • an overview of the three main obstacles to emotional well-being
   • five tools for building emotional balance
Rooted in classical yoga yet supported by psychology and science, the techniques in this book will help you create progressive and lasting change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Forbes clearly and compassionately explains anxiety and depression and helps readers understand the process of healing. We can all benefit from these teachings.”—LA Yoga


“This book is excellent—it ’s timely, clear, and full of tools for creating emotional balance. I particularly love the restorative yoga sequences. They are close to miraculous, and everyone can do them.”—Lilias Folan, PBS host and author of Lilias! Yoga Gets Better with Age

“Forbes has crafted a knowledgeable, realistic guide to addressing the physical and psychological aspects of anxiety and depression, explaining how we can use the body and mind in concert with each other to heal. To her credit, Forbes grounds her ideas and recommendations in sober observations (as both a therapist and a yoga teacher), scientific literature, and a bodhisattva ’s compassion for human suffering. If you ’re struggling with anxiety and depression, this book could point the way to wholeness and well-being.”—Yoga Journal

“Bo Forbes has written more than just a book. She ’s put together a step-by-step prescription that can be tailored to individual needs for the effective relief of the common modern-day maladies of stress, anxiety, and depression.”—Richard Rosen, author of The Yoga of Breath

“Yoga for Emotional Balance teaches restorative poses and simple breathing techniques that, when practiced regularly, can put you on the path to feeling better.”—Timothy McCall, MD, author of Yoga as Medicine

“[A] unique synthesis of yoga and psychology . . . this important contribution to the field of integrative emotional healing is informative for teachers and therapists, yet accessible to the lay person.”—Yoga International

About the Author

Bo Forbes, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist, yoga teacher, and integrative yoga therapist whose background includes training in biopsychology, behavioral medicine, and stress management. She is the founder of Integrative Yoga Therapeutics, a system that specializes in the therapeutic application of yoga for anxiety, insomnia, depression, immune disorders, chronic pain, and physical injuries. Forbes conducts teacher trainings and workshops internationally, and writes frequently for magazines such as Yoga Journal, Body + Soul, and the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. For more information, visit her online at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.boforbes.com/">boforbes.com</a>. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1 edition (March 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590307607
• ISBN-13: 978-1590307601
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.6 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #60 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Injuries & Rehabilitation
  • #75 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Yoga

More About the Author

Bo Forbes is a yoga teacher, integrative yoga therapist, and clinical psychologist with over 22 years of clinical experience in mind-body healing. She is the founder of Integrative Yoga Therapeutics and director of training at the New England School of Integrative Yoga Therapeutics. She is the director of the Center for Integrative Yoga Therapeutics™, which offers innovative mind-body yoga therapeutics to clients throughout the U.S. and abroad. She is also the co-founder of Embodied Awareness, which offers online trainings in Integrative Yoga Therapeutics.

Bo has a bachelor's and master's degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. Her extensive training in Biopsychology, Sleep Disorders, Eating Disorders, Behavioral Medicine, and Stress Management informs her teaching, private work, clinical supervision, and teacher trainings. Bo has conducted seminars for health care organizations and professionals, and has consulted to professional sports teams, corporations, schools, and health care agencies throughout the United States.

In 2002, Bo developed Integrative Yoga Therapeutics™, an innovative approach to issues such as anxiety, insomnia, depression, chronic pain disorders, fertility, performance enhancement, injury prevention and rehabilitation, and more. In 2007, this approach earned Elemental Yoga its designation as an approved sponsor for post-graduate continuing education for social workers through the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Her organization is also approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Bo serves on the Advisory Board of the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).

Bo's articles have been featured in Yoga Journal, Body and Soul, and the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, and she consults for several magazines, including Yoga Journal and Natural Health. She teaches internationally at conferences, yoga centers, yoga studios, and retreat centers. Her book Yoga for Emotional Balance: Simple Practices to Heal Anxiety and Depression (Shambhala Publications) was published in March 2011. For more information on her publications, teacher training, or travel schedule, visit her personal website, www.boforbes.com and her educational website, www.boforbesyoga.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book on both emotional health and restorative yoga! March 29, 2011

By Melody & Words

Format:Paperback

Bo Forbes, a longtime therapist and also a yoga practitioner, struggled with the disconnect she saw between the physical and emotional therapy worlds. Often, she says, "we can feel, rather than think, the emotional experiences that heal us." Instead of just talking through emotional patterns, she began introducing breathwork and restorative yoga poses into her clients' therapy plans.

This was a time before the emotionally healing benefits of yoga truly took hold in Western society, and Forbes was amazed by the transformation she saw in her patients. Rather than repeating the same mental "stories" over and over in therapy sessions, her patients began to address--and overcome--their negative emotional patterns by physically incorporating emotional balance.

Restorative yoga is based on the idea that the mind and the body speak to each other more often when we think. It combines the physical motions of yoga with the mental workout of meditation, thereby embodying the emotional healing process.

Forbes presents the medical explanations for why yoga has such an astounding effect on our health, and she introduces five ways to transform one's emotional patterns: calming the nervous system; regulating the breath; connecting with direct experience; quieting the mind; and changing the narratives you tell yourself that reflect your self-concept and world view.

She then outlines the differences between those who suffer anxiety, depression, or some blend of both. According to the kind of anxiety-depression afflicting you--and this can change as your emotional patterns change--Forbes then recommends restorative poses that will help calm or reinvigorate your nervous system.

I truly enjoyed this book. It illuminates the often murky world of emotional imbalance, while also offering simple, no-equipment-required solutions. This review could've been a lot longer; I underlined and bookmarked countless passages. I would recommend this to anyone interested in a medicine-free way to ease stress and develop healthy emotional patterns.

For a full review, visit my site, Melody & Words!

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars at last! April 1, 2011

By Judith Sayland VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I am so thankful for this book - it allows me to actually do something to help with my anxiety and depression "issues" without relying on medicines or talk-therapy, "not that there's anything wrong with that". I will not repeat a summary of this book - the above reviewer did that with great expertise. I just want to let you know you are in good hands with Dr. Forbes. She is kind, caring, and experienced in the art of healing. You can trust her. Her voice is authentic and real - and she has given me tools to help myself in a holistic, nurturing way. As I said at the outset, I am thankful for this book. Buy it, and you will be too.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars So grateful for this book!!! April 21, 2011

By Tree0252

Format:Paperback

I loved this book so much that as soon as I was finished I turned back to page 1 and started it all over again. I have suffered from anxiety for as long as I can remember and despite medication, I continue to have symptoms. I have tried the practices outlined in this book and can already feel a difference in how well I sleep and how relaxed my body is. I think every yoga teacher, every psychologist and every person who suffers from anxiety and depression should read this book!! I am so grateful to Bo Forbes for all of her work in this area where conventional treatments are often lacking.