Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Finck.
Hi Erin, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hello, I think this is asking more about my personal story rather than the story of my trainings and the like, so here it is:
I’ve been interested in yoga ever since I was a child and can’t explain why. I didn’t know anyone who had done it before. I hardly knew what it was. I started taking yoga classes when I was too young to drive, and I continued to attend classes off and on ever since.
My practice was different, then. Disembodied. It was very much a cognitive experience and very little an experience of being. Even though I was physically doing the postures, I was mentally somewhere else. It was like that for years.
I didn’t become a regular practitioner until around 2011, when a ruptured disc in my spine left me uselessly horizontal for most of my free time, and the doctors offered me a giant bottle of pills as a solution. When I asked if there was anything I could do to fix it, he shrugged and said there were some stretches. I was given a packet of poorly illustrated drawings. I immediately recognized those drawings as yoga, and so my attendance at yoga classes became regular. It took months. Years, maybe – but as long as I kept practicing, the pain slowly but surely became manageable.
I started to notice that yoga was having an effect on me in other ways. I didn’t seem to have as much anxiety. I had a greater sense of wellbeing. It was subtle. Almost like the tiniest seed in the back of my mind began to grow, and a budding curiosity made me begin to wonder if it was the yoga that was making me feel better.
It might be a good time to mention that depression has run in my family for generations. I was diagnosed with chronic, recurrent, major depression and insomnia. I was nine years old when my condition started. Nothing worked. Nobody knew what to tell me. I was hopeless.
My yoga practice went from once a week, to twice, three times, then every day. I understood the physical postures. I thought that this was what the practice was about– perfecting the posture. I began to become aware of my mind racing at the end of class, in Savasana. I wanted to learn more about the meditative aspects of the practice.
So I began to read books about yoga, pranayama, meditation, and spirituality. It was through all of this reading that I learned to see the world, my mind, and life itself very differently.
And then tragedy struck. In 2014, within a matter of three months, I lost everyone who was close to me– through divorce, suicide, and moving away. It was like the tablecloth of my life had been ripped out from underneath me, broken into pieces I had no idea how to put back together again.
About a year after all of that, I lost someone I was engaged to at one time in my life from an overdose.
A year after that, I lost someone who had been my best friend for well over a decade, also to overdose.
I don’t know how I would’ve survived this time of my life without my yoga practice. It was around this time that I began to wonder why this practice wasn’t in mental health and substance abuse settings. Why hadn’t they given me any tools, resources, or practices, for taking care of myself? What if my loved ones had the chance to practice this? Could it have helped?
I started to travel. I took with me two small bottles of the ashes of two of my loved ones and a picture of my friend. I went on nature retreats, yoga retreats, hiking retreats, meditation retreats. I travelled all over the country to see waterfalls, to explore caves, to climb mountains, to sit in coffee shops and scribble in my journal or read one of my books.
Everywhere, I was alone, and always, my lost loved ones were with me.
I became somewhat of a yoga connoisseur. I took all different types of classes from all different types of teachers in all different types of settings, all over the country. Gentle yoga, power yoga, hatha yoga, laughter yoga, aerial yoga, acro yoga, yoga nidra, sekoia yoga, yin yoga, vinyasa, dancing yoga, bhakti yoga, etc., ad infinitum. I visited a variety of meditation centers, spiritual events, and a handful of non-religious churches.
It was during one of the meditation retreats that it came to me to become a yoga instructor. I’m not sure how to describe what “came to me” meant. It was like it was implanted into my brain. It wasn’t something I had ever considered doing before, but it’s like there wasn’t any question of becoming an instructor or not. It was just like, “okay, I have to do this.” It wasn’t up for debate.
I also “knew” that the reason behind becoming an instructor was to get the practice in mental health settings; in crisis centers, hospitals, inpatient, outpatient, criminal justice settings, settings for veterans, for people experiencing homelessness and/or substance abuse disorders, people who have experienced domestic or sexual abuse, anywhere that was set up for people who were suffering.
I completed the 200 hour yoga teacher training in Athens with Inhale Yoga Studio in 2018. I completed the 300 hour Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) in March of 2021. I enrolled in a Master’s for Integral Health with a Concentration in Yoga Therapy with CIHS and Soul of Yoga in 2022. I have written every paper on how yoga, meditation, breathwork can be used to support someone living with substance use disorder, PTSD, depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions.
I finally feel like I am fulfilling my purpose and I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Teaching yoga has required a fair amount of personal growth. I have always been a very quiet, very shy person who did not enjoy being the center of attention. Being the person who stands up in front of the room to share one of their most personal and vulnerable practices with complete strangers took an incredible amount of strength to accomplish. I have also always been a very sensitive person, so learning how to find my voice and trust that what I have to say has value and is worthy of being shared also took an enormous amount of effort. Holding space for other people when you, yourself are going through a difficult time has also been somewhat of a learning curve. I learned how to teach and to share my heart with people after I had moved to a new city as a single parent, knowing very few people, during a global pandemic, while working full time and putting myself through one intensive training after the next. I knew very well that giving up was not an option. I would often remind myself that this project wasn’t about me, it’s about providing tools and resources for people who need it the most, for people who may not know where else to turn. It is to provide hope for people who may have lost all hope. Thankfully, I am teaching the very practices to others that I used for myself to get through difficult times. I am living proof that these tools, if practiced, will work.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The specific type of yoga (TCTSY) I am offering is not recreation or exercise, although it can have the added benefit of improving strength, balance, and flexibility. It is quite different than what you might find in a yoga studio. TCTSY is an evidence-based intervention for the treatment of C-PTSD and chronic, treatment resistant PTSD. The TCTSY program is the first to qualify for inclusion in the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) database published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). It’s been deemed as effective as Cognitive Processing Therapy, the current gold standard of care.
I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, and I am currently enrolled in a Master’s in Integral Health with a concentration in Yoga Therapy. Every single paper I have written as a part of the master’s has been on implementing yoga as an adjunctive treatment for various mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, trauma, and substance use disorders The yoga therapy portion has provided education and training in using yoga therapy for ADHD, autism, substance use recovery, depression, trauma, the aging brain, and for physical conditions such as chronic or autoimmune diseases.
I’d like to share how yoga is an effective modality for mental health conditions. Some key components of TCTSY are interoception, invitational language, and choice-making. Brain-imaging techniques have shown that practicing interoception brings back online parts of the brain that have been eroded or completely shut down as a result of trauma. Invitational language and choice-making restores a sense of agency that has been lost as a result of trauma. This practice not only supports the survivor in knowing what they need to take care of themselves, but it also restores their ability to trust that they are capable of making effective change.
Additionally, I offer practices that have an immediate effect on the parasympathetic nervous system. This empowers the individual with tools to be able to support themselves when they leave the hospital. Some techniques invite the participant to bring their awareness into their bodies and out of their minds (which are often wandering or ruminating; worsening their mental health symptoms). These techniques make it more accessible for someone who has spent a lifetime avoiding awareness of internal sensation to feel more at ease with regulating their breath (thereby, regulating their nervous system). Not only does this support regulation in and of itself, but when one is able to connect with what they are feeling from a regulated state, then the work that they do with their psychotherapist can be profoundly more effective.
Engaging in practices that activate the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest part of the nervous system) has an effect on every major organ system in the body. This is important because we know that our brains need certain nutrients to be able to function properly. Additionally, many of our neurotransmitters associated with mental wellbeing, such as dopamine, are synthesized in our gut. If we are not able to get into the rest and digest mode of our digestive system, then we are not able to supply our brains with the nutrients and neurotransmitters we need to be healthy, which will dramatically affect our mental health.
We know that all parts of the body are connected and in constant communication via highly complex, subtle, interconnected systems throughout mind and body. Mental stress affects the nervous system; which affects respiration, circulation, the muscles, endocrine glands, and organs and tissues of the whole body. Mental health is not just in the mind. We also know that brain systems mediate and enable the integration of perceptual processes, cognition, memory, and emotion with associated bodily responses. Much processing (cognitive & emotional) occurs unconsciously and outside of the verbal realm, thus may be impossible to access through language alone. This is why using bottom-up approaches, such as yoga, are necessary when it comes to the treatment of mental health. This unconscious processing of emotion, and the accompanying physiological arousal are the root of many anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress. Talk therapy can be ineffective at treating these disorders because it cannot access the regions of the brain that are mediating the processing of thoughts, emotions, and bodily responses.
Further, the specific movements and shapes I offer can promote wellness at an embodied level. For example, when one has been living with chronic depression, they often hunch forward, straining their back muscles, weakening the muscles in their chest, and collapsing their breathing space. When we practice gentle chest-opening and back-bending shapes, one is able to counteract the effects of this “posture of depression.” I offer other shapes, such as forward folds, that have a calming effect, which can be supportive for people with anxiety disorders. Practicing these shapes sends messages of wellbeing to the brain, which responds by sending neurotransmitters (such as oxytocin and endorphins) back to the body that can support wellbeing, while reducing neurotransmitters that increase levels of stress, such as cortisol. Therefore, the practice of yoga operates as a feedback loop for positive wellbeing.
Integral Health offers a model of physical and mental wellbeing that is inclusive of the whole person, in that it considers one’s health from subjective (psychological), intersubjective (social), objective (physical), and interobjective (systemic) viewpoints. Yoga Therapy is uniquely capable of addressing all of these aspects of one’s health, while augmenting the effects of more conventional treatment modalities. I can say with complete confidence that I have worked tirelessly to offer this from a place that is both empirically informed and experientially validated.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
The tattoo on my arm is dedicated to the three loved ones I mentioned earlier who lost their battles with mental health and substance use disorders. It is pictures I took of the places I hiked and spread their ashes. It is not only in their honor, but it represents the entire trajectory of my healing journey, of teaching yoga, and of love itself.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tsyproject.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tsy_project/#
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tsyproject
