MISTY 2024 - Dynamic Polyvagal Play 

Overview

Every interaction with our students is a transmission of co-regulation - the human, heart-to-heart task of being with each other and creating rapport. Our embodiment and capacity as the teacher or therapist set the tone, like a tuning fork for our client.

This session, recorded at the 2024 Montreal International Symposium on Therapeutic Yoga (MISTY), will help you better understand your nervous system and social patterns as wise and adaptive through dynamic polyvagal applications. Hone your instincts, and expand your kinesthetic, vocal, and social toolbox.

The blended autonomic state of play invites us to grow comfortable with experimentation and expression and to trust the spectrum of possibility that exists between goal-oriented effort and open-ended being. In the space created by curiosity, we can learn to hold a deeper compassionate space for the client's process of healing inquiry.


Learning Objectives

In this online course, you will:

1. Define what is PLAY and discuss personal and cultural barriers to playing.

   
   
2. Establish collective agreements for our container to invoke freedom to play. 

   
   
3. Clarify the 3 primary ANS states according to polyvagal theory, and 2 blended states, creating a dynamic representation of our window of freedom.
   
   
4. Shift from a hierarchical, threat-based framework for the autonomic nervous system to acknowledgment and welcoming the wisdom of all states. 

   
   
5. Take autonomic state education beyond physiological theory into mapping felt sense awareness, storytelling, and practical applications for teaching. 

   
   
6. Examine the social nervous system’s range of responses, identify patterns, and make space for new preferences or skills to emerge.
   
   
7. Enjoy varied activities, collaboration, and key practices to embody the spirit of yoga as consciousness, liberation and bliss.

Presenter Bio

Cheri Dostal Ryba, C-IAYT, FME-3

Cheri has devoted over two decades to embodied inquiry & transformation as a movement educator, personal fitness trainer, dancer, C-IAYT yoga therapist, mother of two, and author. Cheri's approach weaves cyclical wisdom from nature with trauma & nervous system-informed somatic practices, and whole-person pelvic care.

Cheri served as a founding co-director and lead faculty of the accredited C-IAYT yoga therapist training program, AlcheMe Yoga Therapy, for 7 years and mentors yoga professionals in personal embodiment and career growth. She has spoken at SYTAR twice to serve the growing field of yoga therapy and supports women globally 1:1 and with online programs.

Cheri published her first book, Pelvic Yoga Therapy for the Whole Woman: A Professional Guide. She plans to continue writing & making life a moving ritual. www.cheridostalryba.com.

Audience

Anyone with a keen interest in learning about the vagus nerve and its relationship to the nervous system and how yoga can help in self-regulating as well as assisting others to do so.