Dr. Yoga Momma

11/24/2025

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl G Jung

In the world of Jungian Psychology and yoga ta**ra, the shadow is not something to fix, overcome, or slay.

Rather it is an unintegrated part of your inner landscape - a place where energy, emotion, wisdom, and gifts lie waiting to rise to conscious awareness.

Many people believe the shadow is just our repressed trauma, fear, anger, shame, and other dark stuff that no one would want to see much less love and accept.

But the shadow also holds our unlived potential and untapped gifts. And as Jung taught, our shadow is directing our life whether we consciously work with it our not.

Our shadow reveals itself in subtle ways: Emotional overreactions to small triggers, self-sabotage when things go well, perfectionism that paralyzes, chronic guilt and shame, that inner voice that warns to “not be too much or shine too bright”.

Yoga psychology allows us to integrate and hold our shadow with space, steadfastness, and tenderness. This is when transformation and enhanced aliveness start to become possible.

In Reclaim, we blend Jungian archetypal work with yoga philosophy to help you integrate your shadow so instead of being ruled by unconscious patterns, you become the conscious creator of your life.

During the next 13 weeks we are capitalizing on the dark to go inward and down. I know this work is deep and powerful, and will bring transformation. Are you ready? If you feel slightly scared and resistant you are not alone!

All the most frequently asked questions are below.

Would be honored to journey with you,

Betsy

11/22/2025

The Descent

I had a coffee date with a friend last week and I got a text that she had a migraine and needed to reschedule.

I finally heard from her a week later saying “phew, that was hard. Thanks underworld, thanks descent.”

I love how my friend literally named what it was: the descent.
Descent is a natural process in life. It will happen to all of us, over and over.

Because we live in a culture that teaches that upward movement, expansion, growth, and power are success and that descent is failure, we rarely admit to the descent like my friend was able to do.

Sometimes the descent surprises us. Other times we can feel it brewing. And there may even be times we consciously choose to descend to reclaim parts of self that we have pushed away.

The descent always brings gifts, the main one being we find our soul. Soul retrieval helps us awaken to our meaning and life purpose. If we don’t ever find this, we float along and lack depth and genuine presence.

Are you in a descent? I have been in a long and continuous descent for several years and thus know the terrain quite well. I don’t fear the shadow or dark (or winter for that matter), in the way I once did because I absolutely trust that we find our deepest growth and truest gifts in the dark. I have a healthy respect for it and the mystery that it contains, but I don’t feel the same need to push it away.

And like my friend said, we do resurface, find our bearings, and move back into the world with a new set of eyes.

If you are looking for some guidance as you traverse these dark days, are curious about consciously doing shadow work, or just need some extra support over the winter, check out Reclaim: The Heroine’s Journey that begins in one week!

11/20/2025

Sister reunion! ❤️💙💕

Had time this last week with my 3 sisters - 1 biological and the other 2 from the host family that I lived with in The Netherlands in college. We all gathered with my parents who are navigating a tough time while my dad receives treatment for brain cancer.

We laughed a lot, cried a lot, and spent hours catching up. Grateful. 🙏

11/19/2025

I was at a wellness conference this past week where I heard experts speaking on nutrition, exercise, meditation, psychotherapy, functional medicine, and nervous system regulation.

There was also a large hall of retailers selling supplements, exercise equipment, toxic free beds and makeup - any product that might encourage more health and longevity. While I am clearly curious about such topics or I wouldn’t have attended this conference, I couldn’t quite make sense of the discomfort I felt while walking through the exhibition hall of products.

I listened to a panel with Richard Schwartz, the therapist who developed and created Internal Family Systems, a form of parts based psychotherapy that has become known worldwide, and Gabby Bernstein, a well-known author who just wrote a self-help book based on Internal Family Systems.

During this discussion, Schwartz, who is an extremely humble, soft spoken man, said something that immediately helped me understand the discomfort I had felt earlier that day.

He essentially said “You can do all the practices and supplements offered here, but if you don’t touch your inner polarization, none of it helps.”

The inner polarization - that is it! If we never go inward to the deep places of ourselves that are split off from early painful experiences and reclaim them, it doesn’t matter how much yoga we do, or supplements we take, or kale we eat.

He was reminding us that we find more freedom and more authenticity (something Richard Schwartz calls “Self”) when we meet, reclaim and love the parts of self we have pushed away.

There are many ways to work with this inner polarization, or what some would call shadow work. Shadow work is often feared - that somehow if we delve into our shadow it will take over our life. However, the opposite is true! When we consciously bring awareness to our shadow, we seem to have more agency and choice about how life unfolds.

If you would like a guide, a methodology, and a community of others doing the important work of self-reclamation and integration, consider joining me for a 13-week journey called Reclaim. Details in bio.

11/19/2025

The Courage to Know Thyself
Recorded Wednesday, November 5, Noon

Have you been recently initiated? A divorce, a diagnosis, an empty nest, a job change, financial loss, addiction, midlife transitions, or the death of someone you love?

Initiation in the hero and heroine’s journey is the major transition point to a new life. It always includes trials, challenges, and entering the unknown.

In this free webinar, we are going to explore this initiation phase, normalize what can feel intolerable, and look toward why enduring this period prepares us for a life of deeper truth, aliveness, and potency.

The Courage to Know ThyselfWednesday, November 5, NoonHave you been recently initiated? A divorce, a diagnosis, an empty nest, a job change, financial loss, ...

11/17/2025

WHY YOU’LL LOVE IT

Betsy brings her knowledge of psychology and the wisdom tradition of yoga to understanding the phenomenon of transformation, awakening, and shifting consciousness.

Receive weekly encouragement, inspiration, and normalization for the personal (and also universal) process of change you are navigating.
Each week receive pointed soul work including journal questions, meditations, and contemplations that will help you take your process deeper.

EMBODIMENT PRACTICES
Betsy is a firm believer in taking intellectual wisdom and embodying it or actually feeling it in the body. Most classes will include a guided practice (yoga, breath, meditation, yoga nidra, hypnosis) to help you embody the top of the class.

You will receive each of these programs as a video or audio recording to listen to whenever you want.

CACAO CEREMONIES
Take part in 3 cacao ceremonies over the course of the experience. You will be shipped the cacao if you are out of town, or we will arrange a time for you to pick it up at the yoga studio.

Cacao is a superfood, a natural mood elevator, and is thought to produce an uplifting energetic state that opens the heart.
Each cacao ceremony will take place on the day of the new moon. New moons are ideal days to set an intention and settle into contemplation for the coming month. Because this course is about reclamation, rebirth, and rites of passage, we believe adding this powerful ceremony each month will enhance your process

LIVE YOGA
Join Betsy twice a week for yoga in person (subject to space) or online every Tuesday & Saturday at 9AM CST.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION
Private FB group to post and connect with others. Share reflections, insights, and questions as you move through the program.

11/16/2025

Hi. I’m Betsy, a licensed psychologist, certified yoga and meditation teacher, author, and momma of 3.

Several years ago in the midst of midlife, I was forced to face patterning, relationships and coping styles that were no longer working well.

At a particularly painful moment in this process where I felt powerless and stuck in victim mentality, a mentor of mine suggested we meet and do some meditation. We sat together for a long guided meditation, and during it, something unexpected happened. I felt an opening in my heart, a sense of warmth and support behind me, and heard very clearly, “Please stop worrying about your daily life. The important thing to know is that you are here in service to the Divine Feminine, the Goddess.”

This experience was so real, so visceral, and so comforting that I couldn’t ignore it. But what did this mean? Being in service to the Divine Feminine? I feared that I had “made up” this experience, and yet it was so undeniably real.

In true seeker fashion, I dove into learning everything I could about the Goddess. I voraciously read every book, I sought teachers engaged in this work, and I attended three different trainings around the world.

This deep self-inquiry led me to observe the deep split I was carrying between my inner feminine and inner masculine and how what I needed was integration of these two aspects of self. Beginning to work on this “sacred marriage” of my inner masculine and feminine led me to a beautiful space of vulnerability and strength that I had never known.

I have a sense that at this pivotal point in history, many of us need to reclaim our truth, which is supported by a balanced masculine and feminine. Learning to balance the seemingly opposite energies of rest and work, logic and intuition, kindness and boundaries are what will take us to a more evolved, peaceful state of being and in turn bring this balance to our world.

Support your truth.

11/14/2025

when the work is also the play.

11/13/2025

“Ok Queen”…my daughter said that to me in the last week! Not sure if it was a compliment or sarcastic!

Never the less, made me contemplate this archetype of the Queen from a depth psychology, or Jungian place.

The Queen archetype is sovereign, and responsible. She rules with integrity and resolve. Her decision making comes form a place of inner alignment, and she regularly displays courage and grace.

But this power she wields did not come without pain. You don’t step into the energy of queen without facing the shadow - the challenge, the dark, the pain, the hardship, and the required responsibility of this role.

You do not become a queen without facing your shadow.

Join me for 13-weeks of shadow work, depth work, inner contemplative practices, and the chance for deeper integration and soul work. Join RECLAIM - starts Nov 25. Details in bio.

11/12/2025

Did you know that we each have a unique constitution that favors certain seasons?

Fall and the transition to winter are not my favorite seasons! I become more anxious, experience insomnia, and watch my mind become hypercritical, perseverative, and controlling. For years I wasn’t aware of this pattern, and chalked it up to simply disliking the impending cold, wintery weather.

I now know it is so much more than changing temperatures. The season of fall is about letting go, death, and journeying into more darkness. Retrospectively I can look back and see that for years I was living in denial and avoidance and the last thing I wanted was to look at what wasn’t working in my life. So instead I kept numbing out, filling my life with “busy-ness” and putting up my walls of resistance.

Somewhere in my early forties, I was forced to start to deal with the parts of myself I had been unwilling to look at. Carl Jung speaks of how real life begins after age 40, and this is because the trapping of success or what the culture has told us will make us happy often start to fall short and we are faced with the task of beginning to listen to our soul.

Listening to the soul is hands down the best and most challenging task I have ever embarked upon. The art of listening to the soul is not a clear path, but rather circuitous and feels at times like a corn maze where you lose track of all direction. And yet, the soul is constant and continues to plant clues for us about what is in our highest and best good.

Four years ago I started a course in the fall called “Reclaim: The Heroine’s Journey”. I figured it would be a one time experience, but every fall I find myself circling back around to it.

Why? Because it works. The 13-week process of descending into ourselves during the dark days of winter, doing the inner work that allows us to meet the parts of self we have pushed aside, integrating the new guidance, and then emerging into spring more resilient and powerful is life altering.

11/11/2025

Feminine Reclamation Work? What is it?

It is to reclaim the parts of our feminine energy that we lost along the way in a patriarchal culture that pushes us toward perfection, achievement, and avoiding the messy stuff of life.

Feminine reclamation is taking back our bodies, our emotions, our creativity, and our intuition.

Most of lost our body somewhere along the way.   It wasn’t the right shape, or height, or weight, or age, or color, or you name it….we all have felt those external pressures.  

When we aren’t in the body, we instead are just in our minds which is a recipe for suffering.  We know we are stuck in our minds when we rush through our days, stuck in judgment, rumination, worry, and planning.

But when we drop our awareness into our body, something shifts.  When we choose to come into the body without a need to fix it or control it or even receive anything from it, we start to show up differently in life.  We show up with greater presence.  We are more emotionally self regulated.  Decision making gets easier.  And we are now tapped into a depth of wisdom and intuition that wasn’t possible when living from the neck up.

If you could use some accountability and encouragement to reclaim what has been splintered away by a very harsh and demanding culture, consider joining me for a 13-week deep dive into reclaiming the feminine. And by the way, we all carry masculine and feminine energies, so this course is not solely for women.  In fact, men would benefit perhaps even more as the pressures for them to abandon their body, emotions, and intuition is even more intense.  All details in bio.

11/08/2025

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just to the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” -Diane Ackerman

This quote deeply resonates with me as I contemplate the impermanence of human life, and how I want to live fully and widely into the whatever days are remaining. I am walking with my dad in his journey with brain cancer so the fragility of life is close at hand right now.

Admittedly, I have not lived widely. Rather, I have been stymied with perfectionism and this belief that there is a “right” and “ideal” way to live. How cautious I have been for large swaths of my life, avoiding the chance to widen into MORE, rather staying on a straight, narrow, and limited path.

Our culture is driven by the demand for perfectionism and it is so hard for us to look at the inferior parts of self. But we all have shadow! And I have found that when I am able to touch into my weakness, failure, shame, dependency, jealousy, inadequacy - that I recover more of myself and naturally feel more human and markedly more alive.

In Wisdom Wednesday this past week I offered 2 questions to wrestle with from the book The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller.

What is the vow your soul is waiting for you to make?
What will you have to sacrifice in order to honor that vow?

People courageously shared their vows during Wisdom Wednesday: Surrender. Let go of control. Release attachment to other’s options. Be true to self. Take better care of body. Chose self. Go inward. Free self from unhealthy relationships. Let go of outcomes. Walk naked into the universe without my ego.

People also shared what they would need to sacrifice: Fear. Stagnation. Sadness. Less focus on others. Doubt. Grief. Anger. Hypervigiliance. Judgment.

How comforting to hear each other’s vows and sacrifices and remember that we are not traversing this tangled Universe alone.

If you relate to any of this, could use some support and accountability, and are wanting a model for diving into the depths of reclaiming soul and unlived parts of self, consider joining me during a 13-week journey called Reclaim - details below. This is the time of year to dig into the dark!