Our Services

An Integrated, professionally trained team works collaboratively to support your healing goals by treating the mind and body to bring you back into balance and connection.

Yoga Services

With Bailey Ferguson

What you’ll need
– an internet connection
– a device with a screen and audio
– a space to sit on the floor on a yoga mat, blanket, or towel
– or a chair without wheels (or with wheels locked) and preferably without arms.

*I request that your audio and video remain on during our time together. Our yoga sessions are scheduled for 60 minutes.

Note
Yoga is a practice, it takes patience and time to develop a personal practice that best serves your body. We will do this together with lots of kindness, acceptance, modifications where needed, and teamwork.

I practice and teach a very gentle style of yoga called Hatha yoga. In Hatha yoga, we traditionally use a lot of props to help find accessibility and comfort in the poses. Props can extend reach, give a little cushion and provide support. We can repurpose household items like pillows, blankets, towels, etc to begin and you can always purchase your own yoga props as we progress if you’d like.

I will be here to help guide you every step of the way.

My goal is for you to experience the benefits I have enjoyed which may lead you to an independent yoga practice.

My hope for you is that yoga will become a lifelong journey of health and healing.

In addition to polyvagal yoga outlined on website pages, I also offer:

Chair yoga
Chair yoga is a fantastic alternative to traditional “mat yoga.” Anyone can practice chair yoga. Chair yoga is flexible enough to be either a physically challenging practice or calming, relaxing, and restorative. You may not feel comfortable in a seated position on the floor due to an injury or personal comfort. You may not have space or time to unroll your yoga mat for practice. You may just want to take a few minutes to practice yoga at your desk.

Yoga is for everybody. Chair yoga is widely accessible and can yield all the benefits of any traditional yoga practice.

Breathing exercises (Pranayama)
Pranayama is the practice of breath regulation. In Sanskrit, “prana” means life energy, and “yama” means control. In yoga, pranayama is used with physical postures (asanas) and meditation (dhyana). Together, these practices become powerful tools for physical, mental, and emotional health and healing.

Each is powerful on its own, but together, they form a trifecta of healing, regulation, and mindfulness. Together we’ll learn to use a few variations of pranayama purposefully inhaling, exhaling, and holding breaths in a specific sequence to signal safety and calm to the nervous system. That communication of safety to the nervous system becomes a cyclical conversation between mind and body. The beautiful thing about this tool is that you always have your breath with you and can use it any time, anywhere. It just takes a few moments to apply.

Guided visualization
Building on the tools you’re learning in psychotherapy, we will carry over your specific “vagal brake” imagery in conjunction with breath work and sensory grounding techniques to create a personal visualization exercise to feel centered and calm. We will use your unique imagery and build a tool that you can use on your own at any time to “apply the brake” and bring your nervous system back into a more calm, connected, and secure place. This tool can help you come out of a “freeze” or “fight it flight” response and into a ventral vagal state.

Meditation (Dhyana)
According to the Yoga Sutra (the basic text in yoga), the purpose of meditation is to interrupt the fluctuations of the normal mental noise such as external sensory input, memory, and imagination. The goal is to attain a “mind without disturbances.” Within our normal mental noise, a story is usually present. It may be a false story around a traumatic event or any story that is no longer serving us. It could be causing pain and distress. It is the hardest to quiet, as it incessantly feeds us glimpses from the past, or projections into the future, along with an endless stream of accompanying thoughts, feelings, worry, and anxiety.

Meditation may seem impossible right now, but with tools and guidance, we will start small by practicing for just a short time and work our way up to longer periods of mental quiet and stillness. Meditation can be a powerful exercise for quieting or interrupting the story our mind is creating and broadcasting.

It is a useful tool for finding moments of peace where we can enjoy a break and find mental and emotional balance. Once you begin this practice, you can take a break to reset and re-center almost anywhere. Like any other component of yoga, meditation is a systematic process, which takes practice and patience to learn. We will work together to train your mind to come back to you when you tell it and to sit still, even if for just a few seconds at a time.

Restorative Yoga
Restorative yoga is an amazing tool for healing and recovery. Restorative yoga is very gentle on the body and the mind. Restorative yoga encourages us to set up our environment for relaxation to help calm the nervous system. That means comfortable clothing, low lights, quiet and calm. As with any style of yoga, the physical poses are just one component.

Breath techniques, or pranayama in Sanskrit, meditation, or Dhyana in Sanskrit, work in tandem with restorative yoga poses to help heal the whole person and reconnect the mind and body.  Typically Restorative yoga utilizes many yoga props (or makeshift props) to support the body to find maximum comfort in each posture, which is usually held for a bit longer.

Restorative yoga encourages us to relax into each pose, softening into the support of our props, connecting consciously with the breath, and detaching from thoughts as they arise. 

For my Restorative practice and classes, I like to use a bolster, a set of 2 blocks, 1-2 blankets, and a yoga strap. These are, of course, all optional, and some practices require less or more. Most of us don’t have all these yoga props at home, don’t worry! There are many household items we can easily use instead, like pillows from the bed or couch, beach towels, throws, blankets, a footstool or folding chair, and a belt or tie as a strap. If you’re interested in learning more about Restorative yoga or would like to discuss scheduling a private class, please reach out to yoga@hilltophopecounseling.com  

Services Terms

The description of services does not guarantee that you will achieve optimum results. Your recovery depends on your willingness to: attend all scheduled sessions, be as honest and open as possible, and complete any assignments. Your commitment to improving will make all the difference in achieving optimum results.

Psychotherapy Services

With Cynthia Davis

Utilizing various treatment techniques, we will work together to bring you to a safe, social, connected state of mind.

Note: The symptoms outlined in this section are general and should not be used to diagnose yourself.

Co​gnitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) 

CBT has existed been around since the 1960s and was developed by Aaron Beck. CBT focuses on finding solutions to your problems versus just talking about them. CBT focuses on helping you solve problems and learn new skills to reduce your symptoms and improve your mood.

CBT is based on the concept that your thoughts determine how you feel and behave. The CBT model postulates that something happens, and you have thoughts about what just happened. You then experience emotions/feelings based on the thoughts and respond to the thoughts and feelings with behaviors.

CBT helps you become aware of the negative thoughts and beliefs that you tell yourself and teaches you to reframe them into more positive, useful thoughts. More positive thoughts lead to more positive feelings and behaviors.

CBT is the treatment of choice for:

Depression (Major Depressive Disorder)

✔️Symptoms that may indicate a major depressive disorder:

o Feeling hopeless and discouraged
o Low self-esteem
o Loss of interest in things that used to interest you
o Lack of energy
o Reduced concentration
o Feeling worthless, anxious, angry, and irritable
o Isolating and neglecting hygiene and appearance
o Loss of appetite, overeating, or weight gain
o Oversleeping or trouble sleeping
o Thoughts of suicide
o Being oversensitive to situations that result in mood swings
o Hypersensitive to rejection

✔️Depression can develop due to a thought or belief about a situation, distressing life event, or even
seasons.

Bipolar Disorder

✔️Symptoms that may indicate a bipolar disorder:

o History of at least one hypomanic, manic, or mixed-mood episode.
o Has an inflated sense of self-esteem and an exaggerated, euphoric belief in capabilities that denies any self-limitations or realistic obstacles but sees others as standing in the way.
o Is more talkative than normal—pressured speech.
o Experiences racing thoughts—flight of ideas.
o Is easily distracted by unimportant stimuli.
o Has an increased level of energy that is rigidly goal-directed but not efficient.
o Engages in impulsive activities that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., buying sprees, sexual acting out, foolish business investments).
o Impulsively uses drugs or alcohol without regard to the negative consequences.
o History of depressed or irritable mood episodes.
o Decrease or increase in appetite.
o Diminished interest in or enjoyment of activities.
o Psychomotor agitation or retardation.
o Sleeplessness or hypersomnia.
o Lack of energy; fatigue.
o Poor concentration and indecisiveness.
o Social withdrawal and lack of interest in activities.
o Suicidal thoughts and/or gestures.
o Feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, or inappropriate guilt.
o Frequent thoughts of death or suicide.
o Mood can cycle from depressed to manic (or vice versa) unpredictably

✔️ Many people achieve reduced symptoms of bipolar by taking medication, and it may be challenging to achieve optimal results in therapy without medication. You will need to see your Primary Care Physician, NP, or Psychiatrist for medications to treat bipolar disorder.

Anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder)

✔️Symptoms that may indicate an anxiety disorder:

o Excessive and/or unrealistic worry that is difficult to control, occurring more days than not for at least six months about a number of events or activities.
o Motor tension (e.g., restlessness, tiredness, shakiness, muscle tension).
o Autonomic hyperactivity (e.g., palpitations, shortness of breath, dry mouth, trouble swallowing, nausea, diarrhea).
o Hypervigilance (e.g., feeling constantly on edge, experiencing concentration difficulties, having trouble falling or staying asleep, exhibiting a general state of irritability).
o Demonstrates excessive worry regarding several life circumstances that have no factual or logical basis.
o Excessive worries about family, job, social interactions, and/or health.
o Tendency to blame self for the slightest imperfection or mistake.
o Abuses substances in an attempt to control anxiety symptoms.

✔️For anxiety, CBT involves learning behavioral relaxation techniques and reframing your thoughts and beliefs that promote anxiety.

o For instance, if you tell yourself every day that something terrible is going to happen and believe that only bad things happen to you, you will probably feel fearful and worry about what will happen next. This is anxiety.

✔️CBT helps you become aware of the negative, fearful, and worrying thoughts and beliefs you tell yourself and teaches you to reframe them into more positive, useful thoughts. By changing your thoughts and beliefs to less worrisome and fearful ones, your anxiety symptoms could lessen to a manageable level.

✔️Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) may also be useful in reducing anxiety, especially when the anxiety is caused by the recall of one or more distressing events and the belief that it will happen again. (See EMDR section below)

Substance Use Disorders (alcohol or drug abuse)

✔️Symptoms that may indicate a substance use disorder:

o Demonstrates a maladaptive pattern of substance use, manifested by increased tolerance and withdrawal.
o Fails to stop or cut down substance use once started, despite the verbalized desire to do so and adverse consequences caused by continued use.
o Presents with blood work (e.g., elevated liver enzymes, electrolyte imbalance) and physical indicators (e.g., stomach pain, high blood pressure, malnutrition) that reflect the results of a pattern of heavy substance use.
o Denies that chemical dependence is a problem, despite feedback from significant others that the use of the substance is negatively affecting them and others.
o Experiences frequent blackouts when using.
o Continues substance use despite knowledge of experiencing persistent physical, legal, financial, vocational, social, and/or relationship problems that are directly caused by the use of the substance.
o Demonstrates increased tolerance for the substance, as there is the need to use more to become intoxicated or to recall the desired effect.
o Exhibits physical withdrawal symptoms (e.g., shaking, seizures, nausea, headaches, sweating, anxiety, insomnia, depression) when going without the substance for any length of time.
o Has a history of arrests for addiction-related offenses (e.g., driving under the influence [DUI], minor in possession [MIP], assault, possession/delivery of a controlled substance, shoplifting, breaking, and entering [B&E]).
o Reports suspension of important social, recreational, or occupational activities because they interfere with using.

✔️Treatment for substance use disorders varies based on the severity of the condition and the type of substances used.

✔️ Withdrawing from alcohol or benzodiazepine abuse can be serious and even life-threatening if not managed correctly. It is highly recommended that anyone using these substances seek a medical detoxification facility.

✔️One of the leading causes of opiate relapse is withdrawal; highly uncomfortable physical symptoms. Medications and therapy may make relapse less likely. Medications can be accessed in medical detox or from your Primary Care Physician, NP, or Psychiatrist.

✔️Some individuals with substance use disorders may need residential or inpatient treatment if their symptoms are severe and they cannot achieve abstinence in their current living environment or in the community. Once they can return home or relocate to a safe living environment, they may be able to attend outpatient treatment safely.

✔️It is common for individuals struggling with a substance use disorder(s) to have destructive, negative thoughts. Often, these individuals believe they can only handle life by using substances.

✔️CBT helps you identify the negative thoughts, stressors, situations, and feelings that compel addictive behavior and teaches you to reframe them into more positive, useful thoughts. More positive thoughts lead to more positive feelings and behavior that can reduce the urge to use substances to change your mood.

✔️Several medications can assist in reducing the cravings for alcohol, opiates, and other substances. You will need to see your Primary Care Physician, NP, or Psychiatrist for these medications.

Treating Family, Friends, and Others Affected by Someone’s Substance Use Disorder

✔️Families (which include spouses and significant others) develop certain patterns to manage and survive the challenges of being with a person with a substance use disorder.

✔️When substance abuse has continued for a long-time, these behavior patterns become routine.

✔️When and if the substance abuser enters recovery, the problems don’t automatically disappear.

✔️A lot of damage has been caused within the relationships, and trust needs to be rebuilt before the family members will feel comfortable letting go of the responsibilities they have taken charge of.

✔️Including family members in the substance abuser’s treatment can motivate the substance abuser for recovery, help make the family more supportive of the recovering member and help to connect the family to their own recovery program.

For more information about CBT, see https://beckinstitute.org.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

✔️EMDR was discovered in 1987 by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., and is the psychotherapy treatment with the best outcomes for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related conditions.

✔️EMDR has been so well researched that it is now recommended as an effective treatment for trauma in the Practice Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association and those of the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

✔️EMDR enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress resulting from disturbing life experiences.

✔️ When you cannot process a traumatic event soon after it occurs, you are left with memories, emotions, and physiological trauma responses (fight/flight/freeze) that continue to intrude on your waking and sleeping states no matter how hard you try to suppress them.

✔️EMDR is intended to help you process a traumatic memory that didn’t get processed when the traumatic event occurred. Perhaps it was too devastating, and you didn’t know how to deal with it; you might have had so many distressing situations at the time that you had to put this one on the back burner until you got through the others. Or you were just a child who didn’t have someone to help you figure out what was happening to you or others you witnessed being abused.

✔️EMDR therapy helps to access the memory, issue, or symptom you want to work on by having you imagine the picture, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations associated with it. This helps to stimulate the memory network. The eye movements or other dual attention stimulation (tactile or auditory) used in EMDR therapy seem to unlock the nervous system and allow the mind to process the experience(s) in a more meaningful way. Dual attention stimulation (DAS) forces both sides of the brain to pay attention. The brain does the work, and you are in control, not your body.

✔️After successful treatment with EMDR therapy, emotional distress is relieved, negative beliefs are changed to more positive ones, and physiological trauma symptoms are reduced.

✔️For virtual appointments, we will use auditory DAS. You will need one device to connect AirPods, earbuds, or headphones so that you can access a YouTube channel with binaural beats.

✔️The other device must be connected to the telehealth platform, zoom, or another video app so that I can
guide you through the session.

✔️While EMDR is known to resolve trauma faster than talk therapy (CBT), it requires a minimum commitment of eight concurrent weekly sessions. Missing sessions reduces the efficacy of EMDR and can cause you to feel more uncomfortable between sessions.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

✔️All of your symptoms make sense as a response to trauma, and your behaviors represent valid attempts to cope with what has happened to you.

✔️While many have used self-destructive behaviors as coping mechanisms, these defense structures are most likely no longer working and negatively affect you.

✔️The ways that people find to deal with the intrusive memories and negative feelings associated with trauma not only affect them– they affect everyone around them.

✔️Symptoms that may indicate post-traumatic stress disorder:
o Has experienced a traumatic event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury and caused a reaction of intense fear or helplessness.
o Has witnessed a traumatic event that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury and caused a reaction of intense fear or helplessness.
o Experiences recurrent intrusive memories or dreams of the traumatic event(s).
o Acts or feels as if the trauma were recurring.
o Experiences intense distress when exposed to reminders of the trauma.
o Avoids stimuli that trigger traumatic memories.
o Experiences psychic numbing to avoid feelings or thoughts of the trauma.
o Has periods of disassociation or inability to remember parts of the trauma.
o Experiences persistent symptoms of increased autonomic arousal (e.g., difficulty sleeping, irritability, anger outbursts, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle response).
o Expresses verbal threats or displays physically violent behavior.
o Demonstrates a pattern of intimate relationship, coworker, and authority conflict.
o Engages in addictive behavior as an escape from the pain associated with the trauma.

Working with the body’s nervous system*

✔️Your autonomic nervous system is a network of nerves throughout your body that control unconscious processes. These are things that happen without you thinking about them, such as breathing and your heart beating. Your autonomic nervous system is always active, even when you’re asleep, and it’s key to your continued survival.

✔️The autonomic nervous system comprises two main branches, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, and responds to signals and sensations via three pathways, each with a characteristic response pattern. Through each of these pathways, we react “in service of survival.”

✔️No matter how inappropriate an action may look from the outside, it is always an adaptive survival response from an autonomic perspective. The autonomic nervous system doesn’t make a judgment about good and bad; it simply acts to manage risk and seek safety.

✔️We come into the world wired to connect. With our first breath, we embark on a lifelong quest to feel safe in our bodies, environments, and relationships with others.

✔️In each of our relationships, the autonomic nervous system is “learning” about the world and being toned toward habits of connection or protection.

✔️The autonomic nervous system is the foundation upon which our lived experience is built. This physiological resource is the neural platform that is beneath every experience.

✔️How we move through the world—turning toward, backing away, sometimes connecting, and other times isolating—is guided by the autonomic nervous system. Supported by co-regulating relationships, we become resilient. In relationships awash in experiences of misattunement, we become masters of survival.

✔️The autonomic nervous system is our surveillance system, always on guard, asking, “Is this safe?” Its goal is to protect us by sensing safety and risk, listening moment by moment to what is happening in and around our bodies and in the connections we have with others.

✔️Understanding the protective intent of the autonomic nervous system begins to reduce the shame and self-blame that trauma survivors so often feel. Survivors can become curious about the cues of safety and danger their nervous systems are sensing and begin to understand their responses as courageous survival responses that can be held with compassion.

✔️It’s not the event; it’s how the event is perceived that creates posttraumatic consequences. Even before the brain makes meaning of an incident, the autonomic nervous system has assessed the environment and initiated an adaptive survival response (fight/flight/freeze).

Using Polyvagal Theory to explore trauma and anxiety through body awareness*

✔️The Polyvagal Theory was proposed by Dr. Stephen Porges. Dr. Porges identified a biological order of human response that is active in all human experiences.

✔️Dr. Porgas identified a hierarchy of responses built into our autonomic nervous system and anchored in the evolutionary development of our species.
o The origin of the dorsal vagal pathway of the parasympathetic branch and its immobilization (freeze) response lies with our ancient vertebrate ancestors and is the oldest pathway.
o The sympathetic branch and its mobilization pattern (fight/flight) was next to develop.
o The most recent addition, the ventral vagal pathway of the parasympathetic branch, brings patterns of social engagement that are unique to mammals (safety and connection).

✔️When we are firmly grounded in our ventral vagal pathway, we feel safe and connected, calm and social.

✔️Dr. Porgas coined the term “neuroception” to describe how our autonomic nervous system scans for cues of safety, danger, and life threat without involving the thinking parts of our brain.

✔️The goal of polyvagal therapy is to engage the physical resources that support the prosocial behaviors of the Social Engagement System.
o The Social Engagement System is our “face-heart” connection, created from the linking of the
ventral vagus (heart) and the striated muscles in our face and head that control how we look (facial
expressions), how we listen (auditory) and how we speak (vocalization)
o In our interactions, we send and search for safety cues through the Social Engagement System.
o It is a ventral vagal state and a neuroception of safety that bring the possibility for connection, curiosity, and change.

✔️Through a polyvagal framework, the critical question “What happened?” is explored, not to document the details of an event but to learn about the autonomic response.

✔️The Personal Profile Mapping experience offers a way to enter into autonomic awareness and bring perception to the wordless experience of neuroception. Once the map is created, it becomes an anchor you can return to with the orienting question, “Where am I on my map?”

✔️Knowing where we are on our map brings us a sense of organization. Maps help us find our way, and on the autonomic map, it helps us find our way home, home to feeling safe and connected.

✔️Mapping interrupts the old stories and begins to build the capacity to separate state and story. And only by separating state and story, is it possible for a new story to emerge. Unless we know where we are we can’t know what we need to do to regulate.

*From The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, Deb Dana.