Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psycho-spiritual, contemplative methodology gaining tremendous ground in the healing realms for its pithy and potent transformative potential in awakening a practitioner to the full constellation of our psyche. It’s a practice that seeks
to illuminate the dynamics of young, tender and sometimes traumatized parts of ourselves that have often been excluded or untolerated.

As an IFS coach and a longtime yoga teacher, the purpose of both practices intermingles strongly. We seek the inner corridors of our own personality structure the same way we seek ourselves out on the mat, with a dedication, a clear purpose, to not avoid the challenging aspects of the self. To turn towards our unresolved sorrow. To allow deep grief.

IFS is an opportunity to host what’s difficult, to make friends with our inner-exiles. If yoga is about “waking up,” the psychological aspect is what we often neglect on our mats and it’s about “growing up”— to become our own caretakers, to care for the young, inner child aspects of our nature that weren’t attended to when we were more vulnerable, when we didn’t have the resources to know it’s okay to not be okay. Cultivating curiosity and compassion around the unattended parts of our psyche.

Self-doubt, for example, is a primary part I see again and again on my own and other’s paths. It can come in with a vengeance, and it’s helpful to know it’s part of the human psychological make up. So, we can relax the self-condemnation and start to relate to this inner critic kindly. For most of us, it grows quite young (as soon as we’re relating to the world of speech) and is quite embedded in our psyche by the age of 7.

The method of learning to work with this inner critic, another young parts, is where the magic of IFS is manifest. We learn to cultivate self-energy, that internal resource, to heal our parts through mindful attention. We can utilize IFS inquiry and processes on the yoga mat so that asana reclaims its role as psycho-spiritual contemplation. Our practice becomes one of the places where we don’t hide from ourselves.

One definition I give to mindfulness is the courage to see what’s here. That doesn’t mean getting involved in why this came to be but rather to host consciously what’s here.

I encourage you to seek out the IFS paradigm to create a template out of your organism that can resonate with difficult frequencies and allow them to integrate.

May your practice be ever-expanding in its force field of presence in the face of disturbing features that will surely arise in our lives.

Originally published in Winter + Spring 2023-24 issue of Well.