After many years as a Licenced Trainer we are delighted that Claire has joined the Talking Mats team as a Consultant. In this blog Claire gives us an insight into her other passion and reflects on similarities between her yoga practise and Talking Mats.

A Tale of Two Mats: Synergy and learning from the yoga mat to a Talking Mat.

What can the philosophy and practice of yoga teach us about our approach to carrying out a Talking Mat?  Claire delves deeper into the key learnings from yoga and how the yoga mat can inspire our approach to Talking Mats.

Until last year, I was the AAC Lead in an NHS Children’s Service, leading service developments and supporting colleagues with AAC, alongside a caseload of children and young people who need AAC to communicate.  Part of my role involved delivering Talking Mats Foundation training to Speech and Language Therapists, other health professionals and education partners in the local area.

Now a Consultant and Associate Tutor for Talking Mats alongside independent SALT practice, I also qualified as a yoga teacher in June.  One unexpected benefit of this fantastic opportunity for further study and reflection on yoga philosophy and physiology, is the profound influence it is having on my approach to Talking Mats.   

Regulation

The definition of yoga according to Patanjali, is ‘the stilling of the mind.’*  In yoga, it is this stilling of the mind that enables us to focus on combining our breath with our movement.  How could this concept of stilling the mind benefit our Talking Mats practice?  Can we put aside external pressures of our busy caseloads to give our full attention to the Thinker as an active Listener? 

In yoga, we are guiding people to move away from the ‘fight or flight’ response of the sympathetic nervous system, to activate their parasympathetic nervous system, which puts us in a ‘rest and digest’ state.  By tuning into ourselves during a Talking Mat, we can benefit the Thinker by modelling a calm and well-regulated state, assuring the Thinker that they have our full attention and empathy. 

Furthermore, our Thinkers may well be in a dysregulated state when carrying out a Talking Mat  and we will need to carefully consider the optimum time to work with them to be flexible and responsive to their needs.  By ensuring that we are in a well-regulated state ourselves, we can fire copycat neurons known as ‘mirror neurones’ in the Thinker, helping them to co-regulate and engage more fully in the Talking Mats approach. 

Put simply, by showing up in a calm state, we have the power to greatly influence the positive outcome of the Talking Mat for our Thinkers who will naturally absorb our emotional and regulatory state and subconsciously regulate their own responses accordingly.  We are conveying to them that the Talking Mat is a safe space for communicating and for thinking, and that we are a safe person to guide and support them.

How can we regulate our own nervous system in this way?  We could start by slowing down our pace and bringing awareness to our own breathing patterns before and during a Talking Mat.  We could remind ourselves to breathe gently through the nose, and to engage the muscles of the diaphragm when breathing.  Being an active Listener and holding space and silence for someone involves great concentration, known in yoga as ‘dharana*’ where we focus our attention on one thing.  For a Talking Mat, the focus of our attention is the Thinker; and we can bring our attention not only to our Thinker’s words (either verbal or using other means of communication) but also to what our Thinker’s non-verbal communication  may be conveying, from their posture and movement to their facial expressions and gestures. 

Addressing the Power Balance

By focusing on regulation, we are working towards shifting the power balance away from the Listener towards the Thinker.  But there are further ways in which we can ensure that the balance of power in a Talking Mat remains in the Thinker’s favour.  Yoga philosophy teaches us to consider our limiting beliefs  or limiting patterns, known as Samskaras*.  Similarly with a Talking Mat, do we have preconceptions about how a Thinker might respond or are there others present who may unwittingly have expectations or influence how the Thinker will respond?  One deeply impactful concept from yoga philosophy is the theme of non attachment* whereby we can be truly free in life by not attaching ourselves to a desired outcome. 

Can we engage in a Talking Mat by practising non attachment in the same way?  Can we respond to someone’s views and opinions with neutrality, with no expectation or anticipation of a desired response?  By moving towards non attachment, can we practise cultivating our desire to facilitate, to listen, to hear and to act upon another person’s opinions, even if these differ from our own?

Conclusion

Like the Listener in a Talking Mat, a yoga teacher is there to guide and support people, rather than to direct or to push someone towards a particular pose or a particular outcome.  Although we only touch on some of the underpinnings of yoga philosophy here, there is much to suggest that yoga philosophy shares many of the core values of Talking Mats, and that by looking inwards, we can find increased connection and understanding with our Thinkers.  I am reminded here of Mahatma Ghandi’s observation that, “if we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”

Claire trained with Yoga Hero, Leeds @beayogahero as a 200h Vinyasa Yoga Teacher (Yoga Alliance Professionals accredited)

Notes

* Patanjali’s Sutras are foundational texts in yoga philosophy, believed to have been written anytime between 5,000BC to 300AD. 

*Dharana is the Sanskrit term meaning ‘concentration’ and is the sixth of the eight limbs of yoga in the Ashtanga yoga system

*Samskara is a Sanskrit term, one meaning of which is our limiting beliefs or limiting patterns that mean we act in a way that we have already acted

*non attachment is a key theme of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture that teaches about yoga philosophy

References

1. Caird, J.  Summer 2024.  RCSLT Bulletin ‘Presence of mind.’
2. Vyasa (2007). The Bhagavad Gita. Translated by Eknath Easwaran.Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press.
3. Sri Swami Satchidananda (2012) .Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: New Edition.  Virginia, USA: Integral Yoga Publications.

Talking Mats is delighted to welcome a new Training Associate, Jess Lane. Jess has written this blog to introduce herself to the Talking Mats community. Welcome, Jess, we’re thrilled to have you as part of team TM!

Hello! My name is Jess and I am thrilled to be introducing myself as a newly appointed Training Associate for Talking Mats.   

About Me

I am a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist with a clinical background in Learning Disabilities and Paediatric Mental Health. I also work for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) as a Research and Outcomes Officer, where I help to build research capacity, capability and culture within the profession. I am currently studying towards a Clinical Doctorate in Professional Health Studies, looking at the use of Talking Mats for facilitating the direct and meaningful involvement of children in care planning.    

Talking Mats has been a huge part of my career to date. This began in my hometown of Gloucester, where I worked as an SLT in an Intensive Support Service for children and adults with learning disabilities. Changes in my personal circumstances saw me relocate to Scotland in 2022, where I worked across Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) Services in and around Glasgow. Most recently, I worked at a National Child Inpatient Psychiatric Unit (CIPU), supporting children with severe and enduring mental illnesses.

Talking Mats in CAMHS  

Since completing my Licenced Training last year, I have been working with Talking Mats to deliver Foundation Training for CAMHS teams across the UK, as well as driving an upskilling initiative for Specialist Children’s Services locally in Glasgow. I have found that Talking Mats provides children with a safe space to explore topics that they might otherwise feel unable to communicate about, in a way that is highly supportive, sensitive and impactful. This is encompassed by feedback from a recent patient, who wanted to share that “using a Talking Mat is easier than talking because talking about how you feel can be difficult”.

Many of the children admitted to CIPU present with transient communication difficulties that can exacerbate the impact of mental ill health. Some children present with underlying communication difficulties that were not apparent in the community setting. Other children do not present with communication difficulties, but find it extremely difficult to think about, or share their views on, sensitive topics. Because of this, Talking Mats have been used extensively by the multidisciplinary team on CIPU to:

• Facilitate the direct involvement of patients in goal setting and care planning
• Adapt and extend traditional mental health inventions, including talking therapies
• Support capacity assessments, assessments of mental state and medication reviews
• Improve engagement with local advocacy services as part of the CTO process
• Adapt and extend assessments such as the Child Occupational Self-Assessment Tool
• Improve access to psychoeducation for patients with anxiety and/or depression 
• Improve engagement with meal planning for patients with an eating disorder
• Support the differential diagnosis process for mental illnesses such as catatonia

Using Talking Mats in an acute mental health setting has transformed the way clinicians from across Nursing, Psychiatry, Dietetics, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy and Psychology engage with the children about their care and treatment. Feedback from the clinical team, children and their parents/carers has been overwhelmingly positive. Talking Mats are now used routinely on the unit to support children’s access to (and engagement with) therapeutic intervention as part of their wider recovery, as well as ahead of all multidisciplinary team meetings and case conferences to ensure each child’s voice is heard and acted upon.

I am so pleased to have joined the Talking Mats team and am very much looking forward to supporting other people to use Talking Mats in a range of settings. Stay tuned for a follow up blog on how I have used Talking Mats as part of a post-diagnostic package of support for autistic children and young people, designed to support more focussed, strengths-based conversations around what it means to be autistic, in line with the core principles of neurodiversity affirming practice.