Envision Yoga works by calming your nervous system first, then building new beliefs while it is calm. The order is the whole trick. Alternating left-right audio settles the part of your brain that scans for danger into a quiet, receptive state, and only then do the yoga, visualization, and affirmations go in. Trying to change how you think while you are keyed up rarely sticks. Do the settling first and the same practice lands. I am Leah Davis, I built this method, and here is the mechanism, one layer at a time.
The audio alternates left and right, and that steady back-and-forth settles the brain into a state that resembles REM sleep. In that state, the threat-scanning part of your brain quiets down, your body stops bracing, and your thinking loosens up. This is bilateral stimulation, the same mechanism inside EMDR therapy, first described by the psychologist Francine Shapiro in 1987. Envision Yoga is not EMDR and not therapy. It borrows the calming engine and aims it forward. If you want the plain-language backstory, I laid it all out on the where this comes from page, and there is more on the mechanism itself in the benefits of bilateral stimulation.
A calm brain is a brain that can update. When your stress response is running, your system is spending its energy on survival, not on learning. Everything narrows. That is a useful setting when there is an actual bear, and a terrible setting for building self-trust. When the stress response softens, the opposite happens. You get more flexible, more open, more able to take in a new idea about yourself without the immediate reflex to argue with it. That receptive window is what the audio opens, and it is the window everything else in the session walks through.
Affirmations take root when they are repeated in a calm, embodied state rather than muttered at a mirror. Each session centers on one clear statement, like "I am safe," "I trust myself," or "I deserve success." You repeat it while the audio has quieted your system and while you are moving through yoga, so the phrase is not just a thought floating in your head. Your body is in on it. The brain's ability to form new pathways, neuroplasticity, is strengthened by repetition paired with a sense of safety, and that pairing is exactly what the session engineers. It is the difference between reading a sentence and rehearsing a scene.
The yoga is how the belief stops being an idea and becomes a felt thing. The postures, breath, and pacing are chosen on purpose. As you hold a shape and picture the version of you who already lives the affirmation, your body starts to attach the belief to a physical experience it can remember later. So instead of only thinking differently, you practice being different, in your shoulders and your breath and your spine. When the moment comes to actually be that person, your body has been there before. For the bigger picture of what the whole method is, see what is Envision Yoga.
Each element does real work alone, but stacked together they reinforce each other:
| Layer | What it does |
|---|---|
| Bilateral audio | Calms the threat response and opens a receptive window |
| Affirmation | Gives the session one clear direction to build toward |
| Visualization | Makes the future self specific and vivid |
| Yoga | Anchors the belief in the body so it feels grounded, not abstract |
Take any one away and it is weaker. The affirmation without the calm bounces off. The calm without the affirmation is just a nice rest. Together they are why students describe the method as feeling both gentle and unusually direct.
One session usually feels good. A calmer baseline, the kind that holds up on a hard Tuesday, comes from repetition, the same way one workout feels good but a habit is what changes your body. The REM-like state the audio borrows from is worth understanding on its own, and I wrote about that in how REM sleep inspires mental fitness practices. The honest version: this is training, not a switch. Show up weekly and it compounds.
Come to a class. I teach Wednesdays at 7:30pm in Echo Park, with times and sign-up on the classes page. For one-on-one work there are private sessions in Los Angeles or over Zoom, and teams can look at corporate wellness. You do not need to be flexible or spiritual. You need to be willing to move forward.
Is Envision Yoga the same as EMDR? No. It uses the same calming mechanism, bilateral stimulation, but EMDR is a clinical therapy for processing distressing memories, and Envision Yoga is mental fitness aimed forward at who you are becoming. It never asks you to relive anything.
Do I have to believe the affirmation for it to work? No. Resistance is normal and even useful. The calm state and the repetition do the work over time, whether or not the statement feels true on day one.
Is this just positive thinking? No. Positive thinking is a thought you try to hold. This pairs the belief with a settled nervous system and physical practice, so it is embodied rather than willed.
How long is a session? About 60 minutes, moving through settling, one affirmation, the bilateral audio, yoga and visualization, and closing stillness.
Can I do it over Zoom? Yes. Private sessions run online, and you will need stereo headphones or earbuds so the left-right audio actually alternates.
Envision Yoga is a neuroscience-backed mental fitness method in Los Angeles, created by Leah Davis, E-RYT 500. It is not therapy and not a substitute for it. Questions? Read the FAQs or book a 15-minute intro call.
The easiest way to find out what this is: come feel it.