Showing posts with label emotional wellbeing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotional wellbeing. Show all posts

Contentment and Yoga: An Overview

14:33 | Labels: , , , , ,

by Nina

Sandy Carmellini by Brad Gibson
One of our readers told us that she started taking yoga when she was 48 and recovering from Hurricane Katrina. She wrote, “My first tears shed during my first Savasana, six months after the storm. The asana forced me to accept the world as it is.”

 Although a long health span is one of our main goals for healthy aging, we believe that cultivating contentment is also an essential part of aging healthfully. For what is life without some measure of happiness? A little peace of mind would be nice, too. Of course no one who lives in the real world can be happy all the time—it’s not even appropriate when something tragic like Hurricane Katrina happens. So when we’re talking about “contentment” what we mean is that you’re able to be comfortable with what you have and what you do not have. When you can face difficulty with equanimity and cultivate gratitude for what you have, true contentment naturally arises.

 How does yoga help with that? Well, to start, your asana practice can help you stay grounded. In general, doing a well-rounded practice takes you out of your mind and into your body, giving you a break from obsessive cycles of worry about the future, or regrets about the past. You can also target your practice to help shift your mood. Calming and comforting poses can soothe anxiety (see Yoga Solutions for Anxiety and our other posts on anxiety). Uplifting backbends and moving with your breath can relieve depression (see Tamasic and Rajasic Depression and our other posts on depression). And your asana practice can even support you through the grieving process (see The Way Home: Yoga for Grief). It was actually my epiphany about how valuable yoga was for emotional wellbeing that led me to become a yoga teacher and ultimately a yoga blogger (see Yoga for Emotional Wellbeing: An Epiphany).

 But being able to stay grounded emotionally is only the first step. Mindfulness practices, including both meditation and breath practices, can teach you about your mental habits. And when you start to notice your automatic behavior—whether that’s stressing over small things, eating unhealthy foods, losing your temper, or anything else destructive—there’s a chance to head it off before it starts. This helps you make positive changes in your life that can support your overall goals (see A Pathway in the Mind).

 Finally, yoga philosophy provides wisdom that can change your entire perspective on life. The original aim of yoga was peace of mind, and the yoga scriptures were written to help us all realize that goal. In fact, the yoga scriptures are so full of profound observations about the nature of the mind and the causes of human suffering that you are sure to find something that speaks to you. Mohandas K. Gandhi said that the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita allowed him to maintain peace of mind as he fought for social justice. Ralph Waldo Emerson was inspired by early translations of yogic texts as he developed his philosophy of Transcendentalism. And Henry David Thoreau practiced meditation and pondered yogic concepts as he explored the nature of solitude during his time at Walden Pond. He even wrote:

 “Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. … The yogi, absorbed in Contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating Original matter. … To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.”

 Look up yoga philosophy in our index to find out more about the wisdom of yoga! (See How to Search for guidance on how to search.)
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Yoga for Emotional Wellbeing: An Epiphany

10:36 | Labels: , , , , ,

by Nina

Sand Dollar by Melina Meza
I don’t have a particularly exciting story about why I started practicing yoga. (It’s kind of humorous actually. When I was in my late twenties, I was working at a small software company and we wanted to start an on-site exercise class. One of our co-workers said that his wife could come and teach us, so we decided to give it a go. We had no idea she was a yoga teacher! So there we were, for our first class, and she asked us to stand in “Mountain pose,” with our big toes together and our heels slightly apart, which was the opposite of the foot position I was used to doing in ballet and modern dance, my previous forms of preferred exercise. And just standing that way felt so wonderful for my body, I thought, whatever this is, this is for me!). However, I do have a more dramatic story about why I decided to become a yoga teacher.

During the period when I was studying yoga with Rodney Yee and writing our first book together, Yoga: The Poetry of the Body, Rod helped me understand how my yoga practice was benefiting me in emotional and spiritual ways, as well as physical ones. It turned out that by practicing regularly at home—something I had taken up intuitively rather than with any specific goals in mind—I had been learning to manage my stress, balance my emotions and cultivate equanimity without even realizing it. (If you read the dialogues in the book Yoga: The Poetry of the Body, you can witness Rod helping me toward that realization.) And as someone who had suffered in the past from chronic stress (working full time at a software start-up while raising two children!), which had led to a bout of agitated depression, I began to see the tremendous power yoga had for helping people with emotional difficulties of all kinds, including stress, depression, anxiety, anger, and general dissatisfaction or unhappiness.

Then, one morning when I was practicing yoga with Rod and his best friend, Ian, Ian began talking about how he had just learned that a colleague of his had committed suicide.  (Yes, sorry to disillusion you, those guys chatted constantly while they were practicing.) And while I was in Shoulderstand, I kept thinking about about Ian’s story, and filled with compassion for his friend—for the suffering he must have experienced to lead him to take his life—I began to cry. I realized then that while I could not help Ian’s friend, I did have quite a lot of knowledge that I could use to help other people who were suffering. And while I had no particular ambition to become a yoga teacher per se, I understood at that moment that I really should look into finding a way to share what I knew. Yes, it was one of those actual epiphanies (and I had it while I was doing a yoga pose).

After that, I started doing two things. First, I began taking as many workshops as I could from teachers like Patricia Walden, who teaches workshops on Yoga for Depression (I took that more than once!) and Yoga for Emotional Healing, and Roger Cole, who teaches about the physiology of inversions. Then, I enrolled in a three-year teacher training program at The Yoga Room, in Berkeley. Clearly I believe in being thoroughly prepared! Finally, when I felt ready (and when I got the go-ahead from Patricia, who was informally mentoring me) I did begin teaching workshops on Yoga for Emotional Wellbeing, Yoga for Stress and Yoga for Better Sleep. Those were rewarding—there is nothing like having even just one person tell you that you made a difference in their lives by teaching them a simple practice, like breath awareness—and I still teach them occasionally. But I eventually realized that writing is still my forte and that I could reach a larger audience through my writing than by teaching local workshops.

When Baxter and I came up with the idea of starting a blog, I realized that a blog could be the perfect venue for me; having our own blog would allow me to give myself the power to write about what I wanted to write about, the way I wanted to write about it (frankly, the way some publications edit/rewrite you can be positively painful). And because the blog was free and accessible world wide, I could reach people who would never be able to study with me in person.

Because I not only write for the YFHA blog but I’m also the Editor in Chief, I work on the blog at least five days a week (and sometimes behind the scenes on the weekends). And that takes a lot of dedication. But that original epiphany I had in Shoulderstand and my ongoing passion for sharing what I know about the emotional and spiritual benefits of yoga—as well as the physical ones—are a wellspring that never runs dry.

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