HOW I MANAGE ANXIETY AND STRESS THROUGH PRACTICING YOGA.

I was in Yoga class doing Ustrasana (Camel pose), a heart opening pose. I started to feel my heart beating more quickly, my stomach was tied up in knots. I easily could have thrown up. The panic forced me out of the pose and onto my heels. I shrugged it off thinking that maybe I just needed some water. After a quick drink, I continued. Class ended with Savasana (Corpse pose). Again, in Savasana, I started to feel my heart racing, my stomach tightening, and this time, tears welling up in my eyes. What was going on? Whatever it was, it was powerful; the tears kept coming, and I had no explanation for them. 

I later realized that I was experiencing the release of trapped emotions in my body.  This is a common phenomen in yoga. Corpse pose is deceptively simple. You lay on your back in a relaxed state for several minutes. The intent is to let go of worries and almost be meditative. In the midst of busy lives, it can be difficult to allow that level of relaxation. In that moment, I needed to purge myself of emotional stressors, and my body had a physical response to that release, something I've experienced multiple times since then.

No one is immune to emotional baggage. We carry around pain, sadness, rejection, contempt, etc. Have you ever thought about where you store all of these emotions? Yoga teaches that we carry them in our body. That mind, body, and spirit connection is incredibly interwoven and immeasurably powerful.

So many of us are on medication to control our emotional responses. Medication can be an important jumping off point for healing, but there's something to be said for allowing ourselves to feel. It's important to sometimes sit with our emotions, to observe them. Heartbreak, love, joy, sadness, grief, failure, and accomplishment all have places in everyone's lives. Giving our attention to the sensations accompanying those emotions and letting ourselves sit with them is part of processing our lives. It's how we build coping skills, so that we can push on in the face of emotional obstacles. It seems that some people are robbed of the opportunity to do so by the emotional numbness that can occur with medication. We can't be expected to feel everything intensely, we have to be functional in our lives, but we do need to achieve some level of balance. 

My yoga practice continues to bring me to this place of balance; a place where I can feel my emotions in my body and not judge them. As you go through your day, I urge you to observe what you're feeling without getting overly drawn in to the emotional response. Here are some things that have helped me on and off my mat. 

1.    Be present- I know, easier said than done. I so get the struggle in this. I have been trying to be present ever since I heard what being present was all about! It’s a continual battle in an overwhelming world with constant stimuli. We play so many roles, we take on so much, we go and go and go. Living mindfully all the time isn't realistic but reminding myself in the moments that it really counts is possible, like when I'm with my husband or children. There are times when it's far more difficult, such as the morning rush to drop off the kids, or when my mother calls me to find out where I am (for the third time in three hours), love you, Mom! When does it count for you? Aim to be present, to just be in the moment, to not judge, to not fix. JUST BE. Being present allows you to feel your surroundings and observe your own feelings towards them without judgement. 

2.    Breathe- How many times do we forget to do that in a day? I am constantly reminded in Yoga class “don’t forget to breath!” Breathing, and more importantly, being aware of your breath, is one of the most fundamental things we can do to feel and then let go. It is a tool to help us to experience our emotions and simultaneously work us through them. I often find myself not breathing when I am upset or nervous, holding all of my emotions in. Again, our powerful mind, body, spirit connection at work. 

3.    Feel it all and cry it out- Yes, men too! We have a tendency to only want to feel the good stuff, naturally, because who wants to feel sadness, grief, loneliness, etc.? Yet, as a therapist, I know how important it is to allow yourself to feel the array of emotions we were born with. All of our feelings play a part in our lives. We wouldn’t know what happiness was if we didn’t have sadness. It is ok to feel sad, it is ok to cry, it is normal, it is right. If you deny yourself the negative emotions, it is hard, if not impossible, to genuinely feel the positive ones. Furthermore, guess where all of those negative emotions go? You guessed it, your body. If it isn’t in your body, it will be in your relationships, your choices, and your destiny. Those emotions have to manifest. Yoga and breath awareness are two tools that I invite you to try, to increase the quality of your emotional life!

SOCIAL MEDIA, I HATE TO LOVE YOU AND SO DOES MY YOGA PRACTICE.

I started Instagram this year. I swore up and down that Facebook was enough for me, but I kept hearing Instagram was “better” and “less annoying", so I finally caved. My intention was to only follow people or pages that fed my soul. I'm a nature girl, my first follow was Natgeo (National Geographic). I searched next for people that were in my Yoga community. I loved seeing how real they were, and it genuinely inspired me. My search took me to a few others that were not in my personal community, but who were equally inspiring. Soon I was flooded with images of beautiful, perfect bodies, doing beautiful, perfect Yoga poses. I consider myself to be fairly rational, but I had to remind myself that this was Instagram, not real life. I started to notice feelings of inadequacy creeping in as I viewed these flawless women, because it felt so far from how I viewed myself. I saw myself as flawed and imperfect, and I was okay with that, before I was deluged with perfection. I would go into my practice and attempt to duplicate the Yoga poses I saw on Instagram. I became my worst critic; my comparison game wasn't feeding my soul, it was depleting it. I know I'm not alone in getting sucked in. We all love it, but, ultimately, end up loving to hate it. Social Media can work to our advantage and fulfill our positive intentions but only if we remain mindful. As you navigate through social media, keep the following in mind to avoid opening the floodgates to negative self talk:

1.    You are flawed and imperfect- we all are. A picture can capture only what you allow it to capture. The person posting the picture on Instagram wants to portray to others perfection, and they may be pretty great at what they're doing, but like the rest of us, they have their strengths and are average at a whole lot of other things. They are imperfect and have insecurities just like you do. Remember that, always. 

2.    What is your intention? Be mindful of why you are on social media. We often forget why we connect in the first place. What made us open that Instagram or Facebook account? What were we hoping to gain, find, or learn? These questions will always bring you back to the genuine purpose of connecting. When we start to forget our intention, we start to forget ourselves. We may also find that we need to reevaluate what we're taking away from social media and make some shifts in what we expose ourselves to. It's important to protect our souls and our feelings of well being.

3.    Your yoga mat speaks to you- ok not really, but you get what I’m saying. When you are on your mat, you will at one point or another start to have an inner dialogue with yourself. Listen to this dialogue, but don’t try to change it. Just be present and aware of what your thoughts are. I paid attention to mine, and they said "you are human and that is perfect."

THE FEARLESS YOGI.

During the course of my career as a therapist, I've found myself continually frustrated because I want more for my clients. I want them to experience a whole (mind, body, spirit) experience; achieving this is few and far between with traditional talk therapy. Talk therapy is an imperative part of the process, but it has inherent limitations. This is something I feel not only with my clients but in my own experiences. 

Yoga has been in my vocabulary for the duration of my life. My almost 100 year old grandfather practiced it every morning. My father taught me breathing techniques when I was a child. I've tried it sporadically over the years and knew a few colleagues who utilized it in their therapy practices, but I never did more than dip my foot in. I felt afraid for so many reasons. 

My age was one of them. I'm 38 and am a pretty well established therapist. I went through years of schooling and spent a lot of money to get to where I am today. I struggled with feeling too old and too invested to start something new. 

I'm not a yogi. In my mind I had to be a yogi to start yoga. Doesn't make sense, right? Well to my perfectionist brain it made perfect sense; you have to be the best at yoga to start yoga. 

I don't look like those girls on Instagram. You know which girls I'm talking about, the ones with the perfectly proportioned bodies doing those incredible poses (which you secretly attempt at home and then need your husband's assistance to dismantle yourself from). I never paid much attention to my body growing up, but now that I'm getting older and have given birth to two children, I'm more focused on the changes. I'm working on aging gracefully and fully accepting my flaws, but social media and the human tendency to compare makes it incredibly hard to do so. 

The most important part of my hesitation was that I wasn't clear on my intention. I've learned over the years that your intention always has to be clear or at the very least come from a pure place. When your ego has an intention you can guarantee it's going to steer you wrong. I wasn't sure if I was trying to prove something to myself, or if I truly believed in the power of yoga. I look back now and know that the origin of my intention wasn't ego based,  but the aforementioned fears were holding me back. 

It wasn't until I found my yoga tribe, this year, that I was able to find my fearlessness. I use the word fearlessness because that's what it really took for me to dive in. I saw so many young people around me not hesitating once about what they were pursuing, not using age as a limitation, not worrying about the way their bodies looked, not attempting to be the perfect Yogi. I wish someone would have given me the following suggestions when I first started my Yoga journey:

 1. Be fearless- don't let fear burn you... let it burn a fire in you. 

2. Be a racehorse- I was watching "The Defiant Ones" on HBO the other night and Jimmy Iovine said that racehorses are blind folded so they don't see what's happening around them, they just go. So just go!! Don't think about how you will look compared to your neighbor or what the person in front of you is doing. Just go! Live!

3. What's your end goal? -trick question! There is no end goal. Go for the experience and dwell in it,  breathe, and enjoy your Yoga journey, or whatever new endeavor your heart desires, every step of the way!