Self-Love and Yoga Therapy

I started this post with the intention of writing about self-love and self-care. It wasn’t flowing, interestingly not because there wasn’t enough energy to move me but the energy was moving in a different direction.

I remembered that today marks a year from my last observational assessment as a trainee yoga therapist and as such it marks the end of the 2 years of studying and beginning of life as a yoga therapist. It’s a day to celebrate! 😊

Yoga therapy is something that I have always been drawn to because intuitively it made sense. From my personal experience of the effects yoga can have on my wellbeing I knew that these practices have, perhaps subtle, but powerful effects. Not just physically but also mentally, psychologically, emotionally. Most importantly, these practices could create a safe space for me to explore and understand myself better, as they pointed to my blind spots. Yoga is a practice of self-exploration and ultimately self-realisation. Yoga Therapy is the practice of moving deeper into the subtleties of our unique manifestation and experience of life, to understand it and then using the practices as tools to bring back equilibrium where perhaps we have gone off-centre. Which, in many ways, sounds like self-love and self-care to me.

Going off-centre sometimes looks like insomnia, sometimes as anxiety, sometimes as stiff shoulders and pain in our joints. Sometimes it moves deeper into our tissues and manifests as a disruption to our immune system, our heart’s functioning, our digestive system.

Yoga therapy has taught me a truth I intuitively already knew: we are a whole human being and we are all interconnected. Our thoughts affect our bones and our feelings disrupt our natural rhythms and our bodies’ ability to find equilibrium. There is a concept called tensegrity which is a structural principle of the maintenance of tensional integrity. It also applies to our own bodies and it demonstrates our wholeness on a physical level – when compression happens in one part of the body this will ripple through to each and every part of that contained structure which is our bodies.

Yoga therapy understands and treats our beings as a whole and in relationship to our context, our sense of self and our ideas of what makes us happy. It invites us to stay present with ourselves and pay attention to what needs to be released and what has stood in our way. It requires self-love, or at least enough care, time and attention to stay present with ourselves enough to acknowledge what is present.

Sometimes we don’t see what is present because it has been there for so long, it becomes a second skin. Until we become depleted and used up. Our body will always speak to us, first in whispers and then in loud screams, until we listen. Yoga therapy provides the tools to help us listen. Sometimes it does need to reach the point where all the energy has run out and the well has dried up for us to take stock that we need nourishing and nurturing, and we need to look after ourselves.

Sometimes we forget altogether what it might feel like to put ourselves first, look after our hearts, and manage our energy so that we have some left in the reserves for the re-opening and recovering of our shattered pieces. The moments that we need to pause and breathe are probably the ones that we are least able to or want to. Slowing down can feel excruciating. So how do we move forwards from places that feel impossible and utterly overwhelming, suffocating and stuck. Perhaps with patience and an intention to listen.

Breathing helps, but sometimes it’s not enough. Moving helps, but sometimes that is not enough either. Ultimately, I think we need to learn to trust and have faith that we are being supported, we are being looked after and we only have to “do” whatever it is that is in front of us to do. Not the 100 things swimming in our minds but just that one thing that is in front of us to do. Which ultimately, first is to listen to ourselves, take stock of our starting point so that we can establish a sense of where we are going.

You can find more about yoga therapy and book a session with me here.

In the meantime, perhaps let’s create an intention of putting our energy into good use by attending to our selves each day, whether that looks like a half hour daily practice, a 10-minute walk, or a whole minute of taking a deep breath in and out, enough to check in how we are feeling today.