Emotional Release in Yoga Practice
When we first begin yoga practice it is sometimes accompanied by the bliss of walking in nature - traversing a path we've never walked, or strolling through a garden, seeing each flower and tree with eyes unjaded by repetition and familiarity. As we delve a little deeper into our practice or if we are just very present even early on, sometimes a surge of emotion can occur which might have us feeling a little bewildered and overwhelmed.
Although many yoga practitioners in the West still see yoga as primarily an "exercise," the truth is that yoga gets at some of our deep seated issues. It begins to awaken the emotional scars or what the yogis call in Sanskrit, samskaras. These are deep-seated, psycho-physiological grooves entrenched into our very cellular structure. As we begin to make 'space' in our selves, those deep-seated memories of pain, stress, and trauma rise to the surface. Chinese and Ayurvedic doctors believe that all dis-ease is caused by these deep samskaras. When the energy of the samskara is released and allowed to flow through the psycho-physiological body, then it can be re-channeled for more auspicious use.
Normally, when we feel stress, or emotional pain, we can feel it in our bodies. Perhaps you've experienced a tightness in your chest, or a headache when you've had an exceptionally challenging day. For many people, the messages of the body are ignored. That pain in your chest is a sign that there is some emotional stress occurring. It can be released right then and there with a conscious and present awareness of the feeling, or it can be ignored and subsequently stored in the body. These impressions are stored in the nervous system, and even the muscle fibers. The famous psychologist Carl Jung once said, "enlightenment is bringing the darkness to the light." When we practice yoga, we are bringing the emotions which have been sent to the deep, dark recesses of the body, into the light. From here they can be released and integrated
Furthermore, with continued yoga practice, increased body awareness allows a more present and expeditious way of processing emotional energy as it arises in new situations. Most of us do not realize that we are creating most of our experiences through a cognitive process. We think we are intelligent, so we act intelligently, or we think we are dumb, so we act in stupid ways. Alan Alda told us, "Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in." Our acceptance of conditioning we learned about ourselves and our world in childhood is like a sieve through which we view all manifest reality. Many of us are still operating from conditioning we learned several years, if not several decades ago. Have you ever noticed the thoughts that pass through your head and wondered why it is you think those particular thoughts repeatedly? What if you could change the thoughts you think most often so that your world reflected more prosperity, more peace, and more benevolence for others? Our samskaras are our conditioning. Yoga helps to release the blocked energy which hold these samskaras in place.
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YOGA HALE
Yoga: Sanskrit Word Meaning, to Yoke Oneself to God Hale: Hawaiian Word for House
