Are there secret stretches or poses? Is there a special mantra? Do you need to be a particular body type or personality to benefit?
Although yoga can include stretches, mantra, visualizations or breathing techniques, these are all just pathways to the same portal. The unique combination of yoga elements that helps YOU find healing is where the professionals can help. But healing is within each one of us and awaits you to invest in that journey.
The way we feel is so much more than a collection of bones and muscles. As humans, we have a complex matrix of feelings, experiences and physical sensations that combine to form our current reality. Everything that has even happened to you (even in utero!) is colouring how you interpret and catalogue today's events. One famous experience, regarding pain management, tracked groups of people who suffered paper cuts. One group had the injury at home while relaxing, the other while at work. Can you guess which group reported greater pain? Medical science is clear that the context of the sensation is highly influential on the level of suffering.
What if you could change that context? What if you could radically alter the way you interact with your day to day world? This is where yoga healing starts.
So much of our lives are spent improving things, judging, analyzing, ruminating, planning. Can you remember a time, even a very brief one, where you got a sense of something beyond that? Maybe you were watching a sunset, or listening to an amazing piece of music, or you held a new baby, and there was just this peace for a second.... a sense that the world was beautiful after all. That realization can bring deep emotion, even tears. And our busy minds quickly usurp our bliss and bring us back to the worrying and planning.
Yoga invites you to deliberately cultivate that peaceful, contented feeling. It might be the only activity in your day that does that. It's about taking time and making that commitment to develop that context that minimizes suffering. It doesn't have to take hours every day. Research suggests that, with practice, you can begin rearranging your brain activity in as little as 30 seconds! Focusing on non-reacting, taking slow even breaths through the nose and thinking kind-hearted thoughts for just 10 minutes at a time can effect lasting change.
Yoga is not about mastering an impossible gymnastics move or losing 20 pounds. Those things may happen but yoga is more about your mind as this is the place where the context will shift. To learn more about healing yoga, please visit our website at www.yogacentreniagara.com. If you live outside the Niagara Region (Canada), look for a certified yoga therapist credentialed by the International Association of Yoga Therapists. That professional can advise you on how to use the ancient practices of yoga for healing and finding greater joy in your life, warts and all.
