A colleague, friend and sacred-gifted yoga teacher shared this with me today, something she wrote whilst on a yoga retreat in Ubud. I felt to pass it on. How do you connect into your body and yourself?
“For me, yoga has been my medicine. In every strength, stretch, twist, squeeze, and bend of a pose, the muscular and skeletal frame of the body is shifted. Each shift enables a release of tension in the fascia of the body. Myofacial release is the core of yin yoga, and by moving this connective tissue we can release not only the hardened and knotted tissue, but also the encapsulated stresses and traumas of our past. And I am talking about the emotional “stuff” that we tend to store in our muscles and connective tissue. Everyone has had a trauma of some kind in their life. Yoga is a therapy to help heal your heart, cry out your sadness, laugh away your resentments, dance away your fears, and just allow oneself to let go.
Yoga is not just about getting into shape, but is more about getting into yourself, and how to be present in your body. It’s those moments while breathing into a pose or when resting between poses that your body “speaks” to you about what is really going on in your heart.
Some people exercise to lose weight. They hate doing the exercise, but hate their bodies so much that they force themselves to keep going by disconnecting from their body. This is not yoga. Yoga is about connecting with oneself on all levels and being in tune with oneself on the physical, mental and emotional levels.
This attunement is what makes the heart sing.
by Deidre Parkinson, Naturopath and yoga teacher.
