It’s complicated to explain how yoga works and how it heals. Yoga operates primarily in the realm of energy, meaning we can’t really see it and if we are attuned we can hopefully feel it. Many emotions move through your body and heart and these emotions impact your energy. Shame, will clearly have a negative effect on your body, it’s a real nasty one, especially if you are constantly going there emotionally speaking.
I truly believe that part of the healing that we get from yoga comes from allowing emotions to have there time in the spot light and then to move them out. Each emotion simply put either feels good or bad. It’s impossible to only feel good emotions but we hope to live there most of the time.
Bad emotions can move through the body with a similar feeling to what a forest fire does to a forest. It burns through everything and anything. Some emotions even leave a burning feeling in the body like anger, rage, and insecurity and they can even cause you to physically sweat.
In India, these emotions are often described as the rasas, or tastes. Each emotion has it’s own face and personality. Each emotion has a purpose. Yoga can give us the space to process, move, and shift from bad to good, in one breath. I can be that simple but it takes practice.
Step on your mat and honour whatever emotional state you find yourself in, then set your intention to shift out of it if it feels bad to something that feels good. Take a long, slow, deep breath and try turn anger into love as you move through you poses, I think you will feel a shift at the end of your practice.
Shanti dear friends,
Mindy