Do you go to yoga classes but find yourself feeling tight in certain areas which are hard
to open up? Or engage in hip opening exercises and feel a rush of emotion?
If you would like to engage in individual yoga sessions and see if the energy blockages
or emotions are related to your mental health, I can help you! Sessions are designed
with yoga postures to address where you feel these blockages. Additionally, through
yoga, we build new neurological pathways to integrate our entire experience of our
body, allowing you to see the world and yourself as a whole and complete, exactly as
you are!
There are specific yoga approaches which address certain mental health diagnoses or
symptoms:
Dissociation: Grounding poses which bring us back to the present moment, movement
is slow and can be done seated.
Depression: Poses which enhance energy
Anxiety: Poses to slow the nervous system and calm the mind
Protecting Emotions: Slow cooling practices that are both grounding and pacifying
are good for individuals who process emotional trauma through anger, aggression, and
the need to be strong.
Nidra Yoga
Comes from Tantra yoga and its goal is to bring all the layers of consciousness together
to create a perception of wholeness, where our healing occurs. Nidra yoga works to
balance our central nervous system and directly affects our autonomic functions without
the body such as a parasympathetic system (our state of calm and relaxation and our
sympathetic system (our flight, fight, and freeze). Nidra yoga also helps reprogram our
intrusive thought patterns.
When we endure traumatic experience, we hold that experience in our body tissues and
each cell in our body has a reaction to this experience based on what the chakras are
relaying to the brain. The cellular tension, intertwined with postural patterns can create a
body armor that leads to chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and a sense of separation.
Deep relaxation of Nidra is not polarizing and provides the ability for you to become
deeply relaxed in your body, this reset, it provides the body the chance to let go of our
trauma patterns within the cells and reboot into new healthy patterns.
Pranayama
Pranayama is about our breathing, so it contains exercises which allow us to gain
mastery of regulating our breathing. When we have control of our breath, we control the
flow and direction of energy in the body, with this control we build empowerment and,
we induce relaxation calm, endure comfortable emotions, and control the flow and
direction of energy in our body.
When have a stronger connection to our breath, we gain a deeper connection to our
physical, mental, and emotional bodies. When we have better control of these bodies,
we can anchor our awareness back into the present moment. When we master our
breath, we can master our minds!!
Pranayama can be helpful to learn for those who experience a lack of focus and
experience uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety, fear, worry, tension, depression,
anger, and grief.
