Yoga – more than just exercise
Commonly today, the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions yoga is the postures or exercises. However, yoga is more than this.
In essence, yoga is about how to be with our self in any given moment in a quality of energy that is true in connection.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to ‘be with ourself’. This may be because when we start to re-connect, we can experience an array of feelings that we may not want to feel – such as anger, anxiousness, hardness, raciness or frustration.
So what do we do when we become aware of these strong unwanted feelings in our bodies and it doesn’t feel pleasant?
What I have found is that if I allow myself to ‘just be’ with these feelings, they are then able to pass through my body. I feel the feeling for what it is, without going into the story behind the feeling. If I keep feeling it as a sensation and if I’m able to just stay with that sensation, it can change.
Sometimes I find that the feeling can be just too intense and I’m unable to stay with it for any period of time. My mind might be busy and the story behind the feeling is too much. I react, perhaps there is judgement or a want for things to be different. That is OK as well, as I know that feeling will revisit my awareness and perhaps next time I am more ready to connect and allow myself to simply just feel what is there to be felt.
However, if I am able to connect with the feeling, locate and feel it in a certain area of my body, stay with it, sometimes it shifts like magic. I feel a shift in the energy and then sometimes, it disappears. The shift in my body leaves me feeling clear, light and sometimes joyful.
I have found the more I allow myself to feel what is going on in my body without reacting and as it shifts, I am then able to feel the loveliness of me. As that which was covering up the loveliness of me shifts, I am left with feeling a deeper connection to me. This is yoga and healing.
By Donna Nolan
Donna Nolan offers private yoga/yoga therapy, group yoga classes and offers Esoteric Therapies in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Sydney city and Cammeray. Contact us at info@yogaandhealing.com.au
Donna, this is such a great, useful, simple and amazing understanding, technique that you are sharing here, I was able to connect feel and understand what you wrote and explained, and I llove it! If we were taught how to deal with our feelings, emotions in connection to our body since very young, there wont be a need to bury, create so many addictions, get sick, fall in dispair and drama, and the list goes on…..It is also needed to expand and deepen the meaning of what Yoga truly is…Thank you.