Dealing with negative thoughts and emotions

When we are in emotional turmoil thoughts can go around and around in our head. They become so persistent that we cannot sleep or concentrate on any other job. The emotions that accompany them threaten to overwhelm us. In the worst times we become quite dysfunctional and mentally unwell.

For example, perhaps we lost a job or broke up with our partner. Beliefs about ourselves that have their origins in childhood may arise, such as "I am not good enough", "there is something wrong with me", "I am stupid", or "I am unlovable". And with each of these beliefs comes wave after wave of emotion, such as sadness, anger, shame and guilt. The emotion reinforces the belief and the belief reinforces the emotion.

Not surprisingly we find these emotions and beliefs uncomfortable and we regard them as negative, and something to get rid of. So we resist them, try to push them away, suppress them. This might work for awhile, until something else happens, and those old beliefs are arising again and along with them come all of those "negative" emotions.

We want to know how can we deal with these negative thoughts and emotions and be rid of them forever?

Properly understood, all experiences are signposts to guide us back to our inherent wholeness. We take such emotions and beliefs to be "negative" only when we misunderstand their role and lack the skills to welcome them and receive their messages. 

When we truly welcome and observe all emotional experiences, all thoughts and beliefs, we cease to mistakenly identify with them and learn to recognise that they truly are just passing through. 

In so much as I am sad in this moment I can also be happy. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can observe my emotions pass through, and I can enquire into them, discover a belief that is accompanying them, explore the belief, discover all the messages they are bringing me. I can also invoke and welcome the opposite belief and emotion, so I know that none of it is permanent.

Be drawn to the practices and wisdom teachings that help you to learn to meet and greet whatever arises. Learn to be curious about the felt sense in the body of any emotion and to watch it pass through. Learn to recognise the temporary nature of all movements of the mind, and how to remain at ease in every situation. Recognise that no thought or emotion is truly a negative experience, they just are, and they all have a valuable message that will show you the way home to your inherent wholeness.

The practices we are given in iRest®, whether as Yoga Nidra or meditation, establish a safe place to practice and develop our skills in meeting all that arises. It nurtures us to be open and welcoming and always at ease in every situation. These are ancient teachings that cross many cultures as the poem by Rumi below attests. But in iRest they are packaged to be accessible to us in our modern world.

Translation by Coleman Barks. Image from www.yearofjoys.com

Why older women need yoga

The Yoga market place is flooded with images of the young and beautiful smiling their way through impossible yoga poses. So much so that men, older people, and the not so flexible are likely to judge themselves ineligible.

Here are five reasons why women really need yoga from midlife and beyond.

1. Older women are at risk of losing bone mass - osteoporosis. Yoga provides gentle resistance training that helps the bones osteoblasts build stronger bones.
2. As we age our muscles atrophy at a faster rate. Exercise is needed to build them. Yoga is great for building muscles in a relatively risk free manner.
3. Yoga builds body awareness, breath awareness and includes practices that release endorphins. Its better than chocolate because it burns calories rather than adds them. Older women, especially in the peri-menopausal years face mood swings that these endorphins can certainly help.
4. As women age they often report that they do not sleep very well. The relaxation practices of yoga help to compensate for lost sleep and establish the conditions for improved sleep.
5.  Yoga works on core strength, including pelvic floor strength. This is great as it helps to prevent back injuries, relieve existing back soreness and, bonus, helps prevent bladder leakage, a common curse of the older woman.

But you do need to choose your class. Mixing it with those hot bods of the 20 somethings might not be the best option. Practice yoga amongst your peers and with a teacher who is trained to understand your needs, better still if the teacher is also your peer in age.

Practice makes perfect

It is true, that which we practice we get better at. That being true, we need to be careful of what it is we are practising.

Yesterday I got my grumpy pants on.   I am so grateful that this was observed to me, because if I had gone on practising that, I would have achieved the perfect bad mood and soured things for myself and those around me. Today that got me thinking about practice in general, yoga practice in particular (there is no difference actually) and the Yoga Sutras and how we must be careful of what we practise in every area of our life.

In our physical practice of Asana it is important to remain vigilant to discover or uncover any misalignment for if we do not we are just continuing to practise and get better at something that is inherently unsound, perhaps even leading to injury. Sometimes we might have very ingrained movement patterns we are not even aware of. These might be creating imbalance in the body and pain might be the result. With the assistance of our teacher we can start to uncover these and to repattern our movement and eventually perfect something that has much healthier consequences.

It is similar for the non-physical areas of practice.

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali has given us a manual for the practice of yoga. OK, so it is rather short on what we tend these days to think of as yoga, all those postures! But the postures are not really yoga, not in themselves. Right in the second sutra Sage Patanjali tells us what yoga is.

I.2. Yoga is the stilling of the movement of thought in the indivisible intelligence.

What he sets out in the sutras is a path to attain that state, and these days we can add our posture work to the path. Patanjali's path leads us to the practices of meditation - withdrawing from distractions, concentrating, mindfulness and absorption. This is the path of Raja Yoga, but he very compassionately gives us practices for everyday living to begin with that prepare our minds for what is to come.

So it is that at I.33. Patanjali provides a method of attitude towards our relationships with others.

II.33. Four attitudes to vicissitudes are conducive to peace of mind:

(1) Friendliness towards the joyful

(2) Compassion for the sorrowful

(3) Rejoicing in goodness

(4) Indifference to badness - not being drawn into it nor holding others in contempt for it

When we practice these we are changing our brains, shifting it away from suffering and into joy. And the more we practise, the better we get at them.

The reverse is also true. If we resent the joy we find, we become well-practised at being resentful; if we do not cultivate compassion a sour heart will taint our well-being; if we fail to rejoice in goodness and do not endeavour to surround ourselves with good people, and if we are caught up in badness, badness is what we will perfect.

Later, in Book Two, Patanjali give us more codes for living in the yamas and niyamas. But right here in Book One we have things we can do, attitudes to practice that are most definitely yoga.

Yesterday in my grumpy pants I stepped off the path for a moment.  I am so glad I quickly found my way back on again.

Keep practising, but make sure it is the right thing!

With love
Tina

Relieving deep exhaustion with yoga

As I lay in the Big Relax last Saturday, I began to let go. I had begun the session by leaping up to assist Cherise, helping students to set up their blankets in that wonderful art of blanket origami that is a part of the art of restorative yoga.  Then I began to recognize what I had not been taking time to acknowledge.  I felt deeply exhausted.  I began to settle into the practice. soaking up the deep relaxation of just being. It may sound odd but after two hours of restorative I still felt really tired.  I listened to this, I went home, had dinner, did no more work that day, and had an early night. And woke enormously refreshed.

This all happened after a week during which I had been pushing myself to take advantage of every waking hour to do more.

I have a friend who had an extremely high pressure, powerful but stressful position; and then she stepped back from it.  Discussing that later I asked her how she was finding it.  She told me that as she took on more and more she hardly noticed the increasing pressure.  Like the proverbial live frog in the pot in which the temperature is rising who doesn't jump out, she had simply absorbed.  "Now I have stopped" she said,  "I am exhausted.  I didn't know how exhausted, until I stopped."

The lesson is that we do not always recognize the symptoms of our deep exhaustion until it erupts as illness. But we can be wise and take steps to give our body and mind the true rest it needs.

This is what restorative yoga does. We support the body really well, and feeling that support, the body can finally relax. When the body relaxes, so can the mind and all of our organs and all of our cells can be flushed and refreshed with blood.

Donna Farhi, writing in Yoga, Body, Mind and Spirit said it more eloquently.

"In a restorative posture that has been well propped, one feels absolutely comfortable with no intense stretching sensations. Don’t mistake this, however, with a mild result. It is the graduated nature of the position that will allow you to stay for much longer periods of time than you might normally if you were practicing a posture more actively. This longer stay allows the key organs and glands to become drenched with revitalizing blood. Because the action reaches deep into the nervous system, the practice of these postures can dismantle chronic tension patterns, improve immune function, and bring the body and mind back to their original state of equilibrium."

We can learn from the suggestion of Judith Hanson Lassiter, author of Relax and Renew, "practice at least one restorative pose every day, at least one full session of restorative yoga every week, and one full week a year doing nothing but restorative yoga".

If you attend classes and learn restorative yoga from a good teac her you will learn to finesse your setting up to attain "impeccable standards of comfort" (Neal Ghoshal). But here is one pose you can always rely on.  It doesn't need a lot of props and you can do it almost anywhere.

Easy Rest, or Constructive Rest position is a pose you can do for ten minutes every day. Lie on your back on the floor and feel the spine laid along the floor.  Bend the knees and rest your feet on the floor. The fussiness in this restorative pose comes in the exact positioning of the feet. They should be hip width apart, with the weight evenly distributed underneath them. so sense the weight under the feet. try lifting them up and putting them back down again and sensing that weight beneath them.  If they are too close the weight will be more in the toes. If they are too far away the weight will come into the heels. If the feet are too wide, the knees will want to collapse inward, if they are too narrow the knees will want to collapse outwards. So shift the feet around a little and find that just right position.

You might find that your body greets this position with a deep "Yes". Close the eyes over and just rest here, watching your breath, for ten minutes.

To come up, roll over to your side and stay there awhile and then come up giving weight into your hips, supporting yourself with your hands and let your head arrive last.

(Picture credits: Babbling brook - http://www.yogaforgriefsupport.com/blog/restorative-yoga
Constructive Rest position - http://www.coreawareness.com/articles/the-one-muscle-that-does-not-need-strengthening/)

A decade of teaching

With Guest blogger Cherise Vallet

Celebrating Cherise's ten years of teaching at Yoga Spirit Studios


My birthday more or less coincides with when I began teaching at Yoga Spirit 10 years ago. Birthdays mark the passing of such a solid unit of time – a whole year. There, bam. Like a kilo of apples. An acre of land. A hundred dollar note. Another year. Then those years click together, side by side, and another chunk of time with a bigger thunk – a decade. And I’m still here.

First thing worth noting – I’ve never worked at any other job for 10 years, though I suppose this isn’t technically a ‘job’. More a delight. An opportunity.

The experience has been an ever-changing one and maybe why I’ve stuck with it so long is because of the variety that teaching offers – stimulation and challenge on all levels. Emotionally – facing fears, facing my ego. I’m sure students had no idea that there have been times I’d go home after teaching a class and wake up in the night full of self-criticism for some way I’d taught, how I’d missed explaining this or showing that, or that I allowed too short a time for savasana. I used to worry why my class numbers could be so low for awhile, and then high for a time – was I not teaching well? Over time I have learned to let go of that thinking for the most part – I know the way I teach doesn’t appeal to everyone, but I’ve found that the students that come back again and again are coming because they receive something from me, and I from them.

Cherise enjoying beach yoga in WA

I discovered Yoga Spirit Studios (then known as Torrensville Yoga Studio) in 2003. I had been doing a short yoga practice a friend had shown me several years previously, quite faithfully on most mornings up to that point. It only took about ½ hour and once memorised required little thought, just breathing and moving. This had become my routine while living in the beautiful southern countryside outside McLaren Vale. It was a few minutes that gave my body some nice stretches and maintained some strength, the breathing offered a particular sense of calming and balance that was fortifying during a period of immense change in my life. Then I moved back into the city in early 2003.

I missed the countryside so much once I came to the city – I could feel my whole being crying out at the loss of all that space and beauty. I saw an ad in the local Messenger paper for a 6-week Introduction to Yoga course and decided that could help fill the gap. The course was magic. Suddenly my body was invited to consider more deliberately the conscious thoughts of the mind, and even include awareness of the heart and what my body was feeling. In the first class I remember having tears stream down the sides of my face while reclining back into Savasana, soft little drips landing on the mat under my head. My heart felt so happy. My body felt so alive – I was aware of it all – the humming thrum of blood moving through my veins, the swelling of my abdomen and chest as I breathed, the weight and length and breadth of my body and a profound sense of nourishment, happiness – coming home. And so my association with the Studio was born – first as a student, then as a teacher trainee, and then as an ongoing student and teacher for the past 10 years.

I’ve taught the Tuesday evening Experienced class for around the past seven years – a long time to teach one class, and there is a reliable core of people who have come to that class all that time. I feel connected to this little community of steady practitioners.

My classes in the McLaren Vale region where I have since moved back to have also attracted a small but loyal following. I’d love to be roaringly popular I suppose, but that’s not happened as indicated by large numbers of students. The wonderful people who come regularly, however, do bring such presence. And this helps me see that it’s not all in the hands of the teacher – the students who come along in such a steady way have a deep impact on the tone of the class, providing a sense of continuity and make it easier for me to build on themes/approaches etc.

Cherise does headstand in Spain

Every time I enter the doors of the Studio I get this sensation – I’m home. My body has a memory of that first night, I’m sure. When I do yoga these days, it’s less regimented, not aligned with a set of postures I repeat daily, though sometimes I’ll have weeks of spending time in particular postures, then gradually emerging into another range of postures. My faithful body is a good guide, and some of my most wonderful experiences of practice are when I simply follow the prompts of my arm moving, my leg wanting to stretch, the energy to move vigorously or desire to rest. It is food for my being, this yoga I know. A practice in consciousness, noticing the rise of impulse from my body, the long sigh of an outbreath, the way my arms support the weight of my torso in a particular pose, and my legs in another. In a yoga practice, my body is less of a robot and more of an alert animal, seeking the clearest line, the most delicate balance, the release of breath and stretch and softening. I come home to my body daily, and in this moment, in this practice.

I count myself very fortunate to have seen that Messenger ad for the Introduction to Yoga course so long ago. The path that first tearful savasana put me on has opened continually over the past decade through this experience of teaching yoga. It is a great privilege to be able to share these gifts of yoga to enhance life for myself and others. When I seek to enhance the lives of others, I am automatically nourished, I automatically receive the gift of my kind intentions. It’s quite a foolproof way to create happiness. And happy is how I feel to still be teaching yoga after all these years.

Meeting aversion

Yoga Sutra 2.3

Attachment may be the cause of our suffering, but aversion is the flip side of the coin, an attachment in reverse, a clinging to not wanting, and thus pushing away, that only compounds our suffering. As with everything thought the key is to notice and to welcome. Welcome the thing that creates aversion as well as the aversion itself.

How often does aversion turn up on the mat for you? Yoga practice is called practice because it is where we can mindfully practise all that we need to get skilled at in order to meet life with equanimity. And sure enough, aversion can also turn up in our yoga, just as much as our love for it does.

Ever been in class and not liked the particular class the teacher is delivering? Too slow, too strong? Something about it was not what you Like about doing yoga?  That is aversion. But did you ever stop to ask yourself, "What is it that I am resisting? Why do I not like this?"

Were gentle movements presented that did not give you the sensation you crave from yoga stretching, or strength and weight bearing to build your fitness?

Or was the class strong, fast-paced and demanding, unlike the gentle practice you prefer?

Perhaps your favourite teacher didn't turn up today and aversion towards change turned up.

Or you don't like meditation, and guess what, today the teacher is doing a long meditation!

Or did the teacher include in the sequence that particular pose you hate? Or ask you to do something that you really didn't feel like doing, not that it was dangerous or anything, just somehow confronting, aversion was there?

How fabulous it is when this happens, what an opportunity! If aversion turns up, could you welcome it and see what the aversion itself could teach you? The recognition and welcoming of aversion and opening to its message is yoga.

Of course it might have a message that this pose done that way could be dangerous for you. Aversion welcomed, grateful for message received, heeded, do a modification.

Or it may be that there is something underlying that you need to also welcome and explore in order to find the freedom you crave.

What are you resisting, and what is its message?

Nurturing Inner Wellbeing

The Scream - Edvard Munch

I always knew that yoga was good for me.  On the mat I felt better, more at peace, more centered. Something was calling me, a yearning if you like, and on the mat I had glimpses of that for which I yearned.

But in between times I could still find myself screaming like a banshee, reacting to the vicissitudes of life. Oh, I might have been a lot worse without the time on the mat, but why oh why could I not maintain that equanimity in between times?

So the question arose: What did I do on the mat that was not happening in everyday life? Of those elements, what could I take into everyday life?

There are many elements. Here are a few lessons from the mat that can be simply applied in everyday life. Let me know if they work for you.

1. Somatic experience
On the mat during the practice of hatha yoga we are paying close attention to the felt sense of the body. In everyday life I discovered I was no longer paying attention. In meditation the mind also settles much faster if we begin to explore somatic experience. Try it now. Close your eyes and just start to feel the body, the sensations of the body. Start in one corner, perhaps in the mouth, perhaps in the feet, and begin to explore the sensation of your body. Then after spending some time in this exploration of sensation of the body, observe what has happened to thought.

More recently, and through my explorations of iRest^® Yoga Nidra, I have also started to recognise that all emotions, thoughts beliefs, in fact almost everything that comprises this personality that was sometimes a screaming banshee, all of it is a somatic sensation. This has been a break through recognition. By bringing somatic awareness into everyday life I can feel as sensation all the things that make me react, before I react. Sometimes I choose to let that move through and be expressed, but only if it is not distructive. Early warning systems, great to have on your side.

2. Attention to the breath
Breathing in raise your arms, breathing out lower and fold your body into a deep forward bend.... on the mat my teachers were always drawing my attention to the flow of my breath and encouraging me to flow with the breath in movement. And lying in savasana, or sitting in meditation, again, follow the breath, notice the breath.

I assure you, when screaming like a banshee I was not paying attention to the breath.

When my kids were young I made my own discovery, that when the kids were going crazy and I was going crazy, all I had to do was to remember to sing. We would all calm down. Of course! Singing requires attention to the breath.

Slowly over years of practice, and again further nurtured through Yoga Nidra, my perpetual awareness of the breath has increased, and heh presto, it too is an early warning system. If anxiety arises it always drives the breath upwards, away from the belly and into the chest. Anxiety always subsides if you can bring the breath down into the belly. Brilliant! Another tool for equanimity.

3. Intention
I remember my teachers inviting us to formulate our intention for our practice (often called "sankalpa" in yoga), and to repeat it several times as a simple affirmation. Yearning to be at peace, my affirmation quickly settled to be two words "Still Centre".

Often on the mat I would be totally in the still centre.

Do you think I was remembering those words when having an emotional breakdown?

Once.

Sobbing in bed, unable to sleep, for some reason it arose, and I used it as a mantra, over and over, and I slept and awoke refreshed.

Gradually I began to realise that there is enormous power in our self talk, and if that talk is a constant put down then we will believe that and our way of dealing with life will reflect that.

I began to practise positive affirmations.  But have you eve done that thing where you repeat an positive affirmation, and there is a voice in your head contradicts it?

When that happens, notice how it feels (coming back to somatic awareness), and then try on the positive affirmation, and ask yourself, if this were true right now, what would that feel like.

Intention can be in the form of a resolve for whatever you are doing, this yoga practice, this task, this day. But there is another intention which is more like my still centre mantra, which is an expression of that yearning that keeps you coming back to the mat in any case. When you have identified that one it will be so harmonious that the mind will not undermine it.  It is true, and it is pure and it is an expression of that yearning, which is, for who you truly are.

4. Welcoming
Honestly, I did not get this until I began to really seriously delve into iRest Yoga Nidra. Welcoming uncomfortable sensations did not appeal to me. However it is a wonderful truth worth discovering for yourself. If you stop regarding the sensations and emotions that arise as either good or bad, but as signposts that could point you either towards greater integration or away from a state of grace, depending on what you do when they arise, and begin to welcome them as signposts to grace, their power starts to drop away.

5. Inner wellbeing
So we come to cultivating inner wellbeing. From a place of inner wellbeing, welcoming becomes easier. When on the mat, in movement practice, in meditation, in Yoga Nidra, we practise contacting, truly feeling, inner wellbeing, and the more we practise, the more we can also call upon it in daily life.

If you are interested to know more about these practises, and bringing your yoga high into daily life, keep exploring yoga with a good teacher. At Yoga Spirit Studios you will find classes to explore wellbeing in movement, in meditation and in iRest Yoga Nidra. Come home to your True Self, which is equanimity itself.