One of the grandest things about our practice is that we can release our stuck emotions and lead ourselves to a higher place. Our breath can lead us to some amazing internal spaces if we let it. We can become awake and aware of our physical body as well as the impact on the mental body, the emotional body, and our subtle (energetic) body. We store so many emotions in our hips and often these emotions are too difficult to dealt with. We store memories, emotional pain & energy from our partners current and past, and childhood trauma in the fascia (connective tissue) of our hips and pelvis. In traditional Chinese medicine anger harms the liver, worry harms the stomach, fear/trauma harms the kidneys… it’s all connected!
In yogic terms, there is no separation between mind, body, and spirit. The three exist as a union (one definition of the word yoga); what happens to the mind also happens to the body and spirit, and so on. In other words, if something is bothering you spiritually, emotionally, or mentally, it is likely to show up in your body. And as you work deeply with your body in yoga, emotional issues will likely come to the fore. Any sense of unease or dis-ease in the body keeps us from reaching and experiencing samadhi. Asanas are one path to blissful contentment, working to bring us closer by focusing our minds and releasing any emotional or inner tension in our bodies. Though the ancient yogis understood that emotional turmoil is carried in the mind, the body, and the spirit, Western medicine has been slow to accept this. But new research has verified empirically that mental and emotional condition can affect the state of the physical body, and that the mind-body connection is real. The body knows how to heal itself, but often these emotional burdens weigh on us & slow down the flow of healing energy.
I’m sure we can all bond over taking a yoga class with pigeon pose and the fact that some serious sensations come up, and QUICK. It’s inevitable to feel something: satisfaction, discomfort, anxiety or my favorite – a good old cry. Let’s not pretend. We’ve all been there. We’ve all busted out a tear or two with a good hip opener. Pigeon’s main purpose is to unlock our deepest fears, traumas & anxieties lingering in our bodies and release that undesirable stagnation. Practicing this pose awakens the sacral chakra, helping us connect to our emotions, relationships and creativity.
We can think of our hips & pelvis as our “junk drawer of emotions.” The brain is connected to the hips via the nervous system. We store buried emotions, past experiences, fear and trauma in our cells, floating deep within our physical bodies. These traumas stay with us as stale energy sabotaging our bodies & spirit. Our hips are like a bowl catching & holding the residue of this pain. By surrendering and softening into our hips, we learn to stabilize our breath through the discomfort in order to release deeply held tensions. These tensions have physical, mental, emotional, and energetic components as we can not have one of these without the others. If something happens to us physically, there is mental, emotional, and energetic reaction as well.
"The holistic system of yoga was designed so that these emotional breakthroughs can occur safely," says Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, Ph.D., a psychologist and the director of Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care in Knoxville, Tennessee. "Yoga is not merely an athletic system; it is a spiritual system. The asanas are designed to affect the subtle body for the purpose of spiritual transformation. People enter into the practice of yoga asana for physical fitness or physical health, or even because they've heard it's good for relaxation, but ultimately the purpose of yoga practice is spiritual development." This development depends on breaking through places in the subtle body that are blocked with unresolved issues and energy. Anytime you work with the body, you are also working with the mind and the energy system—which is the bridge between body and mind. And since that means working with emotions, emotional breakthroughs can be seen as markers of progress on the road to personal and spiritual growth.
Difficult and stressful breakthroughs occur most often when the release involves long-held feelings of sadness, grief, confusion, or another strong emotion that a person has carried unconsciously throughout his or her life. Our bodies are amazing protectors. Whenever something happens to us, our body is involved. This is particularly true of trauma. The body comes to the defense of the whole being. In defending it, the body does things to stop the pain from being fully experienced. So the body shuts it off; if it didn't, the body would die from emotional pain. But then the body keeps doing the physical protection even long after the situation has ended. The body keeps score.
When a breakthrough does occur—even if it's much-needed—it can be hard for us to cope with it.If there is a release of emotion in a particular asana, according to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras [II.46-49], the thing to do is relax into the pose, regulate the breathing, and focus on God to become centered in the deepest aspect of one's self. Our practice is a conduit that encourages us to explore deeper connection to our emotions so that we can better know and understand ourselves. We learn our reactive patterns, hot buttons, and compensatory patterns physically, mentally, emotionally, reactiv
Well….let’s get to it. Upward and onward.
Thank you Trish....
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