New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
A friend recently asked me how I made the shift towards a more positive body image. And I froze. Despite writing about this often and thinking about it even more, an answer didn't easily spring to mind. I think that's because it's a monolithic question in a lot of ways, and I've done SO many different things that it's hard to narrow it down. Drilling DownAfter shaking off my initial brain freeze, I did the next best thing I could think of: spout off some platitudes—therapy, journaling, blah, blah, blah. Now, those things aren't blah blah to me—not at all. They're actually two of my most important tools that I use on a regular basis. But they were blah blah to her at the ...
I'd been practicing yoga for fifteen years, and teaching for about twelve, when I found out I was pregnant with my first, my son. His conception was not without its efforts, some of which included acupuncture for a year with the requisite nasty-smelling tea, temperature charts and peeing on sticks, a trip to the Maori healers where my uterus was essentially rolfed by a friendly giant named Papa Joe, and finally, a visit to a fertility doctor who concluded quickly that my estrogen levels were a little low. The first time I went to my mat after my positive pregnancy test, I stood in tadasana, connected to my breath, and thought, "Okay, I have to be gentle, there's someone in here counting ...
Stress and anxiety affect us on all levels. Be it the body's pounding heart, the rapid pace of breath, overwhelming feelings, racing thoughts, or a disconnection from our deeper beliefs, stress weaves its way into all levels of our experience. Yoga Therapy teaches us to understand how to address our stress on all layers of being. Ancient yogis perceived a person as being comprised of five layers (koshas): 1) body, 2) life energy/breath, 3) mind (feelings and lower thoughts), 4) intellect (wisdom and discernment), and 5) spirit/higher self. Each of these five layers exists within the next, moving from the obvious to the subtle, and each one gives us tools for coping with stress and ...
Today's world offers us many opportunities to create and live in stress; even though it has been many thousands of years since we have had to fear attack from wild animals, modern man has his fight-or-flight system turned on most days, and with no idea how to turn it off. Work, relationships, schedules, kids, media, and much more assist in creating stress. Luckily, there are many tools to bring us back from the fight-or-flight response into the rest-and-digest system, or the relaxation response. These days most stress is created in the mind, and is not necessarily "real" stress of an immediate physical danger. We stress about what we fear in the future, our anxiety of an exam, a meeting, ...
