Yoga for Emotional Wellness

Yoga is an ancient system for physical, mental and spiritual wellness. It contains practices to strengthen the body, achieve radiant health, focus the mind, steady the emotions, promote a sense of spiritual connectedness, and live a life of ethical behavior. Quite a list!

Most yoga offered today in the United States is focused primarily on physical strength and flexibility. Yet there is tremendous potential to promote overall wellness, including improved mental health, through certain yoga practices.

Problems including anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, sleep disturbances, addictive behaviors, low energy and stress may be improved or eliminated through yoga practices. The yoga intervention may be combined with more traditional psychiatric treatment as indicated.

Yoga philosophy holds that we are born in a state of "original bliss" (which most people slowly lose through challenging life experiences), and that we can reconnect to a joyful, at times blissful, state through yoga practice. Some clients find this approach to psychological wellness more attractive than the "disease model" of traditional psychiatry and psychology.

Yoga philosophy sees people as containing within themselves the ingredients for health and wellbeing, and having the ability to access them through proper methods and with appropriate resources. This is in contrast to many social messages, which tell us the source of happiness is outside of ourselves.

Along with Yoga for Emotional Wellness classes, I offer individual and group yoga instruction. Using yoga techniques in therapy is an option more clients are choosing. In this way we can utilize the resources of the whole client to produce positive change, not simply the mind.

[top]