Mini Episode: 5 Ways Yoga Can Support Healing

Abby (00:29)
Hi everyone, I'm Abbey. I'm here today to talk to you all a bit about how yoga has supported me in my healing. I'll be reading from a blog that I've written. It'll be posted on our website and we can link that below in the show notes. I wanted to tell my story a little bit as I sort of launched this new yoga.

program experience, if you will, at Reclaim Therapy. And this blog post is entitled, Five Ways Yoga Supported Me and My Healing. So again, I'm Abby. I'm a yoga teacher and EMDR trauma therapist. I'm so excited to bring yoga to Reclaim Therapy because...

The practice of yoga has offered me so much over the years. It really is hard to imagine myself without the tools that I've gained from this practice. And now this is not to say that yoga is the magic solution to all of our individual and worldly problems. I really wish it were. And it's not to say that yoga will be the thing for every individual human. For you it might be art or cooking or time with animals.

Maybe it's yoga. For me, it continues to be yoga. And yoga is just sort of one piece of my pie of practices that I utilize for my own growth and healing, if you will. So before I share how yoga has supported my healing, I want to share my sort of entry to yoga story. I grew up a dancer. I began...

as a lot of people do with ballet and tap. And then I progressed on to jazz, lyrical, modern, hip hop, you name it. I danced at a studio from early elementary on. And then at the start of freshman year of high school, I joined my school's dance team. So I was dancing at basketball games, competitions, and I really loved it. Every bit of it, the movement, the music, the costumes, the community.

Sometimes I felt like I couldn't get enough dance and it brought me so much joy then and when I look back it still brings me joy and looking back I can sense how dance contributed or brought out of me a form of perfectionism that had already taken hold for other reasons.

the outward focus of the art form, at least the ways that I was engaging in it. I know not all dance forms are so outwardly focused.

It made it hard to think about anything other than how does this look. I look back at my experience dancing and I don't remember it being totally embodied all the time. It was very much about the outward form. As I started college for reasons mainly logistical, dance and I began to grow apart. I took ballet through my university's dance department because my psychology major wouldn't be enough credits to graduate.

From there I noticed the dance department was also offering yoga. I had never done yoga before but I figured why not. I was studying, I was at school in Los Angeles and yoga seemed to be all the rage and I was curious. So from the first class, the first yoga class, I really did feel something different. Couldn't put my finger on it but something was different about this practice.

focus remained outward still. I sensed a subtle invitation to go inward. This isn't written in the blog, maybe I should add it, but side note, this may not be a lot of people's experiences with their first yoga class. There's a lot of yoga out there that is also really outwardly focused and not super embodied, and maybe if you're listening to this or reading this,

If you have ever taken yoga, your experience was not this. Maybe it was something vastly different, a space that didn't feel good or didn't welcoming, comfortable, supportive. The list goes on. But my experience was like I felt something different, something about this practice really called to me.

So anyway, as I continue, I continued to practice yoga at my college's dance department and then I began to explore studios in the surrounding area. I noticed the different flavors of yoga classes and started to develop a preference. I didn't know this then, but with the knowledge I have now, I was beginning to discern which style and really lineage of yoga I was most drawn to.

I moved to Massachusetts for my first job out of college and I just so happened to stumble into a studio that felt like home. I took classes and workshops and felt the practice deepen for me. From this point on, would begin, I would say I began to get picky about my yoga. I moved to Boston and found studios there that felt aligned. I worked the front desk as a work study student so I could afford to take classes at the rate that I wanted to.

My practice and love for yoga continued to expand and deepen upon moving to Philly. I knew I needed to find the right studio. And now that I had what I felt like was an eye for what I was looking for, I found it at Three Queens Yoga. Shout out Three Queens Yoga. Three Queens Yoga is a studio that has its roots in alignment-based Hatha yoga, paying particular attention to creating a strong foundation and postures before any movement into expansion.

It was at this studio that I began to really understand the ways in which I've overextended myself, literally. So hyper extension, hello hyper extension, but also metaphorically. I had to unlearn so much of what perfectionism and dance had taught me. Really that was that I need to get as bendy as humanly possible, literally and metaphorically, to look a certain way for others' gaze.

Practicing at Three Queens, I began to embody the knowing that I don't need to overextend to look a certain way to others. In doing so, I was actually harming myself. Through all of this unlearning, I developed strength and stability. I developed a strong foundation from which to expand. I never expected myself to become interested in teaching yoga, but when I learned of Three Queens 200-hour training, something within me said, do it, it's time.

So I did, and I couldn't be more grateful for all that I learned in those 200 hours and the many hours of practice outside of that. So here I am hoping to share the practice of yoga with you. Your story may be vastly different from mine. You may find yourself in some of my story. Either way, I hope that if you join me, you'll discover what it is that this practice has to offer you.

and perhaps what you can offer to it. So now a moment to share with you how yoga has supported my healing over time. Side note, these learnings didn't solidify after just one class. These learnings evolve within me as I continue to show up to my mat. So one, reason one that yoga has really supported my healing, I'm learning slowly how to slow down.

Now there's a lot of yoga out there, as I said, and some of that yoga is really fast-paced and flowy, which is great for some, and no shade to that type of yoga. It's just not the yoga for me, at least at this point in my life. I found in my body to practice in this fast-paced way can really feel overwhelming and dysregulating. And at the same time, I found that slow practices have felt dysregulating to me.

especially for example, like seated meditation when stillness is the expectation that can feel really intense. So now I practice a type of yoga that offers permission to move within stillness, to slow down versus speed up as needed. I felt that I could really play with the just right amount of slowness for me. And in doing so I could build up a tolerance for slowing down. For trauma survivors, slowing down can be terrifying.

Frankly, slowing down in this world can feel terrifying. And for trauma survivors and humans of this world, slowing down is an important practice to cultivate at a tolerable pace. That's where the healing can and often does happen. And that's where it continues to happen for me. Reason number two, healing has happened for me through yoga or continues to happen for me.

I'm learning to notice what's going on in my body when it's tolerable. Yoga invites our attention inward, which for some of us can feel like a scary place to be. In my initial moments with yoga, I definitely kept my attention focused outwardly, watching what the instructor was doing, watching what others were doing, watching the clock. Over time, I couldn't tell you exactly when this began to happen. I started to notice subtleties in my body, both on and off the mat.

On the mat, I'd start to feel when I was pushing too hard in a stretch. So I back off. And then off the mat, I'd start to notice a slight flutter in my chest when anxiety crept in, reminding me really to take a breath. Or I might have noticed the fatigue beginning to take shape, reminding me to take care of myself before it turned into full shutdown mode.

Being aware of every bodily sensation isn't desirable all the time. And so it's important to develop the skill of checking in as our body communicates to us so much day in and day out. Yoga helped me at least sharpen the tool of listening.

Number three, I'm learning discernment or the ability to judge well. Discernment has become one of my favorite words. It is the ability to judge well. And in the context of a physical yoga practice, it's to decide the most supportive posture in any given moment. I know that I'm in good yoga hands whenever an instructor explicitly names the importance of choosing a variation that suits you. Good yoga to me is having the option to explore.

It isn't always choosing the perfect option. I've learned through my own discernment that I might make a choice that isn't entirely supportive, and then I learn from it. I mean, the number of times I've gone too hard in yoga class to then feel it later is too many times to count, and every time I learn. It's through these experiences I further developed a discernment for what might be right for me in any given moment.

And this has shown up off the mat for me too. I'm able to notice when I've gone too hard in life and even notice when I might be able to challenge myself a bit, push a bit. It's so hard to determine day to day, should I allow myself rest or should I push myself? This is the discernment we can continuously explore on the mat to then take it off the mat.

Number four, I'm learning that a strong foundation is required for expansion, creativity, and flow. In any yoga posture, it's important to set a strong aligned foundation. It's from this place that you can expand. For example, if you've ever practiced or seen tree pose, it's vital to set up a strong foundation in the standing foot. Too much weight at the front or back of the foot is a surefire way to easily topple over.

Not that toppling is bad. Toppling and wobbling is actually a beautiful thing. anyway, we first place attention on the foot and tree and get as steady as possible there before we ever begin to lift the opposite foot. Then we find the foundation as best we can balancing there. And it isn't until that's established, then we can play and expand through the arms, maybe create movement with the branches. So just an example of how

we engage a strong foundation before we move into expansion. And this is true in life. Before we experience play, creativity, flow, we ideally want to set up a strong foundation. I know I'm more creative, for example, when my space is decently organized. Not perfect, but decently organized. And that may just be me. But you might experience foundation before expansion in different ways in your life.

I know for me, myself, that I can't tap into my sense of play. If I don't feel somewhat grounded and safe enough, for trauma survivors especially, grounding and feeling safe enough is essential to move into a space of play, connection, creativity. So foundation really is needed to feel safe enough to play, expand, to flow, to create.

Number five, I'm learning how to be in community with others and show up as myself as much as possible. Being in a community and relationship is hard. When I first began practicing yoga, I remember so much relational stuff would come up, as it often does when we're in community. Comparison, annoyance, the list goes on. Over time, this became great information for me to get curious about. I would start to notice, it's interesting.

that I felt so much competition in that space or, huh, what an interesting reaction I had to see someone else taking time to rest in that way. It was never about other people and always about my own stuff. I shouldn't speak in absolutes. Often it wasn't about other people and often it was about my own stuff. And this practice has given me a lot of great material to work with when it comes to how I show up in community.

Being in a community of other yoga practitioners has slowly evolved to be a space that isn't competitive, but more so a space where I get to be with and move with people, but on my own. The teacher of mine, Mariel, often says something along the lines of, can move together and differently. And that has been a profound teaching for me. We can move differently together. What a metaphor for life.

I'm so excited to share more of myself and more of this practice with you. My hope is that we can co-create this yoga space together. Again, I said it before, I really hope this space can be one where you discover what it is this practice might offer you and what you might offer to this practice. Until next time, I'll see you soon. Thank you.