The Release of Yoga: Somatic Healing, Emotional Release and the Power of Practice.
Today I went to a regular yoga class. My body was feeling stiff and sore, as I’d had several days in hospital without much sleep, nutrition or exercise. When you are a carer, then often everyone comes before you. Most of the time I get a balance, but not this week.
The class was my first ‘trip out’ of an intense situation where emotions had run high. I sat on my mat, in my regular space (I like to be at the front so I can clearly hear and see the tutor), and felt my busy mind start to slow down. I felt my shoulders drop; my frown released; and my clenched jaw loosen. As with most classes, this one starts with a short meditation practice; I decided to stay sitting to avoid falling asleep. Sitting cross-legged and focusing on my breath, my mind continued very slowly to let go of the constant stream of worries, rumination and fear. As I continued to sit there in the dark, breathing, focusing and releasing, I felt an overwhelming urge to just cry. To howl. To yell and wail. My shoulders were drooping, my head was bowed, and I surrendered to the somatic healing of yoga. The tension and the trauma that my body had stored all week, and indeed all my life, were slowing down. I was learning to forgive myself and forgive my body for the difficulties that I’d had that week: the times I’d been tired, snappy or overwhelmed with anxiety.
As the meditation ended, our bodies started to move, and I found myself feeling energised. I found myself slowly, but with strength and determination, with courage and without fear, moving through the asanas that my teacher was showing us that day. As I moved into powerful warrior poses, I felt energy surge through my body and continued to release as I breathed in and out of difficult positions. They were not difficult because they normally are, but because they were difficult today because of the situation I had been in all week and the challenges my body had faced. Tears came to me throughout the lesson, throughout different poses and asanas – the brave warrior pose left me shaking, downward dog made my hamstrings scream with discomfort, and cobra stretched my back in exactly the opposite way it had been held for days. Throughout every posture, every pose and every asana, the emotions were flowing through me. Maybe, had I felt more comfortable, I would have just sat there, cried and released them, instead of choking on them; but this didn’t feel like the place to do that, so I focused on the prayer, focused on the postures and focused on releasing my body.
In the darkened room, with the hum of cool air conditioning, the scent of incense and the soft melodic music, the mixture of asanas held my attention and gave me a focus beyond emotions, perhaps. Today I was really feeling the discomfort in my hips — my hips! Gosh, how sore and tight my hips were. Perhaps sitting on my backside in a hospital chair or sitting on my backside next to a hospital bed, unmoving for hours on end, had all taken its toll on my poor hips. As Shakira once said, ‘My hips don’t lie!’ Well, you know what? My hips weren’t lying to me, and they were sore. Going into lunges felt like an 80-year-old body, not my more youthful 55-year-old body, which today was absolutely having none of it. Creaking, grunting and groaning, I raised myself up and down throughout the class.
Why is it that the places that are really sore and hurt so much are, for some reason, the areas a teacher decides to focus on? I was grateful, but I also felt a little embarrassed at my lack of ability and my stiff, clunky yoga practice today. I don’t know why I felt awkward, ashamed or less because of my practice being so poor; the reality was that emotions were overflowing, and several times during the lesson tears poured down my face. I bowed my head so that nobody would see them. I don’t think anybody did. I’m relieved that I managed to keep this hidden. This didn’t feel like the right space, even though the people who are there are lovely and the teacher is exceptionally good. I didn’t feel comfortable releasing my emotional distress.
I got through the lesson. It was fabulous: traumatic, hard, beautiful, emotional and just exactly what I needed. How grateful was I? Hugely! How grateful was I to have this practice in my life, which allowed me to do that, and to have the opportunity to attend a class just when I needed to. It did make me think, on the way home: what would have happened if I had cried? If I had sat there in mountain pose just crying, what would everybody do? I don’t think I’d ever have done it. It didn’t feel like the right environment. I didn’t feel comfortable. It wasn’t that sort of lesson. It was a great lesson, but not for that. This made me move on and begin to think: what would be the place for that? What would be the place to release emotional distress? How would that happen? What would I have to access to be able to go and practise yoga and just sit and sob, or perhaps be held by somebody and allow an emotional release as well as a physical one? I think that would have benefited me so much.
Perhaps this is something I will explore as I progress through my third-age yoga journey, as I enter a deeper yoga practice and understanding during my teacher training. It’s certainly something that I believe would benefit many, many people. I know about somatic yoga, and I’m looking forward to hearing about that too. Today, I think I had a somatic experience; or at least, had I not been an uptight British woman of mid-age, whose proud tradition of carrying on regardless of the burden is so deeply ingrained and embedded, I might have felt able to ask for help, support or release in that situation. As a British woman, I was brought up to hide my emotions, not show them, and even though this is something that I’ve worked on for many, many years, to de-compartmentalise my mind and be vulnerable in myself, it’s still a deeply ingrained habit.
Travelling home in the car, I was grateful for the opportunity to attend the yoga lesson. I felt mentally better. I felt physically better; not significantly, but enough to start afresh, change for the weekend and enjoy a new day. I felt able to be without some of the pressure, and to be myself a little bit more. My head felt clearer; my body was still sore, but less clunky, less awkward and less painful due to the release of the asanas. My mind was also less clunky, less sore and less painful. Thank you, yoga; you did it again.