A couple of months ago I took a series of classes with Elizabeth at Yoga Circle exploring how yoga can help with chronic pain. I thought it would be asana-focused. While that was an element, it was not the main focus. I should have known better.
The purpose of yoga is to calm the fluctuations of the mind. Even after all my study and experience I still sometimes first think of yoga primarily as a means of strengthening and stretching the body. Nope.
As we explored how chronic physical pain can become all-consuming to the mind and how secondary emotions (sadness, anger, frustration, etc) can exacerbate that pain, I began to see how
emotional pain can also be chronic and can also be all-consuming.
Perhaps you are feeling that chronic emotional pain now, in this time of fear and uncertainty, as we face the Covid-19 health crisis. I know I can get stuck in a loop of worry and anxiety. I cry more easily; I feel afraid, sad, angry, and frustrated, longing for this to be "solved", longing to see and hug my grandkids, longing to feel safe. Hearing about illness and death, it is hard not to project ourselves and loved ones into that reality. And maybe we even know someone who has the virus and has been sick or even died. This is a very stressful time.
I want to share something with you that I hope will help. I'll use the 4-step guide to using yoga to address chronic physical pain as guide to addressing
emotional pain as well...
1. What to do with our emotional anxiety? Become an observer of your experience. Instead of being on autopilot, notice how you are responding to this idea of emotional pain and name it. As soon as you feel that first skip of a heartbeat, say, "Oh, there it is. I feel afraid. I feel fear when I think of this."
2. Then, know that the symptoms you experience are signaling you to keep you safe. They are internal messengers of an external experience. They are getting your attention; they are trying to
help. Hello, Messengers!
These messengers manifest in a sympathetic nervous system response that yells, "Fight! Flee!" Freeze!" Our heart rate goes up, breathing gets faster, stress hormones are released and we are suddenly sitting in a chair thinking we can't breathe (and the virus has us in its grip!)....and the anxiety and nervous system response to threat are in a continuous loop of fear and dread.
3. How can you reassure your body that you are OK? Breathe. Ah, yoga. You've taught us to breathe. Deep, slow in breath; deep and even slower out breath. Over and over until things start to calm down. Just this act of breathing with intention, with letting the belly poof out on the in breath and draw in on the out breath lets our nervous system know there is not an
immediate threat in this moment. We are safe.
4. a) Now it's time to explore the depth and width of that emotional pain. Can you think about where you feel stress in your body? Can you see how big it is? For me, stress feels like tightness in the chest, maybe the neck. I can trace its circumference to that area and sometimes into the gut. That's where my stress lives, just within the confines of a certain part of my body. Trace it to its edge.
4. b)Now it's time to explore the opposite. Move your awareness beyond that place where emotional stress manifests for you. Can you notice that if your chest is feeling constricted this same constriction is not not happening in your leg or your big toe? Can you sense there is an opposite of stress in other parts of your body? Focus there. Breathe. Notice that you can use your mind and your breath to move your body from a stress state to a calm one.
Pain in any form is a message to pay attention. That message can be subtle or inescapable. We can notice how our body is responding to that message and use it to motivate us to get help, if needed. We can also notice that sometimes our very thoughts, and
not a physical reality, are causing us pain and stress and our body is reacting just as it would to a physical threat. We can calm ourselves through breathing, bringing awareness to the area of stress, then moving awareness out and beyond that to a place of peace.
I hope this practice helps those of you who are struggling right now. I know it helps me.
Deep gratitude to Elizabeth Gray for her wise teaching and permission to pass this information on to you in this blog post. Be well, my friends.
Namaste, donnajurene
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