Healing through power vinyasa
In the therapeutic yoga community it is practically a truism that healing yoga is gentle, or even restorative. It is true that mental ailments can create a pattern of chronic neural arousal, which slow yoga helps counteract. Yet many mental illnesses also have somatic elements, meaning they affect us on a physical as well as a psychological level. Think of depression with its sense of heaviness and lethargy, anxiety which makes us sweat, quickens our pulse and our breath or addictions and eating disorders, in which our behavior is completely cut off from, and counterproductive to, a sense of physical health. These physical manifestations can in turn exacerbate the sense of mental malaise, creating a vicious cycle.
Internationally-known power yoga teacher Baron Baptiste says “in order to heal you need to feel.” Enter power yoga. Who hasn't been challenged to feel during a power yoga practice? When you think about it, this challenge is usually of a mind-body nature. The teacher cues a posture that isn't right for us at that moment and our mind automatically launches into negative samskaras (patterns): “I'm too weak/fat/old/lazy (fill in your personal blank).” Or we do the asana (posture) anyway, disregarding what we actually feel, inviting physical or emotional injury. Such situations create an opportunity to begin healing the mind-body disconnect, learning to listen to our bodies and our emotions in an accepting, non-judgmental way and hearing what the interplay is telling us about how we are feeling in real time.
When we begin to notice what we are feeling on the mat, notice our patterns of behavior and reaction, we enhance our ability to notice those same patterns and reactions off the mat. Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron talks of the harshness with which we act toward ourselves during meditation practice and asks whether we are similarly harsh to ourselves in real life. It's the same principle in yoga. As you treat yourself on the mat, so you are likely to treat yourself off the mat. When practice gets hard stay with the feelings, the frustrations, the negativities. Notice what they are like and how they impact you. Why not feel on the mat? You are guaranteed to feel off the mat! Can you begin to be kind to yourself during practice? Then you can begin to be kind to yourself in real life.
Criticisms of power yoga as a therapy include the activation of the sympathetic nervous system which, as mentioned above, is often in a chronic state of arousal in people suffering mental illness. While this is true, a vigorous practice helps burn off nervous energy and invites people to engage with their bodies on a very physical level, increasing heart rate and muscle strength as well as physical openness and flexibility. Indeed, studies from the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation show that rajasic (energizing) practices followed with tamasic (soothing or calming) postures can create a deeper sense of relaxation in practitioners than relaxing practices alone.
Some people criticize power yoga teachers for being too talkative, for not leaving enough quiet space in the practice. Yet many of us come to the mat with our monkey minds at top volume, heads full of past failures and fantasies about the future. When power vinyasa teachers give multiple verbal cues they literally help anchor us into our bodies in the present moment. Similarly, if we begin practice in a negative head space, brooding about what is not going right in our lives, a slower practice can exacerbate this tendency, giving us too much time to think and potentially even adding to the list of things we can't do right. The pace of a vinyasa class keeps us so involved we have no time to dwell on the negative. By the end of class feel-good endorphins are higher and we are in a better, more grounded place to begin dealing with real issues. In a strong practice we literally get stronger on the mat, creating a feeling of accomplishment which can translate off the mat into an increased sense of self-sufficiency in life.
When using power yoga as a healing modality it is important to be alert to feelings of failure in less adept participants. Challenge means different things to different people. While we want practitioners to awaken their awareness of their bodies and to increase their distress tolerance through the direct experience of dealing with difficult moments in practice, it is never the goal to have them feel they have failed or are “less than.”
Remind people that, as Patanjali said in Yoga Sutra 1.1, “Now is the time for yoga.” It means wherever you are physically, you are ready to practice. It is by starting, not making excuses and putting off practice, that you begin to experience benefits. It helps some people to know the least physically fit and most inflexible people experience benefits most quickly. This is true on a physical and mental level. Physically, because they are starting to take better care of their bodies. The less fit you are, the easier it is to make gains. Mental gains come more quickly because the discomfort felt in the asanas and the inability to perform them “correctly” allows people to practice real time emotional distress tolerance. Those who feel “good at it” can take longer to experience the inevitable frustration that can come in practice.
Power vinyasa will never be the dominant system in the yoga therapy world. However, for many people it is as healing, or more, than what is accepted as standard practice.
Deborah Patz Clarke, PsyD, RYT is a licensed clinical psychologist and yoga therapist. She is privileged to share yoga and healing conversation with a wide variety of people including felons, recovering addicts and graduate students. She has practiced yoga for more than 20 years and has trained with Baron Baptiste, Bryan Kest, Bo Forbes and Gurmukh. Her style in both yoga and therapy is straightforward, compassionate, challenging and honest. Debby can be reached at FindingOm.net.
Internationally-known power yoga teacher Baron Baptiste says “in order to heal you need to feel.” Enter power yoga. Who hasn't been challenged to feel during a power yoga practice? When you think about it, this challenge is usually of a mind-body nature. The teacher cues a posture that isn't right for us at that moment and our mind automatically launches into negative samskaras (patterns): “I'm too weak/fat/old/lazy (fill in your personal blank).” Or we do the asana (posture) anyway, disregarding what we actually feel, inviting physical or emotional injury. Such situations create an opportunity to begin healing the mind-body disconnect, learning to listen to our bodies and our emotions in an accepting, non-judgmental way and hearing what the interplay is telling us about how we are feeling in real time.When we begin to notice what we are feeling on the mat, notice our patterns of behavior and reaction, we enhance our ability to notice those same patterns and reactions off the mat. Buddhist nun and author Pema Chodron talks of the harshness with which we act toward ourselves during meditation practice and asks whether we are similarly harsh to ourselves in real life. It's the same principle in yoga. As you treat yourself on the mat, so you are likely to treat yourself off the mat. When practice gets hard stay with the feelings, the frustrations, the negativities. Notice what they are like and how they impact you. Why not feel on the mat? You are guaranteed to feel off the mat! Can you begin to be kind to yourself during practice? Then you can begin to be kind to yourself in real life.
Criticisms of power yoga as a therapy include the activation of the sympathetic nervous system which, as mentioned above, is often in a chronic state of arousal in people suffering mental illness. While this is true, a vigorous practice helps burn off nervous energy and invites people to engage with their bodies on a very physical level, increasing heart rate and muscle strength as well as physical openness and flexibility. Indeed, studies from the Swami Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation show that rajasic (energizing) practices followed with tamasic (soothing or calming) postures can create a deeper sense of relaxation in practitioners than relaxing practices alone.
Some people criticize power yoga teachers for being too talkative, for not leaving enough quiet space in the practice. Yet many of us come to the mat with our monkey minds at top volume, heads full of past failures and fantasies about the future. When power vinyasa teachers give multiple verbal cues they literally help anchor us into our bodies in the present moment. Similarly, if we begin practice in a negative head space, brooding about what is not going right in our lives, a slower practice can exacerbate this tendency, giving us too much time to think and potentially even adding to the list of things we can't do right. The pace of a vinyasa class keeps us so involved we have no time to dwell on the negative. By the end of class feel-good endorphins are higher and we are in a better, more grounded place to begin dealing with real issues. In a strong practice we literally get stronger on the mat, creating a feeling of accomplishment which can translate off the mat into an increased sense of self-sufficiency in life.
When using power yoga as a healing modality it is important to be alert to feelings of failure in less adept participants. Challenge means different things to different people. While we want practitioners to awaken their awareness of their bodies and to increase their distress tolerance through the direct experience of dealing with difficult moments in practice, it is never the goal to have them feel they have failed or are “less than.”
Remind people that, as Patanjali said in Yoga Sutra 1.1, “Now is the time for yoga.” It means wherever you are physically, you are ready to practice. It is by starting, not making excuses and putting off practice, that you begin to experience benefits. It helps some people to know the least physically fit and most inflexible people experience benefits most quickly. This is true on a physical and mental level. Physically, because they are starting to take better care of their bodies. The less fit you are, the easier it is to make gains. Mental gains come more quickly because the discomfort felt in the asanas and the inability to perform them “correctly” allows people to practice real time emotional distress tolerance. Those who feel “good at it” can take longer to experience the inevitable frustration that can come in practice.
Power vinyasa will never be the dominant system in the yoga therapy world. However, for many people it is as healing, or more, than what is accepted as standard practice.
Deborah Patz Clarke, PsyD, RYT is a licensed clinical psychologist and yoga therapist. She is privileged to share yoga and healing conversation with a wide variety of people including felons, recovering addicts and graduate students. She has practiced yoga for more than 20 years and has trained with Baron Baptiste, Bryan Kest, Bo Forbes and Gurmukh. Her style in both yoga and therapy is straightforward, compassionate, challenging and honest. Debby can be reached at FindingOm.net.