5 Poses to Heal Emotional Pain and Calm the Mind
Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years to strengthen and unite the mind, body and soul. When the mind and soul become out of balance, the body is also affected. In turn, physical wellness can affect and strengthen a person’s mental wellness. The two are so interconnected that many doctors and therapists suggest exercise as a partial regimen for people suffering from anxiety and depression. However, those who are feeling depressed often find it difficult to begin an exercise routine as an unbalanced body and mind can feel listless and lack energy.
For those who are embarking on a journey of emotional or spiritual healing, yoga offers poses that can focus and calm your mind. These poses can be used as in-the-moment coping strategies to relieve anxiety or can be incorporated into existing routines for a maximum affect.
- Child’s Pose/Balasana**
It’s so easy, a child could do it! For those who are new to yoga, the child’s pose is an excellent introduction to the calming benefits of its poses. Usually, child’s pose is reserved as one of the last, tension-releasing poses of a yoga routine; but for someone who is struggling to regain physical control during a panic attack, child’s pose can bring a feeling of calm, comfort and focus. Focus on deep breathing.
- Easy Pose/Sukhasana**
Though simple, mental focus is required to maintain the posture and breathing of the pose, which makes it ideal for both preventative and coping routines for those who experience anxiety. Those who are feeling displaced or confused can mindfully use Easy Pose by envisioning the body as being rooted to the ground.
- Cat and Cow Pose/Marjariasana**
For the Cat/Cow to be effective, it is important to allow your mind to become completely absorbed in the tiny alterations taking place in your body’s energy while shifting between the two. Starting out on all fours, inhale while looking up toward the sky, opening the chest and heart. As you exhale, round your shoulders and hang your head between your shoulders. This is a revitalizing pose that will gently massage your lower back, which makes it perfect for anyone who feels fatigued or mentally clouded after a long day at the office.
- Locust Pose/Salabhasana (paired with Downward Dog/Adho Mukha Svanansana)**
The Locust Pose can be used to help assuage the effects of chronic depression and its effects on the body. The pose opens the heart, strengthens posture, revitalizes energy levels, aids in digestion and alleviates back pain. For someone who is feeling physical fatigue from emotion stress, Locust is a wonderful natural remedy.
To access the Locust Pose, lie prostrate on your mat with your hands by your side, palms up. On an exhale, lift your arms, chest, head and legs off the ground. Your palms can remain facing up, or you can clasp them together behind your back. If you have trouble lifting your arms, you can drop your palms to the mat and lift your chest, head and legs. (This is very similar to the Cobra pose.)Take care to keep your head in line with your neck. If your neck feels tense, try looking down.
The pose can be paired in a sequence with Downward Dog to heighten energy even further. To transition into Downward Dog, simply shift into table top, pressing through palms into the second pose on an exhaling breath. While inhaling, settle into Downward Dog. On the next exhale, come to the floor. Settle onto your mat on an inhaling breath, and lift into Locust during the exhale.
- Savasana
Each yoga routine should end in Savasana, also called the Corpse Pose, this pose requires no physical movement, but demands an intense mind-body connectedness. Lying on your back with palms facing down and eyes closed, simply focus on your breathing and your body. Now is the time to eliminate all muscle tension. Starting with the toes, focus your mind’s energy on completely relaxing each part of your body. Continue for as long as it takes for your body and mind to achieve a resounding calm. Then, begin testing your muscles as if for the first time, wiggling toes and fingers and eventually bending your knees to stand. This is especially helpful for those who awaken with panic attacks in the middle of the night or who have difficulty calming the mind at the end of the day.
About the Author
Yoga and Emotional Intelligence
Recently, in one of my journals, I read an article by a psychologist who had stumbled across an obscure research project involving emotional intelligence. I had first been exposed to the concept of emotional intelligence when I was working on my master’s degree back in the nineties. As a yoga teacher, emotional intelligence as a basis for a balanced life seemed intuitive.
The premise of the research is basically that our emotional intelligence is as important, if not more important, than our intellectual IQ. Without a strong emotional foundation, intelligence alone was not enough to create a successful and balanced life.
There are four components to emotional intelligence. The first is self-awareness or knowing what you are feeling and why. The second is self-management or the ability to use your self-awareness to get better at handling your impulses and disruptive emotions. The third component is empathy or the ability to sense how others are feeling; and the fourth component is being skilled at establishing and maintaining healthy relationships.
Without self-awareness, self-management, empathy and relationship skills, even the most intelligent person would find it difficult to live a healthy and stable life. That is because we are all dependent upon each other and emotions and feelings are a major part of human existence.
In yoga emotional turmoil is often referred to as “monkey mind.” This is an expression used to describe the jumping and scattering of our mind due to emotional instability. In life, it is all too easy for us to lose our emotional balance and end up leaping from one emotion to another.
Who doesn’t get pulled into drama and emotions or caught up in games, competition and fighting? How about sadness and fear? We call this being tossed around in the world. In the ideal, we are in the world, but not of the world. That means we are aware of our presence while being in control of our thoughts, words and actions. We have compassion for all of life and we relate to others with a sense of complete understanding. We appear in the world, but are not perturbed or thrown off balance by the events of life. Once this is achieved an individual is said to be liberated or free of the monkey mind.
Now, it is not that a person must go away and live the life of a hermit in order to achieve liberation. It means to live fully in the world, while maintaining a sense of emotional balance. It’s about control and reaction. If you learn to control your mind, you control everything. This is yoga intelligence. How do we achieve this? Practice; nothing in life is achieved without practice.
Sometimes people try to run away and hide and even renounce life to be free of life’s turmoil. But you can never run away. Without emotional intellectual we can remove ourselves physically, but the mind – its thoughts and emotions – go with us forever.
As the saying goes, “you take it with you wherever you go.”
Intellect in yoga is really mental attitude. “As the mind, so the person.” It is not about changing the outside world. It is about changing your attitude towards things. If you gain control over your emotions you will never be tossed about by the outside world. Emotional intelligence reminds us that there is nothing wrong with the world; the problems begin and end within our own minds.
We can try to measure the quality of life with a high IQ, but without awareness, control, empathy and the ability to relate the mathematical equation that measures our intellect, we miss the mark. The prize does not always go to the smartest, but it does more times than not, go to the one who has the ability to keep a focus; and keeping a focus requires the application of the four components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, empathy and relating.
Therefore, with all things in life, be aware and fully understand their nature. Manage them with empathy and understanding, and then rise above the turmoil and be at peace. With awareness you begin to understand yourself. When you understand yourself you free yourself from the entanglement of worldly emotions. In this you will find a sense of balance and you will achieve the pinnacle of yoga and emotional intelligence: peace.
