The Therapeutic Benefits of a Mindful Yoga Practice
Rachel Sykes | I Work with Stressed Out Professional Women | Licensed in Massachusetts
Rachel C. Sykes, LMHC, LLC
Rachel@rachelcsykes.com
rachelcsykes.com
As a regular yoga practitioner and occasional instructor, I am frequently asked questions from curious folks who have heard about the benefits of yoga but are nervous to begin. The biggest concern I hear is that someone wants to try it but is worried because they don’t already know how to do it. I try to gently point out that no one actually knows how to “do” yoga until they have practiced it and that most of us “practice” indefinitely, as there is always more to learn.
The second most common concern I hear is that they are overwhelmed about what type of class to take-vinyasa, power, hot, hatha, gentle, kundalini, goat (yes, goat yoga is a thing)… I could go on and on about all the different types of yoga classes and philosophies (and maybe I will in other blogs), but ultimately, feeling confused about this actually makes a lot of sense to me. Personally, I have my favorite styles, but it ultimately boils down to what you are trying to get out of it. Sometimes, I meet someone who wants to get more toned and stronger triceps for their upcoming wedding or just to look good for the summer season and are not looking for any spiritual awakening or personal insights - no judgement here—improving your muscle tone is generally a good thing. More often, however, I meet someone who has heard from friends how much yoga has improved their overall physical comfort, with less aching and tightness, and that, when practiced a couple times a week, they become more limber. All by itself, this is a good enough reason to practice yoga as far as I am concerned. However, one benefit many new practitioners of yoga may not expect is an overall reduction in stress due to identifying and eliminating unhelpful thinking practices.
Physical benefits
One of the most noticeable benefits practitioners get from yoga is an improvement in physical ease and a reduction in stiffness in joints and tightness in one’s muscles. Personally, one thing that I have noticed as I get older is that I need to spend more time stretching, especially when I get up in the morning. If I simply spend a minute or two doing forward bends and stretches of the legs and feet, my walking gait improves noticeably. I am not ashamed to be getting older but I sure don’t enjoy shuffling around like an old person, and even these simple stretches make a big difference. Dedicating 1 to 1.5 hours to intentionally stretching out the major muscle groups throughout your body can leave you feeling comfortable and strong throughout the rest of your day, although everyone’s experience is likely unique. In addition, many yoga classes include pranayama (yogic breathing), which I discuss a little further on in this article. In general, this intentional breathing practice can help strengthen one’s breathing capacity, which is particularly relevant in this new COVID world.
Stretch
Mindful practice
When I talk about a mindful yoga practice, I mean one that incorporates silence and breathing paired with movement. I was taught that the word yoga means union or joining together and is related to the word yoke [Caveat: While there are many sources online that also support this derivation, I cannot cite any one source that supports this authoritatively]. If you look online, many sources state that yoga yokes together the body, mind, and spirit, but, for those of us that get uncomfortable with that kind of talk, you can perhaps think of yoga as the linking of a physical practice of movement with a meditative practice of mindful breathing.
Some yoga teachers incorporate guided meditation and other verbal instruction to aid a more personal, inward practice. Some of my favorite classes have included intentional breathing cues as part of the instruction for each pose. I often practice with my eyes closed, as long as I feel steady, as it helps me focus internally and tunes out extraneous stuff going on inside or outside the practice room.
Mindful yoga frequently links breath work with practice, helping to clear or reduce thoughts, especially helpful ones. I see it as a form of meditation, although some purists may quibble, I see even a moment of a quiet internal mind as meaningful, inspiring progress. Hey, if you can sit in silent meditation for lengthy periods of time, that’s fantastic but I suggest you not let perfection be the enemy of good.
Pranayama
When I am teaching a class, I typically begin each class with some form of quiet, centering exercise involving a breathing exercise or pranayama. In my experience, it helps people disconnect from traffic, household and family annoyance, and work troubles to settle into a brief time focused inward on helping oneself. Then, as I cue up each pose, or asana, I typically include a specific breath to accompany the physical pose. The breath is intentional – objectives include invigorating the practitioner, helping them release spent energy or tension stored up in the body, or sometimes clearing out the sinuses. An additional benefit is that the concentration required for most people when doing a yoga pose that incorporates breathwork is that it doesn’t leave a lot of room for random, unhelpful thinking. This is part of what leaves people with a sense of calm and some mental distance from your worries.
HINT: When students are having a tough time in a pose, they often begin to hold their breath. I try to pay attention to this and can either suggest that they re-start breathing or I may end the pose earlier than originally planned. I think it is important for students to be actively and intentionally breathing throughout their practice, and that holding breath is only valuable if it is intentional.
Overlap between yoga and therapy
One of the concepts I learned when studying yoga was the idea of the “chitta vrittes” or the thoughts that clutter the mind. I have also heard this referred to as the monkey mind, which I understand refers to a Buddhist concept of a busy, restless mind. Often, in class, I will explain the concept and encourage students to gently quiet their mind to get a break from their internal chatter and help them stay present in their practice. I often encourage my therapy clients to tune into their internal self-dialogue (monologue?) and find ways to eliminate the messages we tell ourselves that are unkind and untrue. I have had the pleasure of seeing clients gain significant reduction in unintentional, self-imposed suffering when they gain control of this internal critic, who we often allow to speak to us in the most brutal of ways. Encouraging your mind to be quiet is an effective technique to reduce anxious and stressful thinking, regardless of whether you are introduced to the idea in therapy or in a yoga class.
If you are interested in learning more about how to silence your inner critic in therapy, consider practitioners that have experience with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), as CBT links thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with a lens to seeing how making changes in thinking and behaving can affect your mental state (feelings). One really helpful exercise I often suggest to client involves listening to your inner critic and finding once specific critical message you tell yourself internally and to write it down. Then clients are asked a series of related questions, such as to provide evidence that either supports or negates the statement and to step back and determine the importance of the thought over time. Often clients will be able to prove to themselves that the specific message was in fact not true, and they are able to prevent that negative thought from repeating itself. There are specific ways to confront those thoughts if they do pop up again, and with well thought-out evidence to disprove them, those thoughts can fade away. This exercise could be repeated to confront the various negative messages we tell ourselves but, with skill and practice, many clients can effectively re-author their critical self-talk on the fly.
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email: Rachel@rachelcsykes.com
phone: 617.804.6471
I am licensed to work in Massachusetts.