In each of my roles as a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Registered Yoga Teacher®, I have opportunity to witness the positive effects on mental health when a client, in either area, begins to quiet down the random ramblings of the mind. Our experiences of life are, largely, determined by the meaning that we attach to the random events that occur in our lives. Ten different people can be exposed to the same stimulus and report ten different experiences. This is because each person is processing the raw data of the event, the who, what, when and where, through their own filters of beliefs, perceptions and attitudes. Our beliefs, perceptions and attitudes are nothing more than systems of thought that we learn and to which we become habituated. After years of practicing a particular method of thinking, our minds come to feel “safe” within the internal environment that is generated as a result of our predominant way of thinking. The mind, thriving on the status-quo, works very hard to perpetuate its familiar environment.
For example, a child who grows up in a home with an anxious parent learns through observation to behave in an anxious way. The energy generated in the home by the anxious behaviors of the parent begins to feel “normal” to the child. The child adopts the parent’s set of perceptions, attitudes and beliefs. She learns to generate her own anxiety. Her mind begins to grow accustomed to this anxious state and creates thoughts that help to perpetuate that state. Being anxious becomes the state in which the child’s mind feels safe. The beliefs, perceptions and attitudes that help to create the anxious state become part of the child’s system of thinking. When this system is practiced throughout life, the anxious child becomes an anxious adult.
Yoga has been called the practice of moving into stillness. Through synchronization of breath and movement, both the mind and body move to a quieter place from which the habitual ramblings of the mind can be better observed, the first step in learning to manage them. The simple act of breathing in a slow, deep, deliberate manner helps to break the cycle of “fight or flight” thinking and behavior that have become a routine part of many of our daily lives. Yoga poses or asanas encourage the body to move in ways that are outside of our typical ranges of motion and open up areas that may be the storage places of undigested emotion and feelings.
If being in a state of good mental health requires the ability to observe and manage the ramblings of the mind and the capacity to allow emotion to move through our bodies, as I believe it does, then yoga is an effective vehicle for cultivating each of these behaviors.
geo
