On your mat, get set, go! Yoga and you.
Manon Laliberté, MBA, CRHA, Kerri Ritchie, PhD, CPsych.
There is no one way or one recipe for managing stress and taking care of your wellbeing. Different things work for different people, and different things work at different times. Sometimes a really good dark chocolate will help to soothe a bad day, and sometimes three chocolate bars later, we are still upset and now we feel sick.
Everyone gets overwhelmed at times. Some people feel flooded by feelings, sometimes about certain feelings. Other times about any feelings they experience. When this happens, the feelings can take over their thoughts, emotions, and their body; consuming them and making them feel like they can’t to the other side of the emotion wave.
Yoga is one strategy that can help us manage stress and distress on a couple of levels:
Yoga is rhythmic and grounding. It can get us out of our heads and into our bodies. It can take us away from the should have’s and the what if’s and bring us to the present moment. It allows us to step away from something stressful and refocus our attention on our breath and body. It creates distance from what feels dangerous and unpredictable and encourages a sense of safety in exploring and experiencing the here and now.
The breathing in yoga can help us manage heart rate variability, and in some cases, recouple it, so that when we focus and inhale and exhale, our heart rate starts to come down. This helps us send a message to ourselves that we are ok, and that our system can start to calm down.
Both strategies are examples of bottom-up regulation, meaning we use our body to soothe our minds. Need a 5-minute Yoga re-set? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fnLKyRJsrs Torn between yoga and sitting on the couch? You can do both. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwFK-XIwD3c Want to try a 30 day yoga challenge? https://www.youtube.com/@yogawithadriene
Remember: it is all about fit. If yoga does not do it for you, and you yearn for the runner’s high, or if it is about turning up the music as loud as you can and dancing your heart out, go for your best match. You do you!
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