"Stefania was very sympathetic to my physical needs and limitations. Her yoga lessons really helped my body and mind cope with chemotherapy treatments."
Annette Cryan - Television creative
HEALING YOGA
RECOVERING FROM MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ILLNESS
" 'Curing' is what mainstream or complementary medicine may or may not be able to do for us when we are ill or injured. Healing is what happens after doctors, the medicines, the surgery and the technology have done their work. Healing comes from within, from our inner resources. We all have these inner resources, and practicing yoga can help us to connect with them, to trust them and to utilize them. Yoga helps to create the conditions that encourage our innate healing forces to work for us".
(from "The Healing Power of Yoga" by Julie Friedeberger)
I'd like to illustrate two examples of illness, which well represent the two main categories of the wide spectrum of diseases, which exist and I will point out how yoga can help both, in the case of mental health issues as well as physical ones.
This is a gross simplification, only useful to demonstrate that Yoga can help us heal physical and mental wounds and it will be done bearing in mind that mental issues can often lead to damage to the body, and any disease affecting us in the flesh, it will definitely challenge our view of the world and our mental ability to accept and cope with the pains and limitations we experience, thus potentially creating anxiety or even depression
MENTAL HEALTH
THE CASE OF BULIMIA NERVOSA AND DEPRESSION
I am going to talk about this issue from a very intimate perspective as I have personally lived for years with bulimia and depression. Even though it is absolutely not necessary to have had a particular illness to understand the dynamics and to help people recover from it, it can definitely help provide a Powerful insight on the mechanics of the illness.
When you are bulimic your own body is something to be constantly punished because of what it feels and wants. In Yoga the body is something to be nurtured. As bulimic people, we are constantly Fighting a lost battle, the battle against basic needs. We feel guilty to be hungry and then feel guilty because we have fed ourselves. As we deny ourselves the right to be hungry and judge ourselves as failures because, at times, we do, we can understand how bulimia is always linked to depression (and not the other way round), whether the former was the trigger for the latter or vice-versa. Strict, inhuman rules imposed on ourselves are bound to be disobeyed and when that happens, the nervous energy accumulated in restraining ourselves transforms into a limitless nervous hunger which makes us binge on food until there physically isn't any more space in our stomachs and then we get rid of food by vomiting. At this point self-esteem is at rock bottom and our stomachs are on fire.
In Yoga, we learn how To be in our bodies. We learn to listen to our body and mind without immediate judgment and therefore without immediate punitive action. By accepting to stay with unpleasant feelings and emotions and allowing them to be, just as they are, we are already breaking free from the most well oiled pattern for all addictions: immediate reaction in front of uneasiness in ourselves, looking for the easiest way out.
This is what the Gentle practice of awareness is: observation together with a little detachment. It takes time but step-by-step we learn to sit still in the company of our demons. Through watching them we begin to understand what's behind their masks and how they originated. Then we learn acceptance. It personally took me a few years to admit I was ill but what a cathartic experience that is! Acceptance of our current situation is what is needed to begin to change. After that, accepting that help is needed and that we ought to start truly loving ourselves are real steps forward.
Yoga can allow these processes to happen and it does that considering you as a whole, not just a mind to analyse or a body to fix. It works gently on all levels. It opens and strengthens the body, thus making you feel better right away in your own skin, but adding to these physical movements your awareness, will help you break vicious circles of behaviour. It works on the breathing and teaches you how to be with the breath, but also how to harness it to your own advantage when you think you might be losing control again. It helps you rewire and retrain your mind through guided concentration practices. It teaches you how to relax and to see the great person that you are, even if this is a little hidden to yourself.
PHYSICAL HEALTH
THE CASE OF CANCER, CHEMOTHERAPY AND BEYOND
It's mind blowing to realise that really there is no end to the number of faces that Yoga can have. It was for me when I went to a workshop led by Julie Friedeberger, about Yoga and Cancer.
If you are going through a chemotherapy treatment and feel totally exhausted, you might wonder how on earth you could be doing yoga and how that would be helpful in any way.
The answer is: by adapting to your needs and giving you energy back instead of taking it away. Small movements of the joints, practised with breath awareness can go a long way in allowing your body to get some energy running through it, and can also take your mind off the preoccupations you are carrying with you.
Breathing exercises and guided meditations will be your best friends along the way. When you feel as if you had the weight of the world on your shoulders, being able to find a corner of peace, silence and stillness it is pure bliss.
"The shared, identical aims of yoga and of healing are wholeness, integration, connection, the bringing into balance of body, mind, emotions and spirit, the uniting of the inner and outer aspects of our reality. Yoga has also given us the means to this end: an armoury of practical tools to help us work towards our healing, our wholeness"
(from "The Healing Power of Yoga" by Julie Friedeberger).