Yoga can harm… and Yoga can heal…
Those who know me well must have already heard this story. In 2016 I ditched Sivananda Yoga after almost 10 years of practising it religiously every day and teaching it with fanatic zeal to my students.
It took me a long time to do the full 'coming out'. It wasn't easy to admit I had pain in the butt (piriformis syndrome, with symptoms similar to sciatica). It was caused by overstretching.
I was reluctant to share it because I felt ashamed I was teaching something that caused me pain. And because I thought my students would quit Yoga. The same Yoga which was benefiting them greatly. For example... alleviating pain.
So how come Yoga can harm but also heal? Or maybe the problem isn't in Yoga itself?
Time flies. 7 years passed since my 'divorce' from traditional Hatha Yoga. I still believe that dogma in Yoga is dangerous. The teacher shouldn't be convinced that she knows better than the student what happens in the student's body.
But even with the worse teacher, your outcome depends on how you approach the practice. And what happens in your head when you do Yoga.
Any form of mindful movement (Yoga, chi kung/tai chi, somatics), holistic therapies (Thai Massage, Shiatsu, craniosacral therapy) or even meditation are just methods to develop 3 crucial conditions for any healing to happen:
1. Awareness of the body
2. Awareness of the mind
3. Tapping to Intuition/ body's natural intelligence
If you combine those 3 with the magic ingredient: loving kindness towards yourself, that's when the SELF-HEALING begins.
Pay attention to the prefix SELF. It is never a teacher or a therapist that fixes you. If you wait to get fixed, nothing is going to happen. Or maybe it will be a quick fix in one place, only for your body to play up somewhere entirely different.
The body has its way of saying a loud NO if it feels you're going against yourselves for too long. It could bring a disease (often auto-immune), chronic pain, or mental suffering. This kind of pain never comes out of nowhere. It comes up to the surface because of emotional stress. That's the trigger which unleashes disease and pain. Much before the outburst, the body was only whispering to you, sending you quiet warning signals. You either chose to ignore them or didn't even notice them.
Self-healing doesn't mean you will never feel any mental or physical discomfort again. You won't live happily ever after in some ideal reality. Self-healing means you will deal with every upheaval. You will be resilient precisely because you can tap into the potential of healing and regeneration which is already within you.
My life still has ups and downs. Whenever something dramatic happens, my back and bum remind me about their existence. But I know how to respond. I don't fall into the spiral of chronic pain. I don't become my pain.
Evolution has given all creatures the natural ability to regenerate and heal. A lizard grows back its tail. Humans don't, but they can regenerate, too. Your wounds heal, and your bones grow back after breaking. When your nervous cells die, you can create new connections among the remaining ones so that your cognitive functions stay the same (neuroplasticity).
The path to self-healing is a long and winding one. It could be so much easier with a guide and the support of others.
It's only recently I realised what is my mission in this world. I wish to encourage people to treat themselves with loving kindness and let go of what they don't need to hold.
Self-healing is perfectly achievable - we are all like a lizard which grows back its tail.