» 2009 » נובמבר

משאבים

יוגה תרפיה מבוססת על ההנחה שיש לנו כאורגניזים חי מקורות של כוח ומשאבים שתומכים בתהליכי הריפוי ואיכות החיים שלנו.

יוגה תרפיה מקנה את היכולת להתחבר למקורות הכוח והעצמה וממקום קיומי זה לאפשר תהליכי ריפוי

רשימה חלקית זו באה להזכיר לנו כמה הרבה משאבים יש לנו ולתמוך בהתחברות המודעת אליהם

רשימת המשאבים החיצוניים

פנאי	חושים: ריחות, צבעים, צורות, צלילים	חברים ומשפחה	עיסוק רוחני	עבודה
סרטים	טבע	אנשים היקרים לנו	מורים	עיסוק למטרות נעלות
תרגילי נשימה	טיולים	ילדים	דת	פעילות צדקה
פעילות גופנית: ספורט, יוגה, תאי צ'י	יופי	קהילה	ידע זמין	ריקוד
מדיטציה			לימודים
יחסי מין	מוסיקה	יחסים בין אישיים		קריאה
טיפול גופני – עיסוי	אומנות פלסטית	פעילויות תרבות		תחביבים
תרופות		חיות מחמד
		בית
		כסף

רשימת המשאבים הפנימיים

להיות מעוגן	להיות בעל חושים חדים ומפותחים	יכולת להרגיש שלווה, שמחה	אמונה	לא לוותר
להיות ממוקד	לראות	יכולת להרגיש כעס	הומור	נחישות
תחושת איזון	להריח	יכולת להרגיש סיפוק	אינטליגנציה	קואורדינציה
כוח גופני	לטעום	יכולת להרגיש חום	שאיפה לחיפוש רוחני	אופי מגובש
גוף בריא	לשמוע	יכולת להרגיש אכפתיות	ממוקדות במטרה	יכולת להירגע
להיות בעל תחושת גבולות	לחוש	יכולת להרגיש חמלה	סקרנות	יכולת לשחרר
אינטואיציה	היכולת לדמיין	יכולת לאהוב	חלומות	להביא תועלת
תחושת שליטה		היכולת לצקת משמעות	אומץ	יכולת ליצור קשר
		יכולת ליצור קשרים	יכולת להכיר תודה	להנהיג
		יכולת לתת אמון	להיות מודע	מומחיות
		אופטימיות	להבין	כישרונות
			מוסריות	רגישות
			כוח רצון
			רגישות לעקרונות היופי
			הערכת יופי, מילים ואומנות

תחושות הרגשות רגשות

יוגה תרפיה

רשימת התחושות

לא נעים	נעים	לא נעים	נעים
רדום	זורם פועם	מתנודד	יציב
מנותק	מחובר	בחילה	רגוע
נוקשה	נוזלי	קפוא	משוחרר
כבול	חופשי	מתוח	קליל
כואב	מדגדג	רוטט	איתן
חלול	מעובה	רועד	יציב
מכווץ	מתרחב	מסוחרר	מאוזן
כבד	צף	נחנק	תוסס
קר	חם	מפרפר	עמוק
מאובן	מחושמל	עוקצני	מלטף
חסום	אנרגטי	שרוט	חלק
גדוש	חלול	מרוקן	מלא
סגור	פתוח		נושם
לחוץ	נינוח		חמים
כואב: מתיחה, שורף, עוקץ, דחוס, דוקר, עמוס,	מתארך

הרגשות ורגשות

ביישן	אדיש	חרד	מעוצבן
כועס	מנוכר	עליז	נחוש
מדוכא	סקרן	מבולבל	בטוח
זהיר	משועמם	נלהב	מקנא
נלהב ונרגש	נבוך	ניגעל	מיואש
מאוכזב	שמח	אשם	מתוסכל
מפוחד	חושש	מותש	נרגש
תמים	היסטרי	פגוע	מושפל
עוין	מלא תקווה	חסר אונים	אומלל
שובב	מאוהב	אהוב	בודד
מקנא	מעוניין	גאה	שליו
חשדן	כאוב	אופטימי	שלילי
מצטער	ביישן	המום	מסופק
עצוב	משוחרר	מתחרט	מסוגר
מהסס	מתחשב	חשדן	מופתע
נינוח	עקשן	נרגז	זועם
מועצם	נפעם	מסוקרן

תשומת לב ויוגה

When it comes to practicing mindfulness, the yoga and Buddhist traditions have much in common.

By Stephen Cope

Not long ago, I was flying from Boston to San Francisco late at night. As the plane roared down the runway, the young woman sitting next to me appeared to be meditating. Given the restraints of air travel, she had adopted a remarkably good posture–eyes closed, sitting with her hands palms-up on her thighs. She sat that way for a good 30 minutes

Later, as the flight attendant began to serve snacks, my seatmate introduced herself as Beverly. She had just been on a retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, a well-known New England center for vipassana meditation. I told her that I was a yoga teacher and I had done many different kinds of meditation, including vipassana. We dived into a long conversation about yoga and meditation, and after a while she stopped for a moment, clearly thinking hard about something. "Can I ask you a question?" she asked, furrowing her brow. "If you teach yoga, how can you be doing vipassana without getting confused? I thought yogis taught samadhi practice and Buddhists taught the insight practices."

Indeed, Beverly was voicing an interesting and persistent misunderstanding that the yoga meditation traditions teach only what she referred to as samadhi–by this she meant concentration practices–and that the Buddhist traditions primarily stress insight, or vipassana, practice. This misperception is often flavored with the view that samadhi is really about "blissing out," while insight is about the more serious business of seeing clearly. I have noticed that this confusion has become a stumbling block–especially for the many yoga students who are learning the deeper practices of meditation almost exclusively from Buddhist teachers.

The word samadhi has different meanings in the yoga and Buddhist lexicons. To Buddhists, it usually refers to a whole spectrum of concentrated mind states. (The Buddha said, "I teach only sila, samadhi, and panna"–ethical practice, concentration, and insight.) To yogis, on the other hand, samadhi frequently refers to advanced stages of practice–stages that may, in fact, include much of what the Buddha referred to as both samadhi and panna. In classic yoga, of course, samadhi is the eighth and final limb of the eight-limbed (ashtanga) path.

This confusion has led to the misperception that the classic meditation traditions in yoga–those based on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra–rely exclusively on concentration techniques for enlightenment. This is not so. There are many views about the role of meditation–not only between practitioners of Buddhism and yoga, but also within each of those wide-ranging traditions. But my seatmate and I were in luck: She practiced a form derived from Theravadan Buddhism (based on the Pali Canon), and I practiced a form derived from classic yoga. As it turns out, both are part of the same classic meditation tradition; each relies on sophisticated methods of training in both concentration and insight.

The Experiences of Delight

In each of these classic paths, practice begins with the cultivation of the mind's natural capacity for concentration. This capacity reveals itself all the time in daily life. For example, while on a recent vacation in Florida, I was lying on a beach reading a book. My body and mind were already relaxed–an important precondition for attentional training. I lifted my eyes for a moment, and they drifted to a tiny red granite rock that was just in front of my towel. I was fascinated by its color and shape. My attention sank into the rock and examined it. The rock held my attention for a couple of delightful minutes of spontaneous samadhi.

Several curious things happen when one's attention sinks into something in this fashion: The stream of thoughts in the mind narrows; external, distracting sensory input is tuned out (I was no longer aware of the sun burning my skin); brain waves lengthen; feelings of oneness with the object arise; a peaceful and calm mind state emerges. These experiences happen to us more frequently than we think. At the symphony, the mind gets locked onto a beautiful violin line in a Bach concerto. At dinner, we find a morsel of food particularly remarkable. Both of these experiences involve a natural emergence of one-pointed attention.

It turns out that this natural capacity for attention can be highly trained. The mind can learn to aim at an object, stay on it, penetrate it, and know it. The object can be either internal, like the breath or a body sensation, or external, such as an icon or a candle. As concentration develops on the object, the mind becomes still and absorbed in the object.

The side effects of this highly concentrated state are quite delightful and can include equanimity, contentment, and–sometimes–rapture and bliss. These concentration experiences are, in fact, sometimes even referred to as "the experiences of delight." In Buddhism, they are highly cultivated in a series of concentration stages called the jhanas (absorptions). In the classic yoga tradition, a similar, but not identical, series of stages is identified in the development of the final three limbs of the path–dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi.

As our concentration matures through these stages, we are trained to sustain attention on the object without lapses for longer periods of time. Our uninterrupted concentration now becomes powerful–like a laser beam–and we see only the "bare" qualities of the object, beyond categorization and discriminatory thinking.

At these deepest levels of the training, another remarkable result emerges: The mind becomes secluded from the pull of distressing emotions and is temporarily free of craving, clinging, and aversion. In Western psychological terms, we might say the mind is completely secluded from conflict. As a result, concentration techniques provide a much-needed haven for the mind.

Widening the Stream

Through the practice of concentration, the mind becomes a highly attuned instrument. And as the mind matures in steadiness, something extraordinary begins to happen: This concentrated mind develops the capacity to explore itself. It becomes capable of systematically examining the ways in which all phenomena–thoughts, feelings, and sensations–arise and pass away into the stream of consciousness. Mental phenomena previously too fleeting to be noticed begin to fall within perceptual range. In effect, the mind may begin to take itself as its own object.

The rudiments of this subtle investigative mind are perhaps not so common in everyday life as the rudiments of a concentrated one. Nonetheless, anyone who has entered a contemplative mode may have experienced them. Sitting in church, at prayer, we are suddenly aware of the ways in which other thoughts intrude. Or, resting quietly under a tree, we watch as a wave of difficult feeling moves through the stream of consciousness like a dark storm cloud and then drifts away.

It turns out that this investigative capacity of the mind can be systematically developed and trained. And this training, as you might imagine, depends on an altogether different attention strategy: Rather than narrowing the stream of attention, we learn to methodically widen it and observe the endless fluctuation of thoughts, feelings, images, and sensations.

Through insight practices, the meditator learns to attend to as many mental and physical events as possible exactly as they arise, moment to moment. The meditator sees precisely how the world of ordinary experience and the Self are actually constructed. ("I have seen the builder of the house," said the Buddha on the night of his enlightenment.)

This type of training is known as insight training, and though it has been well developed in the Buddhist meditation traditions in America, it has not been quite understood in the yoga traditions as they've been transmitted to us. This explains our misperception–and Beverly's–that insight practice does not exist in the yoga tradition.

The question of why the insight series of Patanjali's program remains neglected in actual practice–at least in America–is a fascinating subject for another time. (Yet it's undeniable that his program does depend on the development of insight-as the conclusions of Books Three and Four of his Yoga Sutra make clear.)

Once Patanjali lays out the training in concentration–dharana, dhyana, and samadhi–he instructs the practitioner to use the resultant attention skills to explore all phenomena in the created world, including the mind itself. The yogi learns to use the "perfect discipline" (samyama) of concentrated mind to explore the entire field of mind and matter. Indeed, much of the third book of the Yoga Sutra, which is widely believed to be just about the attainment of supernormal powers, actually contains Patanjali's instructions for a systematic exploration of the field of experience.

Moments of insight can be more than a little terrifying. Some Buddhist traditions will even refer to these as "the experiences of terror" because, as we begin examining experience closely, we discover that the world is not at all as it appears to be. Insight practices in both traditions effectively deconstruct our ordinary way of seeing ourselves and the world. Learning to bear this moment-to-moment reality can be fragmenting and can cause considerable anxiety. As a result, we need a regular return to concentration and calm. In order for our practice to proceed successfully, we must develop a systematic interplay between the experiences of delight and the experiences of terror.

Drops in the Rainstorm

At the conclusion of these meditation paths, meditators in both traditions see thousands of discrete events arising and passing away in each millisecond. Patanjali describes the most momentary vision of phenomena that he believes humanly possible–dharma megha samadhi, in which they are seen as a rainstorm in which each separate raindrop is perceived.

Meditators in both traditions see how all phenomena (including the Self) simply arise and pass away due to causes and conditions. Buddhists discover the so-called three marks of existence, which consist of suffering (duhkha), no self (anatman), and impermanence (anicca). Yogis discover the similar "four erroneous beliefs": the belief in the permanence of objects, the belief in the ultimate reality of the body, the belief that our state of suffering is really happiness, and the belief that our bodies, minds, and feelings comprise who and what we really are.

Some aspects of the views at the end of the paths are not identical. Yogis discover that behind this "shower" of phenomena lies an abiding pure awareness (purusha)–unborn and unchanging–while Buddhist meditators see pure discontinuity and momentariness, an emptiness that gives rise to form.

Nonetheless, it does seem apparent to me that what is truly freeing in both traditions is much more similar than either tradition seems to realize. In the final stages, meditators in both traditions see that the world of ordinary experience and the Self are actually constructions, compounds in nature rather than "real things" in and of themselves.

The great classic meditation traditions are interested in two outcomes: helping the practitioner end suffering and helping her see reality more clearly. Both traditions discovered that these dual goals are intimately connected, and that only the strategy of methodically training both concentration and insight can accomplish these astonishing end states. It is for this reason that both traditions are valued as authentic and complete paths toward liberation.

יוגה תרפיה היא אמנות תשומת הלב לכול מה שקורה ברגע . כלים שמגדילים את חופש הבחירה ואת הריפוי.

עבודה עם רגשות עוצמתיים

תרגול יוגה הוא הזדמנות לפגוש את עולמנו הרגשי  והגישה של יוגה תרפיה נותנת כלים לריפוי והתמרה.

Feel Your Way

Our intense emotions—even negative ones, like fear, anger, sadness, and grief—can be a path to spiritual growth.

By Sally Kempton

Last summer—as mars hovered close to the earth, power blackouts darkened the Northeast, and car bombers wreaked havoc in Baghdad—everyone I met was talking about how intense their lives were becoming. There seemed to be too much of everything: arguments, explosive feelings, weird dreams, and intrusive thoughts. I received scores of e-mail messages about how to handle the accelerating energies. More meditation and self-inquiry, some advised. Time for political action, others said. Connecting with one another through the heart was the thing to do, according to one Web site; another suggested we gather water supplies and start growing our own vegetables.

In the midst of all of this, I kept remembering a verse from the Vijnana Bhairava, a meditation manual in the Shaivite tradition. The verse says that pure consciousness—the heart-stopping brilliance that composes the core of reality—is especially close to us in moments of emotional intensity, even though those moments might seem like the very opposite of peaceful. The text goes on to give examples: "When you're angry, or overjoyed, or at an impasse reflecting what to do, or running for your life, find within that state the perfect condition of the primordial energy."

This is a deep clue about how to practice in our speeded-up times. It's no secret that strong feelings and experiences carry a lot of energy. Why else would people go to raves, become war correspondents, or provoke their lovers into screaming matches? But there's a big difference between using strong energy to feel more alive or to get high, and consciously using it to move deeper into our own essence. That movement is what the inner life is all about.

And it's the radical truth behind the Vijnana Bhairava verse: If we choose to practice with our strong energies, they can lead us into the very source of our own power. Entering a strong feeling is like splitting an atom, except that the energy released from the core of that feeling is essentially that of brahman, the "vast expanse" itself.

Peeling Away the Layers of the Heart

Linda has been meditating for several years, doing retreats with one of the hard-core Indian teachers of the older generation. Her basic M.O. was always the straight, classical, citta-vritti-eroding yogic approach of stilling the mind.

Recently, however, she went to Mexico on vacation, met a guy, and fell in love. Her heart flung open; detachment melted. There was, as she put it, "big soul-mate energy" between them. They were together for a while, then it was over. She found herself on a plane back home, roiling around in an emotional stewpot of feelings. The pain was extreme. But Linda decided to dive in, to bring her practice-honed attention into the pain itself and look into her own heart space.

She said it was like peeling an onion. Layers of boggy sadness. Layers of hurt pride and bitterness. A big, thick shell of indifference. More sadness. Then she dropped into a huge, open stillness: One minute her heart was an emotional swamp; the next, it was pure spaciousness. She told me that once she had tapped into that spacious heart energy, it stayed available. Ever since, her basic practice has been "sitting" inside her own heart space.

As I listened to Linda's story, my first thought was that she had discovered the power of meditation in the heart. Yet the deeper point of her experience isn't simply that it's nice to meditate in the heart center, or even that there's a better way of dealing with unrequited love than wallowing in it or trying to be stoical. Her story illustrates how inner spaciousness can be especially present and available when we're going through something that feels horrible—like having our heart broken, getting fired, facing our own capacity for anger, or dealing with a personal loss and the grief that attends it. It's almost as if a balancing principle is at work, a secret gift that our inner self can offer us during times that wring our soul.

Energy collects strongly at intense moments. If you don't know how to work with it, it can spin you into confusion or stress you into adrenal overload. But if you understand what intense energy is and practice working with it, it can and will transform your consciousness.

This is one of the deepest and most liberating truths that yoga offers us. I would even go so far as to say that it contains the gist of why we do inner practice at all. The whole yogic paradigm is based on the idea that there's something vast, loving, and spacious in the heart of reality, an awareness that connects all of us and that we uncover when we turn our attention inward. As we practice, we keep waking up to the source of our energy, moving past our fixed perceptions, feeling how it is to live from that vast, loving, and spacious source.

The Practice of Inclusion

Yet on the way to the spaciousness at our center, there are, as we all know, many roadblocks. Between our ordinary state of awareness and our deeper being, we sometimes encounter distractions, emotions, intellectual barricades, fantasies, and just plain dullness. The big question is what to do with these obstacles when we come across them. The Vijnana Bhairava's approach to practice aims to take us to the core of ourself by working with these roadblocks—by including everything in our experience yet reducing each experience and emotion to its essence. So the way it advises us to deal with obstacles is to move right into them and allow them to transmute themselves.

The enlightened sages who originally taught this practice were not just theorists. They actually lived in a state that allowed them to experience the pure awareness within the heart of everything, including the aspects of life that the rest of us regret. Their great realization was that everything we experience in life can provide us with a connection to the Divine. Since we are all, at our core, made of the same subtle loving energy, there is no part of us that can't lead us back to what we are. Even our thorniest feelings—anger, greed, fear—can take us there if we know how to distill them to their essence. Loving energy and angry energy are both, at the bottom, just energy.

We need to understand this in the right way, however. Loving actions lead to very different consequences than angry actions do. But at the deepest level, the core level, we can recognize that anger is not just anger, that fear is not just fear, that depression is not just depression. When we sit quietly with an emotion and go deeply inside it without acting it out, we find that it dissolves into pure consciousness. This is true of every feeling we have, especially when that feeling is strong and when we can let it mount to a peak but not allow it to explode. One of the most self-empowering choices we can make as yogis is to view our tough feelings as doorways to inner freedom.

The Inner Shift

Sam runs a video documentary company with a business partner, Paul. In last year's tight economy, their company was on the verge of going under. Then Sam was asked to make a proposal to a big corporation. If it was accepted, their business would be saved.

On the morning that Sam was scheduled to make the presentation, Paul had a meltdown—he said he wanted to do the presentation; he was tired of having Sam be the star of the company. Sam refused, and the two wrangled painfully until it was time to leave for the business meeting. Sam's mind was churning, his adrenaline was up, and he was wading through his own swamp of confused feelings, not the least of which was extreme guilt over losing his temper. For a moment, he panicked; how was he going to face the potential investors in his emotionally disheveled state?

Then Sam took a few deep breaths. As he did, he found his attention powerfully drawn into the feeling of anger. He held steady with it for a while. Suddenly, he said, there was a kind of implosion. It was as if a skin had come off his awareness and something large, strong, and centered had unfurled itself inside.

It sounded to me like a spontaneous experience of what is sometimes called witness-consciousness—some deep inner stillness and presence had revealed itself. Throughout the crucial meeting, Sam's mind was unusually clear and focused. The presentation went so well that he ended up taking a long, companionable walk with one of the client's principle negotiators.

Several hours later, Sam phoned Paul. To his surprise, Paul reported that he too had experienced an inner shift. He had realized how much he valued his friendship with Sam, how much more important it was than their differences. He did not care what it took to work things out, Paul said; he wanted them to preserve the partnership.

Sam's experience is not so unusual for people who are willing to work with their emotional energy. When we have the fortitude to hold steady with negative emotions without getting caught up in our thoughts about them, they actually collapse—all on their own—into the energy of which they are made.

I've found that when I'm serious about this inner practice, the external circumstances that triggered my emotion often get resolved as well, just as Sam experienced. Misunderstandings get cleared up, sticky relationships dissolve or disentangle themselves. When we get to the core energy inside ourselves, we open up to the force that some people call grace and that Carl Jung called synchronicity. It's a power that transcends duality, and it's one of the great natural forces for positive change.

Some issues aren't so easy to resolve, of course, and we can't expect that making a one-time inner shift will take care of everything that's difficult in our lives. Sam and Paul had to do a lot more negotiating to make their partnership work smoothly; Linda needed to take a hard look at why she kept becoming involved with men who weren't available. And sometimes, the dive inside can turn into a way of escaping the hard work of digging through the issues in our outer lives. (How many frustrated husbands and wives have said to their yogi spouses, "Will you stop acting so damned detached and talk to me"?)

But working with the energy of negative emotions is the exact opposite of avoiding them, resisting them, or trying to make them go away. When we enter into the energy of our feelings, we are looking for the transcendent by facing directly into our emotional winds.

Start with Yourself

If you want to practice with intense energies, a good way to start is with your own feelings and moods, and to start small. Stephen Levine once wrote that working with heavy emotional issues can be like getting into the ring with a 500-pound wrestler—if you haven't trained for it, the wrestler will throw you in the first clench. One of the best ways to train for working with energy is to practice during private moments of meltdown.

One of my favorite times for this kind of practice is the onset of road rage. Like many otherwise reasonable people, I have an inner road warrior who emerges only when I'm alone behind the wheel. He's mouthy, cynical, easily offended—a cross between a New York City cabbie and one of those eccentric hit men from a Quentin Tarantino film. There's a lot of energy in this persona, however. So when I notice myself having snarly private dialogues with a driver who has cut me off at an exit, I try to use the occasion for exploring the energy inside my anger.

You can do this too, anytime. First, take a moment to remember one of your characteristic heavy emotions or the last time you were very angry, grief-stricken, or scared. When you've found the feeling you want to work with, here's what to do:

Acknowledge your feeling. Notice and identify the fact that your inner world has been rocked by an intense, primitive feeling. This is especially important when you've been ambushed by an emotion. It helps to say clearly to yourself, "I'm feeling angry," or, "I'm sad," or, "I'm upset." You don't have to analyze the feeling or even think about where it's coming from.

Pause. Stop yourself from acting on the feeling. To do this, focus on your breathing, following your breath as it moves in and out through your nostrils.

Get grounded. When we're experiencing strong emotions, we often lose touch with our physical body. To get grounded inside your body, bring your attention to the sensation of your feet on the ground; if you're sitting, feel the contact between your buttocks and the cushion or floor.

Bring your awareness into your heart. Once you're grounded, find your center in your heart—not your physical heart but your inner heart, the subtle energy space in the center of your body. If you touch your finger to the spot on your breastbone right between your nipples, you will probably find that there's a slight hollow there and even an achy feeling. Behind this little hollow lies your inner heart. Drop your attention into this center, using your breath as an anchor. Breathe in and out as if you were breathing in and out of your heart. Do this for a few minutes.

Explore the energy in the feeling. Once you have found your center like this, focus again on the feeling you are working with. Where is it in your body? How does it feel? This is not an analytical process; it is more of an exploration. You are giving yourself permission to fully feel and explore the inner sensations created by anger, sadness, injured pride, or fear. Feel whether the emotion is hard or prickly in your body. Notice if there's a color field around your mood. Someone told me that his depressed feelings actually feel grayish.

Let go of the story line. At this point, you'll notice that certain thoughts are attached to your particular emotion, thoughts that frequently begin "How could he?" or "I always…" Acknowledge these thoughts and then let them go, keeping your attention on the feeling rather than getting caught up in your personal story line.

Some people ask, "Suppose there is content in my feeling that needs to be dealt with psychologically or practically? Am I supposed to just let it go?" For the moment, yes. For this particular process, it's important to let go of believing the story that your thoughts and feelings are telling you. If you sense that something in these feelings or in the situation that provoked them needs specific action or attention, take note of it! You'll come back to it later on.

Hold the feeling inside your heart until it dissolves into awareness. Consciously bring the feeling-sense of your emotion into your heart. Hold the feeling inside the energy space in your heart. As you do, let your heart space expand, gently and slowly, until you have the sensation that there is real space around your feeling. Now notice what happens inside you, how the energy inside your anger or grief shifts. It might become sharper and more intense for a while, or it might begin to soften around the edges, to become less specific, less prickly or swampy.

It's important to realize that you aren't just trying to make yourself feel better. You are in a process of shifting your perspective about this feeling. Your intention is to explore its energy and to let that energy resolve itself back into its root, into the core energy of every feeling.

When we bring our heavy emotions into our heart space, it is as if we are bringing them into a place where they can be safely cradled. Psychologist Rudy Bauer has a great way of describing this. He says that holding our intense feelings in our consciousness is like holding hot coals in a basket. The basket contains the coals and allows heat to build up so that we can warm ourselves by their fire, but it also keeps the coals from burning us.

In this way, we can harness the energy inside our intense emotions and use it as a vehicle to move beyond our ordinary mind and toward the source, the Self, where we are powered and supported by something much larger than ourselves—something impersonal and yet loving, something that has no content and yet is full of wisdom. Abiding in this place, we understand what Rumi really meant when he said that fighting and peacefulness both take place within God. Whatever the quality of the times we live in, when we know how to enter the energy of intensity, we have discovered a doorway to the infinite

רגשות שצפים על מזרן היוגה

Danielle Pagano hurried to her favorite yoga class feeling rushed but happy. Everything was fine until it came time to relax into Child's Pose just before the end of class. With her head bowed and attention focused inward, Pagano, a 33-year-old vice president of an international investment company, began to cry. She spent the next few minutes struggling to contain herself, and wrote the experience off to exhaustion. When it happened again the following week—this time earlier in the asana progression—she was stunned.

What had at first been a relaxing hour for Pagano had become a stressful obligation. She realized that something significant had happened, but she refused to return to class until she felt confident that an emotional upheaval wouldn't occur again. Not comfortable talking with her yoga teacher about it, Pagano skipped class for a couple of weeks, choosing instead to discuss the incident with her therapist.

Though Pagano didn't know it, her experience is a common one, as are the concerns it raised for her: Was something wrong with her? When would she be able to stop crying? What did the people around her think? And why did this happen in yoga class and not, say, while she was eating lunch or taking a walk?

It's a Good Thing

"The holistic system of yoga was designed so that these emotional breakthroughs can occur safely," says Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, Ph.D., a psychologist and the director of Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Care in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provides guidance to spiritual seekers. "Yoga is not merely an athletic system; it is a spiritual system. The asanas are designed to affect the subtle body for the purpose of spiritual transformation. People enter into the practice of yoga asana for physical fitness or physical health, or even because they've heard it's good for relaxation, but ultimately the purpose of yoga practice is spiritual development."

This development depends on breaking through places in the subtle body that are blocked with unresolved issues and energy. "Anytime you work with the body, you are also working with the mind and the energy system—which is the bridge between body and mind," Harrigan explains. And since that means working with emotions, emotional breakthroughs can be seen as markers of progress on the road to personal and spiritual growth.

That was certainly the case for Hilary Lindsay, founder of Active Yoga in Nashville, Tennessee. As a teacher, Lindsay has witnessed many emotional breakthroughs; as a student, she's experienced several herself. One of the most significant occurred during a hip-opening class. She left the class feeling normal, but during the drive home became extremely upset and emotional. She also felt she'd experienced a significant shift in her psyche—something akin to a clearing of her spirit. Lindsay felt, as she puts it, released. "There is no question that the emotion came out of my past," she says.

By the next day, her opinion of herself had taken a 180-degree turn. She realized she was a person who needed to constantly prove herself to be strong and capable, and saw that this was partly the result of an image instilled by her parents. Her spirit actually needed to recognize and accept that she was a proficient person and ease off the internal pressure. This realization, Lindsay says, was life-changing.

Not every spontaneous emotional event is quite so clear-cut, however. Difficult and stressful breakthroughs occur most often when the release involves long-held feelings of sadness, grief, confusion, or another strong emotion that a person has carried unconsciously throughout his or her life.

"Whenever something happens to us as a kid, our body is involved," says Michael Lee, founder of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, which is headquartered in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts (see "Therapy on the Mat," below). "This is particularly true of trauma. The body comes to the defense of the whole being. In defending it, the body does things to stop the pain from being fully experienced.

"Emotional pain is overwhelming for small children, because they don't have the resources to deal with it," he continues. "So the body shuts it off; if it didn't, the body would die from emotional pain. But then the body keeps doing the physical protection even long after the situation has ended."

Painful experiences, Lee adds, can range from small, acute ones to intense, chronic problems. Still, the mechanism at play is unclear: "We really don't understand the body-memory thing," he says, "at least in Western terms."

The Body-Mind Connection

In yogic terms, however, there is no separation between mind, body, and spirit. The three exist as a union (one definition of the word yoga); what happens to the mind also happens to the body and spirit, and so on. In other words, if something is bothering you spiritually, emotionally, or mentally, it is likely to show up in your body. And as you work deeply with your body in yoga, emotional issues will likely come to the fore.

In the yogic view, we all hold within our bodies emotions and misguided thoughts that keep us from reaching samadhi, defined by some as "conscious enlightenment." Any sense of unease or dis-ease in the body keeps us from reaching and experiencing this state. Asanas are one path to blissful contentment, working to bring us closer by focusing our minds and releasing any emotional or inner tension in our bodies.

Though the ancient yogis understood that emotional turmoil is carried in the mind, the body, and the spirit, Western medicine has been slow to accept this. But new research has verified empirically that mental and emotional condition can affect the state of the physical body, and that the mind-body connection is real. (Newsweek and Time both dedicated issues to the topic last year.)

Many doctors, psychotherapists, and chiropractors are embracing these findings, and are now recommending yoga to help patients deal with problems that only a few years ago would have been viewed and treated solely in biomechanical terms.

Hilary Lindsay recently experienced this firsthand. "I woke up one morning with my body completely distorted," she remembers. "I went to see a chiropractor, who told me plainly, 'There's nothing wrong with you physically.'" The doctor suggested she try a Phoenix Rising session, which she did. The practitioner put Lindsay into some supported yogalike positions on the floor. "He did not focus on anything more than, 'Here's this pose and how does it feel?' I would say something; he would repeat my word and say, 'What else?' until I would say there was finally nothing else." The therapist never analyzed or discussed what Lindsay said, but still, she felt he helped her to see her problem.

"When I drove off on my own, I realized my words had just painted a clear picture of my approach to life," she says. "I saw a power-driven maniac who was probably in the process of driving herself nuts."

As the day went on, she felt physically healed, and attributes that to the emotional outcome of the session, which the asanas helped her access. In other words, she was able to release the distortion in her body only by releasing her inner tension.

"I did not have any repeat of the symptoms," Lindsay adds, "and I felt the calm that comes with knowing yourself a little more than you did before. The awareness does not occur like the lightbulb over the cartoon guy's head. It doesn't come ahead of its time. The student has to be ready to receive it."

Forcing the Issue

Teachers are divided as to whether it's productive to actually try to raise difficult emotions on the mat. "One shouldn't really try to have an emotional release during asana, but if it happens, that's fine," Harrigan says, voicing what seems to be the majority opinion.

Ana Forrest, founder of the Forrest Yoga Circle studio in Santa Monica, California, is an experienced yoga teacher who has had her own emotional breakthroughs both on and off the mat. She is proud of her intention to push her students toward—and through—their own emotional blockages (see "Poses That Push You," below). "It's not that I push with my hands," Forrest explains. "But when I work with people, I really ask them to go deep, and I educate them along the way. I tell them, 'You're going to hit what's stored in there. Let it come up and be cleansed out of your cell tissue. It's a gift of the yoga.'"

At the beginning of each class, Forrest asks her students to "pick a spot that needs extra attention, so you can connect to that spot and then feel what emotion is connected to it." For example, when a student tells Forrest she's just had her heart broken, Forrest offers this advice: "Challenge yourself to make every pose about moving energy into your heart."

Her approach has worked well for many students, she says, but it's not without controversy. "People challenge me on this all the time," Forrest says.

Richard Miller, Ph.D., a yogi and licensed psychologist, says trying to cause an emotional release is a subtle form of violence, because it suggests that "you need to be other than you are." A true yogic view focuses not on change, he argues, but on self-acceptance on the student's part. "In that way, change and spiritual growth will unfold naturally," he says.

Miller, who is also a contributor to The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy (Paragon, 2003), a collection of essays by meditation practitioners and psychotherapists, stresses that it's important for teachers to neither comment on nor try to "help" a student through any release. "The moment we become helpers, we become hinderers," he says.

Forrest, however, believes that "most people need help with this, as our culture doesn't educate us on how to work in a healthy way with our emotions," and that without assistance, many people will remain stuck. Students trust her, she says, because of her own traumatic past (which includes sexual abuse, she openly shares) and her experiences working through emotions. "I've had years and years of therapy," she says. "I've still got twisty places inside of me, but I know how to accept and work with whatever memories need to come up."

Forrest tells her students, "I've walked the road you're on; I'm just about 10 miles ahead of you. But I still have a road to walk. I'm not enlightened, but I know what it is to have my spirit directing my actions."

And it's not just the student who learns from the teacher. Forrest says that through her students, she has grown from having "an emotional range of about four inches to a larger capacity—but there's always a lot of room for breakthrough."

Teardrops on the Mat

When a breakthrough does occur—even if it's much-needed—it can be hard for a person to cope with it. "If there is a release of emotion in a particular asana, according to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra [II.46–49], the thing to do is relax into the pose, regulate the breathing, and focus on the infinite to become centered in the deepest aspect of one’s self," Harrigan advises.

Harrigan thinks teachers should encourage their students to find a comforting and inspiring word or mantra to turn to anytime during class and to correlate with their breathing. "This is a centering device that is always at the student's disposal, no matter how or when the emotional release occurs," she says.

"I also recommend that people taking a hatha yoga asana class keep a journal of not just the physical experience but what goes through their minds and their emotional states," Harrigan adds. "This way, they can consider the spiritual aspect of their lives very consciously."

When a student is facing a welling-up of emotion, the most powerful action teachers can take is to simply offer him or her quiet support. "I would teach the teacher not to judge the event but to observe it with the discriminate buddhi [wisdom] faculty," Harrigan says. In this way, teachers can help their students disidentify with the feeling but use it later for self-study, either in yoga class or out—as Danielle Pagano did with her therapist. It is always wise, Harrigan adds, for teachers to be on the lookout for students who might benefit from a referral to a psychotherapist.

It's important for students to use their buddha minds too, and to get help when they need it. Whereas Lindsay felt released and was easily able to process her feelings on her own, Pagano knew she needed to talk with someone. There are times when a good therapist—as opposed to a good yoga teacher—is the right choice, agree all the teachers interviewed for this article.

etter yet, says Richard Miller, is a combination of the two approaches. "Some therapists don't have an understanding of the universe as a oneness; instead, they often believe they are helping their clients to have better lives by supporting them in achieving certain goals or resolving specific issues," he says. "Meanwhile, yoga teachers who speak only of hamstrings or Pigeon Pose are not communicating a true yogic view of enlightenment or inner equanimity." The truth, Miller concludes, is that "we are not here to try to change ourselves. We are here to meet ourselves where we are."

Poses That Push You

Asanas are not prescriptive for emotional issues in the same way they can be for issues in the physical body. But most of the yoga teachers interviewed for this story agree that some poses seem to initiate emotional responses more than others.

"Camel, hip openers, and lunges" Ana Forrest suggests. "Camel because of its immediate impact in exposing the heart, hip openers because they tap into the vital feelings stored in the area, and lunges because there's a lot of unchanneled potential and power in the thighs." Twists and backbends can also trigger an emotional release.

However, what works for one person may not work for another. You cannot demand release and expect a response, although you can certainly, as Forrest asks of her students, listen to your body and discover where it needs to untie an emotional knot. If your heart feels heavy, if your stomach is constantly in turmoil, if your inner child needs comforting, you can create an asana and pranayama program specifically for your condition, the same way you might practice inversions or balancing poses if you want to challenge yourself physically.

Michael Lee created Phoenix Rising specifically to help students cope with emotions. It combines assisted yoga postures, breath awareness, and nondirective dialogue based on the work of Carl Rogers, in which the therapist acts as a sounding board, repeating much of what the student says to allow her to stay with her own train of thought.

Lee drew inspiration from his own encounter with emotions on the mat in the early 1980s. He was living in an ashram where morning practice took place each day at 5:30. "Every day for a year and a half, the guy on the mat next to me would get about one-third of the way through class and begin to sob profusely," Lee remembers. "Some people found it disturbing. One day, I said to him, 'What's going on?'"

"I don't know," the man answered. "I just get overwhelmed by sadness. I try to hold back a little so I don't bother people." It turns out that he had been experiencing these intense outbursts every morning for 10 years.

"The guru had previously instructed the man to just stay with his practice, because he believed his emotions would work themselves out through asana alone," Lee recalls. "But even back then, I thought the experience required a more integrated approach."

Lee talked with the man extensively about his experience and, in helping him, created Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy. He launched the program at the DeSisto School for emotionally troubled teens in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1986, building on his background in group dynamics from the psychology movements of the 1970s. (Lee is not a licensed psychotherapist.) Practiced by yoga teachers, bodyworkers, physical therapists, and psychologists, the method aims to bridge the gap between body and mind. Unlike traditional therapy—which might focus on eliminating a phobia or improving a skill, such as communication between spouses—Phoenix Rising sessions focus on helping people recognize their own body’s wisdom and get to the source of emotions that may be causing aches and pains, physical or otherwise.

I wanted to experience the method for myself, so I turned to Carol S. James, one of 1,012 Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy practitioners around the world. We began by talking on a couch, where James asked me about my health, state of mind, and background. After telling her about a few things that were troubling my mind on that particular day, we moved to another area in the softly lit room, where we sat facing each other on a large, puffy mat. James asked me to focus on my breath, which brought me into the moment and allowed me to begin to talk.

Throughout the session, she moved me into very gentle supported poses (backbends, forward bends, and leg stretches), almost the way a personal trainer might stretch a client at the end of a workout. She asked me to tell her more about my thoughts, and repeated many of my words. The session sounded something like this:

"I feel sad that I'm 40 and alone."

"You're sad that you're 40 and alone."

"It's surprising. I didn't expect this to happen."

"You're surprised. Tell me more about that."

And so on, until I found myself leaning back, physically, directly onto Carol and telling her more—a "more" I had never gotten to before.

The experience of physically leaning on someone while revealing myself to the person was one of the most profound I have ever had. During my session, I felt a connection to my deepest self, the self that is at peace. The combination of discussion and touch was sweet and deep.

At the end of the session, my heart was as open with love toward myself as it had ever been. The emotional breakthrough was not traumatic but physically and spiritually enlightening. I hate to glibly paraphrase Bob Dylan, but I truly felt released, and as Richard Miller said, I met myself right where I was, with love.

בקורס להכשרת מטפלים ביוגה תרפיה אנו לומדים לפגוש את העולם הרגשי שלנו על המזרן בתוך מיכל בטוח ומוגן ולרפא ולהתמיר מטענים רגשיים כואבים