Category: Article

In the article by Sarah Ezrin, Sarah describes the relationship that most people have with their bodies. She explains different scenarios that most women can relate to and how we can change our thoughts to change our perception of our body. She explains that the longest and most intimate relationship you will ever have is the one with your self, yet sometimes it feels impossible to truly love and accept our bodies. Sarah introduces five different yoga poses that help administrator self love and acceptance. 

I learned to think about my relationship with my self through the lens of self love. I had never considered that our relationship with ourselves is the most intimate relationship we will ever have. I also learned how and they why of how there are yoga poses that can promote self love and acceptance. One of the poses I learned was Construtive Rest which is where you lay on your back with your arms across your chest as if you are giving your self a hug. Your legs are bend with your feet hip width and the knees knocked in. This position helps release the psoas muscle which I learned is the most important muscles that is connected to emotion. When we become emotionally unbalanced, our psoas is the first muscle to become chronically tight and can cause a loss of core awareness. These article helps answer one of my content questions because it shows a direct corrilation to yoga and emotional health. 

 5 Poses to Inspire More Self-Love, Less Self Smack-Talk. Retrieved July 14, 2019, from https://www.yogajournal.com/practice/yoga-for-self-love-a-5-pose-home-practice

In the article, Befriending Your Body, clinical psychiatrist Bessel van der folk explains how yoga can help individuals that have experiences trauma work through their emotional scars. He is the author of a book that examines how trauma effects the brain and the body and specifically how treatments such as yoga can help. He explains that trauma is much more than the actual event that happen some time ago. Trauma actually settles into your body and becomes part of yourself. People who have experienced trauma become afraid of their own physical sensations, which causes them to become short of breath and their entire body to become tense. Yoga is so beneficial for trauma patients because of the yogic breathing. Yoga helps us be able to feel all of our body’s sensation. It is for this reason that yoga is a gentle and safe way for people to start to befriend their bodies and work through the trauma that has become stored in their body. 

I learned that trauma is not just an event but a physical sensation that individuals feel. I learned that yoga can help those individuals face those triggering body sensations and work through the pain of the experience by using breath work and mindfulness. I did not know that yoga is equally or more beneficial that the best possible medications to alleviate traumatic stress symptoms for patients dealing with trauma. This article supports my conclusion that yoga is a tool for mental, emotional and physical healing for individuals. 

Befriending Your Body: How Yoga Helps Heal Trauma. (2018, August 10). Retrieved July 13, 2019, from https://kripalu.org/resources/befriending-your-body-how-yoga-helps-heal-trauma