Siva and Alix, I must lovingly disagree 
But that’s what is beautiful about yoga! We find teachers and studios that fit what we need. In my experience, the release of emotion is so vitally important that a teacher should create the safe space for that to happen. People attend my classes because of that. If either of you are teachers and people prefer emotion NOT be expressed, then you will attract students based upon that variable, students who would want nothing to do with me
To those reading this thread, if you feel that emotion should be allowed to be fully expressed in a class, ask your teacher their opinion. If they say no, then find a new teacher. And of course vice versa.
[quote=Alix;14459]The release of emotion in a yoga class is very normal, and to be expected. Depending on the emotion released it may or may not be appropriate for the class. I would certainly be uncomfortable with someone who became very angry in a class expressing that emotion (and for the record I have seen that). It would be an entirely different scenario for someone to cry during savasana.
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Why should one emotion be allowed and another not? That’s social conditioning. We’re more comfortable with crying than anger but in the end, each is the experience the person needs to be having, otherwise they would not be having it. I LOVE when someone cries. I LOVE when someone laughs uncontrolalbly. I LOVE when someone expresses rage. Interestingly enough, there is often a great wound underneath that rage if it is allowed to be fully expressed. It is amazing to see those lifelong wounds heal and the amazing transformation the student undergoes.
Refusing to let go of the past can only force us into a neural feedback loop that causes the trauma to be replayed over and over in our minds in an endless loop of madness. Eventually, the neurological process of our brains will transform this excess neural energetic activity into ideations of hate, revenge, shame, suicide or depression. Once we enter this arena we can be forever trapped into the compulsion and vengeance of victimhood rather than the freedom and forgiveness of survivorhood. (Berceli, 2003)
In my opinion, if we are uncomfortable with something, that is us unconsciously reacting to something in our past. Part of my practice has been to ask why I feel a certain way. When the universe reveals the answers, they are often startling, destroy longheld belief systems, and have torn off the many masks I have worn.
What’s really neat is all of this can be explained on a physiological level by science. Why do certain scents cause us to recall a memory? Because of the, “What fires together wires together” rule of neuroscience. If you smelled something during a traumatic or memorable event, that smell is wired in with the memory of the event. When you smell a similar smell later in life, that same neural network is accessed which causes the brain to say, “Oh my god the last time you smelled this [B]X[/B] happened which was REALLY bad so feel anxiety just like last time and RUN!” Emotion and deep chronic muscle tension often wire together because your body naturally clenches during traumatic events and you experience a certain emotion during said event. When you access and begin to let go of that deep chronic tension then the emotion that was wired in also begins to release. That emotion may have been fear, grief, anger, or whatever. The thing is, if you stop that emotion from releasing, the deep chronic tension doesn’t release either. Watch someone having a massive emotional release. They’ll also be shaking in certain areas of their body. That is the deep chronic tension releasing. Stop the shaking and the emotional release will subside. Stop the emotional release and the shaking will subside. Either way, you don’t let go of what your body desperately wants to let go of.
[I]Letting go is not for the purpose of forgetting or forgiving the past, it is about releasing the energy of the past to give us back our lives in the present which is necessary to deliver us into a new future. (Holloway, 2002).[/I]
