Hey loved ones,
I have been doing yoga on and off for a couple of years now.
I am struggling with general and social anxiety and upon that depression, but gets better if doing medications.
Now, I am thinking about doing a month of yoga training (at least) to transform and heal myself and later on to also help others.
Do you have recommendations on anything on this topic and to where and how to best get an education in this area?
Love to all of u,
Yogastic
I would say that persistence is the best tool you may need for yoga to have any effect. If you are doing it on and off , the effect may not even be visible for a long time. Yoga is meant to be a life style unconditionally following yamas, niyamas to begin with and at the same time you would have to develop persistence to devote about 1 hour per day to asanas, everyday 6 days a week and 1 day to let the body rest. So the best advice is to find a teacher that can jump start you on this journey.
Thanks for fast reply.
You are absolutely right. It takes persistence I guess to get some effect. That I have to work on.
Are you asking about teacher-training recommendations?
Yes, I am thinking about doing yogatraining to both transform myself into better physical, mental and emotional health and to also eventually help others with the same problems.
Any tips on great schools and other suggestions would really be appreciated.
Thanks and love,
Hi Yogastic (love your name by the way!)
A yoga intensive (say a month long session) is a great way to deepen your practice. There are many available world wide and I think the best place to start is to ask yourself a few questions- Are willing to travel? I think getting out of your normal surrounding is a great way to grow…
If you are really ready to teach make sure the school you go to is recognized under the yoga alliance as for getting a teaching job after you are certified will be difficult if the course isn’t recognized.
The last question would be which is your favorite style of yoga? There are sooo many these days and it’s such a personal thing, if I suggest a Ashtanga school and you like a gentle hatha- I wouldn’t be helping you very much at all! hahaha:)
About the anxiety- a regular dedicated practice in not only asana but meditation and pranayama can probably help significantly in that regard, where as the on/off method isn’t quite as helpful. It’s the times when I really don’t feel like practicing that help me the most and it took me a loooong time to figure that out!
Hope that helps a little bit!
I believe one should practice at a place, in a style, with a faculty, before selecting a training. Sometimes this isn’t “easy” or “convenient” but then neither is the path of yoga. After all, how could you possibly know that what you’re receiving will resonate with you if you’ve not actually sampled it?
I also feel that yoga trainings are not well shopped by prospective trainees. While a program that has met Yoga Alliance standards is a plus, by no means could I say all qualifiers are created equal, offer the same goods, have integrity, or know what they’re doing. Ask about the curriculum. Ask about anatomy and physiology. Ask about support or community AFTER the training. And most importantly find teachers who are living what they are teaching.
I can say with all confidence that you’d find all of this in Helsinki with Tove Palmgren.
Thank you all for your kind answers. I can see what you all are saying and Im taking it in. I will definitely look into the teacher in Helsinki.
(Disclaimer- I am new) I recently read THE UNTETHERED SOUL by Michael A. Singer, and it has been a life changer. He seems to be heavily influenced by the Yoga philosophy (partly why I signed up here). For the Yoga experts here, please let me know if I’m wrong. I’ve incorporated many of the practices in that book (and many other books I’ve read) into my life with great success. For example, practicing mindfulness has been a life changer for me. Simply observing emotions come and go as if they were people entering my home. I let them in and observe them. I don’t fight them or cling to them (we tend to cling to happy thoughts and want to get rid of unhappy thoughts). Mindfulness allows us to live in the moment, and it is one of those things, I believe, that needs to be a life style. For example, I felt depressed and angry over some external factors last night, and I simply observed them and allowed the depression and anger to roam my “house” while watching my breath. The depression and anger passed, and I did not become attached to them. Today, I was grateful not to be stuck in resentment, because the anger past. Regarding anxiety, frequently the worse thing about anxiety is the fact that we try to get rid of it, so anxiety begets more anxiety. We become anxious that we are anxious. If we simply stay with the initial anxiety and know we are not our anxiety, things will get better. Well, that’s my two-cents, and I know you’re looking for a specific teacher, and I’m not giving you that. But in the end, whatever that teacher teaches, you will need to incorporate it into your every moment. By the way, I know someone who had serious social phobia with frequent panic attacks to the point where she could not work. She started practicing Yoga, using mindfulness and meditation (concentrating on the breath) at least three times a day. She rarely has panic attacks now, but she has to continue incorporate these practices into her life or she’ll go back to the same anxious patterns. Hope that helps.
Thank you, YogaJ for your long response! I will have a look at the book you are mentioning. Yes I have tried mindfulness and I think it is incorporated actually in most parts of yoga asanas and meditation etc. If you really practice yoga you have to be mindful I believe.
About the anxiety, my higher self knows about to move on and that I don’t have to clinch to the anxiety but my stubborn and loving ego wants me to stay there and really feel it. So we are not always on the same side but we are working on becoming more friends :)!
Knowing when to push yourself into a situation is always difficult if one is shy or anxious. And being in my sixties doesn’t free me from those thoughts either.
But generally a person can force themselves thru more than they expect. Getting some objective opinions from those that you trust and those that know you is always good to do first.
The main reason I am posting is to suggest a bit more grounding and natural life during each day regardless of where you go, because it produces a safer and more balanced outlook on life. For example, walk a few minutes barefoot on real Earth each day, yoga is barefoot but rarely on actual Earth. Get some real sunlight daily as compared to office lights. Eat some real live raw food, preferably vegan, like sprouts etc., as opposed to all processed cooked dead foods (think live foods help one be alive, dead foods don’t). Shake some hands or hug if acceptable more often.
Yoga is great because one starts to sync their breathing with their movements and still one’s mind from chaotic thoughts (or at least reduce them). This helps a lot with our pyschologies.
Best wishes, Gil.
YogaJ! Absolutely agree with your remark on letting emotions roam around and to observe them non-judgementally! I started on this pathway way a number of years ago while accidentally ending up in a gentle hatha yoga class and wow. It really and truely opened my eyes. I used to try and just push away any negative emotions and force them out of my life and it never really worked and just got worse. What I’ve realized, and still blows my mind to this day, is the impermance of the negative emotions if you allow them to happen. Before I started allowing emotion to happen I believed the anxiety (or depression) if I allowed myself to truely feel it, would stay forever. I was so surprised when I let the emotion flood in and then it so quickly flowed right out… It was seriously only a matter of minutes. I cried my eyes out but then it just stopped without me even trying to stop it. It just ended. These days things rarely bother me, as the deeper I go with yoga the less the external world disrupts me, but when it does I have the skills to deal with it properly.
Great testimony, Kristie. Sounds like you definitely have a good grasp of mindfulness. Better than me, and I look forward to attaining that level of depth. Westerners (I’m one of them) frequently correlate meditation with deep breathing and feeling peaceful, so have a hard time understanding mindfulness. I had explained the concept to a friend of mine. Later, he said it really worked: he described how his sink had broken, and he initially freaked out, thinking about the finances, but then he was able to put things into perspective and realize that it wasn’t the end of the world. Bless his heart. It was great that his interpretation of what I said helped him, but it wasn’t mindfulness. His “positive” inner voice (sorry I’m putting a judgement on it) was talking to his “negative” inner voice. Mindfulness would have involved observing non-judgementally how he was anxious and later began seeing things more rationally.
Yogastic, your job with mindfulness is to simply observe your “higher self” and “stubborn and loving ego” battle it out without judgement. It’s okay that they do that. Our minds can be quite dramatic. In THE UNTETHERED SOUL, the author says that you are neither of these sides but rather the one who observers, the consciousness.
I’m glad you found my post helpful. It always brings a smile to my face when I can help someone.
Gilyoga, studies have shown that communities that live close to nature tend to be happier. I like the idea of walking a few minutes barefoot on real Earth and getting some real sun and eating real food.
YogaJ, I get a little excited when talking about sitting with your feelings/anxiety rather than pushing them away:) It’s a topic I’m very passionate about as you can tell from my post! hahaha! The mindfulness is journey, I have my moments too…Thankfully it’s been a while since I’ve had a moment.
Observing with no aversion/attraction allows unimpeded experience.
Since you want to deal with “general and social anxiety and upon that depression” you are going to deal with most subtle entities. There is no fixed timeline you can decide for it. You need to keep on practicing yoga. Sometimes it takes months and years but it is only yoga that works here.