My yoga journey
(..and why it matters)
Yoga and Reiki seem to go hand in hand. A lot of Reiki Masters are yoga teachers and vice versa. After three years of immersion in the yoga world, I understand why. I have learned many things on the mat that have helped exponentially in my growth and development as a healer.
I started yoga with Bikram. Yes, the yoga you do in a room heated to 101 degrees. We were living in the California desert at the time, so 101 didn't seem that hot. I learned poses, balancing, and how to bend my body much like I had in ballet. After we moved to South Carolina we kept up our Bikram practice, and then I transitioned to prenatal yoga when I got pregnant.
It took me a long time to come back to the yoga room. I went back a few months after my daughter was born, but I took her with me, to mommy and baby yoga. After a few classes and a lot of distraction, I put my yoga practice on hold for a while, except for one class when my son was a baby which involved way too many handstands for my taste.
When we moved to Florida, yoga started calling me to come back. I landed in a local studio after my father died. I had been traveling back and forth to Louisiana and had just completed my seventh trip home to take care of the estate. My husband had just told me he was leaving me. My father's death was literally taking apart my life.
My yoga instructor seemed to pick up on my despair. He could read me in an uncanny way that unsettled me. I took a few classes from him and then switched to another teacher, who was a Reiki Master. Being around her as I rebuilt my life was enlightening, comforting, and very helpful. Her calm presence allowed me to open up. I had started over as a beginner.
I took two levels of Reiki while taking classes from her. Then I switched back to my original instructor, and there it was again, his ability to read everything that was going on with me. I thought perhaps it had something to do with Reiki attunement, or being around three Reiki Masters who taught at his studio.
What I realized after my Master attunement was that it wasn't those things. It was his ability to see me open up. When you work with the body for a number of years, you start to notice where people unconsciously hold their energy and where they let go. I realized that taking care of sick people had given me the same ability, but in a different way- I could tell where they held emotion in their bodies.
Some very interesting things started to happen in his class. My chakras would open up and my emotions would dump all over the floor. Or my body would send out cords to try to grasp onto my teachers. I was looking for emotional help from outside of myself, when what I really needed was to begin self care. When I started crying in class, I started to see energies that scared me. I knew it was time to make a change.
I started doing Bikram again and found hot power yoga. I vowed to myself to take better care of me. As someone who has been a caregiver most of my life, caring for myself was a new venture. The Healing Touch Program requires self care as a part of healer development. I was doing the journaling, meditating, and eating well homework, but the exercise was missing.
When I started going to yoga classes consistently, my chakras would open up and I'd be confronted with memories I had held down for a long time. The root chakra is our safety and survival chakra, and it holds memories from birth to age three. I was confronted with memories I had not seen before, and quite literally started doing inner child work on the yoga room floor.
I cried in every class. My teachers assured me this was normal, a part of healing. All of my pain and rage was contained in my solar plexus, the power and will center. I have learned that depression and anxiety live mostly in this chakra, as a result of holding back our power. I had held back my own power most of my life because I was afraid of it. The more I opened up and worked on my chakra system through yoga, the better I felt.
I also started attending the Kundalini ashram in Maitland. At the beginning of a Kundalini awakening, the energy can move right through chakras like a freight train. I had felt this energy coursing through my body, and when it first started it scared me. My teachers taught me to ground the energy and learn to move it gently through my body, and to respect myself when the energies got too strong.
After a while, I started to feel well. I actually started to feel good. I had been taught in my Healing Touch classes that sometimes people do not want to get better, because they're unaccustomed to feeling well, and when they do, it's too much to handle. Feeling well took some getting used to. Being emotionally well was an even bigger accomplishment, because I had struggled with depression most of my life.
One of the mantras in the studio is, "it's not that you can't do something, it's that you can't do it yet". I took that to heart and practice gentleness with myself when I come up against my own resistance on the mat or in my life. After almost three years of consistent yoga practice, many of my haunting memories have left, and have been replaced with feelings of joy, happiness, and peace.
I'm so happy that I made a commitment to that 101 degree room 13 years ago. Everyone's yoga journey is different, and I'm glad that mine included Reiki and Healing Touch. I've begun studying ashtanga for my home practice, and the combination of yoga and energy work has helped me put my life back together. Moving energy through the chakras is healing for the body, mind, and soul.
(.. and I'm happy to say yoga helped heal my marriage too.)
Yoga and Reiki seem to go hand in hand. A lot of Reiki Masters are yoga teachers and vice versa. After three years of immersion in the yoga world, I understand why. I have learned many things on the mat that have helped exponentially in my growth and development as a healer.
I started yoga with Bikram. Yes, the yoga you do in a room heated to 101 degrees. We were living in the California desert at the time, so 101 didn't seem that hot. I learned poses, balancing, and how to bend my body much like I had in ballet. After we moved to South Carolina we kept up our Bikram practice, and then I transitioned to prenatal yoga when I got pregnant.
It took me a long time to come back to the yoga room. I went back a few months after my daughter was born, but I took her with me, to mommy and baby yoga. After a few classes and a lot of distraction, I put my yoga practice on hold for a while, except for one class when my son was a baby which involved way too many handstands for my taste.
When we moved to Florida, yoga started calling me to come back. I landed in a local studio after my father died. I had been traveling back and forth to Louisiana and had just completed my seventh trip home to take care of the estate. My husband had just told me he was leaving me. My father's death was literally taking apart my life.
My yoga instructor seemed to pick up on my despair. He could read me in an uncanny way that unsettled me. I took a few classes from him and then switched to another teacher, who was a Reiki Master. Being around her as I rebuilt my life was enlightening, comforting, and very helpful. Her calm presence allowed me to open up. I had started over as a beginner.
I took two levels of Reiki while taking classes from her. Then I switched back to my original instructor, and there it was again, his ability to read everything that was going on with me. I thought perhaps it had something to do with Reiki attunement, or being around three Reiki Masters who taught at his studio.
What I realized after my Master attunement was that it wasn't those things. It was his ability to see me open up. When you work with the body for a number of years, you start to notice where people unconsciously hold their energy and where they let go. I realized that taking care of sick people had given me the same ability, but in a different way- I could tell where they held emotion in their bodies.
Some very interesting things started to happen in his class. My chakras would open up and my emotions would dump all over the floor. Or my body would send out cords to try to grasp onto my teachers. I was looking for emotional help from outside of myself, when what I really needed was to begin self care. When I started crying in class, I started to see energies that scared me. I knew it was time to make a change.
I started doing Bikram again and found hot power yoga. I vowed to myself to take better care of me. As someone who has been a caregiver most of my life, caring for myself was a new venture. The Healing Touch Program requires self care as a part of healer development. I was doing the journaling, meditating, and eating well homework, but the exercise was missing.
When I started going to yoga classes consistently, my chakras would open up and I'd be confronted with memories I had held down for a long time. The root chakra is our safety and survival chakra, and it holds memories from birth to age three. I was confronted with memories I had not seen before, and quite literally started doing inner child work on the yoga room floor.
I cried in every class. My teachers assured me this was normal, a part of healing. All of my pain and rage was contained in my solar plexus, the power and will center. I have learned that depression and anxiety live mostly in this chakra, as a result of holding back our power. I had held back my own power most of my life because I was afraid of it. The more I opened up and worked on my chakra system through yoga, the better I felt.
I also started attending the Kundalini ashram in Maitland. At the beginning of a Kundalini awakening, the energy can move right through chakras like a freight train. I had felt this energy coursing through my body, and when it first started it scared me. My teachers taught me to ground the energy and learn to move it gently through my body, and to respect myself when the energies got too strong.
After a while, I started to feel well. I actually started to feel good. I had been taught in my Healing Touch classes that sometimes people do not want to get better, because they're unaccustomed to feeling well, and when they do, it's too much to handle. Feeling well took some getting used to. Being emotionally well was an even bigger accomplishment, because I had struggled with depression most of my life.
One of the mantras in the studio is, "it's not that you can't do something, it's that you can't do it yet". I took that to heart and practice gentleness with myself when I come up against my own resistance on the mat or in my life. After almost three years of consistent yoga practice, many of my haunting memories have left, and have been replaced with feelings of joy, happiness, and peace.
I'm so happy that I made a commitment to that 101 degree room 13 years ago. Everyone's yoga journey is different, and I'm glad that mine included Reiki and Healing Touch. I've begun studying ashtanga for my home practice, and the combination of yoga and energy work has helped me put my life back together. Moving energy through the chakras is healing for the body, mind, and soul.
(.. and I'm happy to say yoga helped heal my marriage too.)
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