Get your yin on
Yoga understands that both yin and yang as yang aspects of the body are as important as eachother. Balance is the key. In this article, Jonathan explains the purpose of the postures. To move your body is to be more aware of your body. What science is discovering is that through our increased ability to feel our own bodies, we increase our ability to empathically feel the world around us. To understand how this works, we need to first get our head around bodymaps and mirror neurons. “The current human disconnection from the natural world starts with our disconnection from our own bodies, which we as a culture inherited – to a degree that most of us generally don’t quite acknowledge the extent of our inability to feel our own bodies.” – Simon Thakur Neuroplacticity is our brain and nervous system’s ability to rewire itself according to what we focus our attention on. I am a huge believer that how you think and feel is a mirror image of what occurs biochemically inside of your body and also what you see in your reality around you. Jonathan explains: For example, as we practice a particular posture, the repetition creates more neural connections from the brain’s associated parts of your bodymaps. More nerve fibers are also created along the connection through the nervous system to that part of the body. As we do something more, our ability to receive more information about the subtlety of what we are doing increases. Mirror Neurons give us the ability to feel what it feels like to be doing something, simply by observing another person doing it. For example if someone waves their hand, around 15% of the neurons in our own bodymaps in our brain around our hand and arm of that area in our brain light up. The study of Mirror Neurons has widely been referred to as the science of human empathy. The more in touch we are with our internal body and systems, the more likely it is that we can tell is something is wrong or ok in another person. I personally use Yoga as an effective way to create balance in the yin and yang of my body. When we are in our #yang we are doing, executing, working, in our masculine aspect and in action or expression. Which is healthy and great. But if it’s not balanced out with returning to my #yin aspect where I feel safe to receive, a place of rest and repair, we can become stuck in our #yang. This is one of the most common causes of anxiety, depression and unhappiness that I see in my clinic Bend Like Bamboo. To go within is to be in your feminine, to be receptive, to feel safe in your head and body. It is from this place one can open up to the capacity to receive love and be nurtured. We need both aspects to be open to be truly happy and healthy. What can make you stuck in your ‘yang’ aspect? Perhaps you had trauma in your life, but you just had to keep going and get on with it. So you became a fantastic doer. Sounds like you? Great that might serve you when you’re at work. But are you able to receive love in your life, help or pleasure? Are you feeling nurtured and loved? Do you stop to feel gratitude or take the time to smell the roses, enticing feelings of I have enough rather that striving for more? If not you can become incredibly unhappy. This creates stress in the body, which is not the right environment for the body to repair and thrive. Kinesiology is a great tool to help you open up your yin aspect whilst still maintaining your yang promoting more balance in your life. Take a walk, hug your loved ones, write daily points of gratitude in your journal and just do the things you enjoy amongst the hard work in your week. Be the light x
Inspired by this article
Neuroscience and the True Purpose of Yoga
By Jonathan Davis on Wednesday July 22nd, 2015
http://upliftconnect.com/true-purpose-of-yoga/
