Yoga and meditation were, and continue to be, very powerful healing tools for me. Now that I have healed the wounds from my childhood, these tools continue to help me grow into a continually more functional and at-peace person. I am talking about these tools together because they really are part of the same process.
In the United States, we have turned yoga into a stretching class, but that is not yoga’s intended purpose. For thousands of years, yoga’s purpose has been to prepare the mind for meditation. So, I do both together – first yoga, immediately followed by meditation.
Yoga is a very spiritual experience when done in the privacy of your own room rather than with a large crowd of people. Yoga helps you focus on being present rather than stuck in the past or fearful of the future. It also teaches you how to quiet your mind – a concept that was foreign to me when I first began these disciplines.
When I first started doing yoga, it almost “hurt” when I finished. I came to realize that the “pain” I was feeling was the release of tension. I had spent most of my life carrying a lot of tension in my shoulders. I truly did not know how it physically felt to relax. Doing yoga helped me to relax my body and, in time, my mind.
Howard Kent’s book, Yoga Made Easy: A Personal Yoga Program That Will Transform Your Daily Life, is a particularly valuable resource for learning the art of yoga as a merging of body, soul, and spirit rather than a series of stretches. It is written for the beginner with no experience in yoga, which is where I was when I started. The book includes lots of pictures and text so you can understand what you are supposed to be doing both physically and mentally.
While Howard Kent’s book also discusses meditation, the best resource I have found is on a blog called The Little Jewel. (If you struggle with religious triggers, skip down to the heading “BASIC MEDITATION TECHNIQUE.”) That blog explains meditation in a very simple way for beginners.
Related Topic:
Positive Coping Tools for Healing from Childhood Abuse
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 