Cultivating resilience through yoga

How are you travelling this week as we get closer to the end of the year?

How are you travelling as we continue to get bombarded with information, notifications and various requests?

How are you going when conflict arises in your life?

How are you?

Being in a pandemic can be a challenging time for the most resilient person and that’s without layering in general life events, family, work, study and community connections and influences.

Your ability to develop and maintain resilience is something to keep in mind as we continue to navigate life.

Resilience relates to the ability to recover from an experience that has been challenging and or stressful. “Resilience is often understood to be the ability to “bounce back” or recover from a challenge in a meaningful and productive way.” (Newell, 2017, p. 6). Stress, empathy, resilience and self-care are key concepts that are intertwined and influence each other. Stress is a natural part of life and important for our survival, and there is chronic and ongoing stress that can overload the body (Newell, 2017, p. 5). Traumatic stress like violence can lead to traumatic stress reactions (Newell, 2017, p. 5).  Being in a pandemic has been an incredibly traumatic time for people because it has exacerbated existing challenges and social issues.

Sanderson (2010, p. 20) highlights trauma “incorporates both an objective event and subjective response in that it requires the presence of an actual and threatened serious injury to the physical self accompanied by intense fear, helplessness, or horror. This implies that it is not just the event that is critical but also the enduring adverse response to the experience, as distinct from horrific events that are not accompanied by enduring adverse effects.”

Continuing to practice yoga or starting a yoga practice is a really wonderful way to be able to develop resilience and activate the calming system in the body. If you are feeling stressed or highly strung, that’s pretty normal considering where we are globally and locally. Starting a meditation practice and yoga for even 5 minutes can be highly beneficial to:

• allow you the opportunity to breathe deeper
• reset your nervous system
• cultivate calm
• think clearly
• build physical strength
• increase your flexibility on the mat
• increase your flexibility in the mind and improve your ability to respond and adapt to change
• become more mindful in your daily life

One of my teachers said in class, yoga will put you in strange positions and show you the world from a different perspective on the mat. Indeed it has! What you cultivate on the mat, you take with you into your daily life as well. So that you eventually may see life from a different perspective and seek out different views to yours and still allow yourself to breath with ease. This practice has the potential to support you when the world is upside and your world may be topsy turvy. This practice has the potential to cultivate resilience and increase your ability to bounce back when life throws you curve balls.

Read more about how to Grow Your Resilience through Yoga and Meditation (chopra.com)

This is me planting seeds and encouraging you to keep practicing! This beautiful practice is on offer to incorporate into your self-care kit and is a way to be able to cultivate resilience.

Love Roxy xxx

References

Newell, J. (2017). Cultivating Professional Resilience in Direct Practice : A Guide for Human Service Professionals. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Sanderson, C. (2010). Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma. London : Jessica Kingsley Publishers.