Question about emotional releases

[hotfeet]

Hello,
I have only been to three Yin classes so far and I have noticed that every time I go the day after class I get very weepy and emotional. Could there be a corralation or is it just my imagination. If this could be from the Yin does anyone have any advice.

[admin]

Definitely there could be a correlation between what you are experiencing emotionally and your yoga practice. This can happen in any style of yoga but Yin Yoga seems particularly adept at bringout out emotional "toxins". The organs that get "fed" by the stimulation of the meridian lines in Yin Yoga have associated with them emotions. You can check the YinSights book for more on this.

Unfortunately I don't have time to post a lot about this ... but I will try to get back to this topic in a few days. Or maybe others can weigh in on this too.

cheers
Bernie

[moksaman]

I can't remember whether or not Bernie mentions this in Yinsights, but in Chinese Medicine it is believed that the emotions move with the Qi and vice versa. In other words, if the Qi is stagnant, the emotions are also stagnant. And since Yin Yoga emphasizes the deeper connective tissues that are believed to house the meridian system, specifically targetting the most heavily ligamented regions in the body - the hips and low back - it is to be expected that Qi and Emotional stagnation will move in response to the stresses of the poses. Hence, people often get 'emotional releases' after these classes. That's looking at it from an energetic perspective. There's also something to be said for the fact that as one enters into the stillness of the yin-style poses, one also peers beneath the habit of distraction and actually contacts the emotional body - and this might feel like an emotional release, when in fact it's more likely to be an emotional encounter.

[moksaman]

Sorry, forgot that the original author was looking for advice for what I assume is a way to deal with the emotional releases. There are many approaces to this, and I'm only offering one, but from the prespective of mindfulness meditation, you wouldn't want to judge the emotion, or condemn the emotion or try to get rid of the emotion, but rather to try an understand the emotion like anything else: to see it as something that arises and ceases within the mind. The habit tendency is to glob onto the emotion as something personal , as me or mine. So you might try a simple technique of recognition: "this is sadness, and it feels like this." or "this is irritation and it feels like this." or insert whatever the particular emotion might be. As you relax into this recognition of the sensation or the emotion, you will begin to see that the emotion is a conditioned phenomenon. When certain conditions in the body and mind come together, the emotion arises, and when those conditions change, the emotion either changes or ceases. And it's not that the aim is to become some detached indifferent stone, but rather to not get quite so swept away by the emotional storm and abide more peacefully in the awareness that knows the emotion.

[gabrielletherese]

i've been unknowingly doing yin yoga for about 2 years and have had all sorts of pretty heavy emotional releases as a result. first, i'll explain how i've been unknowingly doing yin yoga and then a little about the emotional releases. i have two massage therapy degrees, so have a decent working knowledge of the body(mine in particular), have been doing yoga at home on and off for about ten years and have been a zen buddhist for about nine years. due to schedule constraints, i never had the time to devote to sitting meditation, so i went about making my life my practice even though i always wanted to be able to devote more time to sitting meditation. i was never able to attend yoga classes because i couldn't afford them and whenver i did yoga at home, i always held the poses longer than was recommended and used books, so it was very easy for me to pace myself however i pleased. i also had reservations because i have mild scoliosis, so the subtlety required for many traditional yoga postures is somewhat out of my reach since my body is all crooked. when i started grad school in 2005, i went to a yoga class at the school's rec center and got a nasty back cramp and spent most of the rest of the class in child's pose, so for better or worse, i haven't been back to a class since.

my big 'turning point' came in the fall of 2006 when i was suddenly unemployed and in one of the most all around inescapable, traumatic situations i'd ever been in. i decided to use the experience to deepen my practice and started combining yoga and meditation and was doing anywhere from 2 to 6 hours a day for about six months. i was also writing extensively and filling journals pretty quickly. after a few weeks of deep hip work, i straightened my shoulders and my posture increased dramatically. however, while doing this deep hip work, there were many occasions when i would bawl my way through the pose and realized and accepted that some sexual experiences i had when i was 19 were actually rapes, amongst other things. i stuck with things and was processing everything as i went and things started to get better by leaps and bounds and the crying and repressed traumas gave way to boatloads of love, peace and contentment.

i had no idea what i was doing was yin yoga until earlier today when i got my yoga journal and found the sequence of yinyoga poses in the sept 08 issue was almost identical to what i've been doing at home.

i could talk a lot longer about this, but hope this helps some.

[DDB]

That is a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that.

[gabrielletherese]

re-reading the other replies, i should add that while mindfulness is certainly useful, if you're dealing with traumas or have any kind of history of mental illness (of which i have both), it's very, very important to experience the emotions and honor them, even though it can be excruciatingly difficult. in as much as we can't let our emotions run everything for us, which is what mindfulness is so useful for addressing, if you have a history of avoiding, detaching and dissassociation (all of which are hallmark with post-traumatic stress disorder and prominent with many other issues), mindful detachment can only serve to further intellectualize the very things that need to be healed. i know this very well because it's exactly what i did for years and years. experiencing the emotions that come with trauma, even if it's years later, is necessary to really let them go and move on. that said, you MUST have an environment in which it is safe for you to do that in because the level of vulnerability when you're bringing all those old issues up is unlike anything i'd ever experienced and the potential to be re-traumatized is very, very high (especially since survivors of trauma and abuse and the mentally ill tend to be constantly re--traumatized without doing anything at all).


i wasn't aware of that when i was doing any of my work a few years ago and my situation ended up getting much, much worse and it's taken me this long to feel like i am really recovering. however, now that i am able to turn my attention to other things, i can say with a fair degree of certainty that my twenty year history of depression is gone and i have repaired and made peace with many relationships i didn't think i'd be able to. i still have a lot of work to do in other areas and i can't say that my depression will mever return. that would be where for me, mindfulness comes in. now that i've become aware of many of my blind spots and taken steps to correct and address them, i can be that much more aware should things start to go awry in the future, which i am doing by staying very solidly grounded in the present.

these are very difficult things to put into practice for anyone, but for those with traumas and mental illness, there are extra challenges that must be dealt with. it's worth every bit of effort though because more than ever, as i've come to appreciate the depth of my own issues and realized how painful it really is to be honest and kind to yourself, i've become much more compassionate and loving to others than i ever thought possible because what i've gone through is a fraction of what millions of people experience every day, many of whom can't do much of anything to change the situations they're in.

[hannahhkelly]

Depression is very different from the blues in terms of duration and severity. And it's very difficult to identify the real reason behind it. Have a look at this article I came across at http://www.caring.com/articles/depression-signs

[amala yoga]

well i would like to share what hapened at my studio
most of my students are psycologist, psyquiatrist patients
the had depressions, autism etcc and kids with attention deficit, they had a lot of improvement while they are working still.
yin yoga of course open all the internal psique and body
when body has block , emotions too

[emily67]

There are certain places in your body that act as emotional dumpsters for your body to store all of your emotional toxins. Your hips are a common area for this. When you hold positions that unlock your hip joints, you release the emotional toxins that are stored there. I know it's difficult to work through these emotions when they come up unexpectedly, but if you acknowledge them and release them with peace, you will rid your body of them. Remember, you need to accept something before you can release it.
___________________
Treat others as you'd like to be treated. That's the golden rule.

[Jessica Powers]

Additionally, we don't need to label each and every tear's cause - just saying 'thank you and goodbye' can work wonders. Somedays the root of emotion will be crystal clear, other days not so much. Release with gratitude on exhale and ask for something that will serve you, your intention, on inhale, and repeat as necessary. Of course, with deep, deep things, it might go release with gratitude on exhalation, inhale self-forgiveness and strength to then exhale and release again...and again...and again

[fiorellafru]

Hi All,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post, but here it goes.

I've done yin yoga twice and both times I've had a major bodily response. It's difficult to find something to compare it to but I'm going to try. The first time I tried it, not long after the session maybe a couple of hours later, I got a very bad headache and the next day I felt like I had a hangover.

The second time I tried it was last night before going to bed, the session was 20 min long, I went to sleep about 1 hour later and felt absolutely fine. But I woke up this morning and I felt hazy in my brain or more like brain fog. Like I'm detoxing or something. It almost feels like I'm getting sick but I don't feel the weakness that normally accompanies getting a cold/flu. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but I'm hoping someone can comment and maybe have some insight on what may be happening.

My body craves to do yin yoga so I would like to continue. Maybe it's because I have only done it so seldom that I have that reaction and it will pass once my body gets used to it.

I have done other types of yoga and I have never had a reaction like this.

Both yin yoga sessions I did were 20-30 minutes.

Thanks!
Mayra

[Bernie]

Hi Mayra

It is difficult to figure out why you had those experiences without knowing much more about you and what is going on in your life. If you went to a doctor (a good doctor ) she would probably want to know how you have been sleeping, how is your health in general, how your diet is, any work stress, relationship stress, other causes for concern. And then, she would want to know what exactly were you doing in the yoga practice: which poses, for how long, were you having your period, did you eat well that day, how had you been feeling before practice. In this questioning, we could start to sense how much of what you experienced was due to the practice, due to other things happening in your life, or due to an unfortunate combination of both things. Or maybe, you were coming down with the flu?

Sometimes people can get a headache in yoga when they hold certain postures too long, like inversions. There is a thread on the forum that talks about headaches after Yin yoga: you may want to read this. Your problem may be as simple as avoiding a certain pose, but you didn’t mention which postures you did. You also don’t say how long you stayed in the poses. Could you let us know a bit more about your situation?

Most importantly, how are you feeling now? Were the symptoms short term, or were they long lasting. Finally, please don’t take medical advice from a yoga teacher If you are concerned and this happens again, check it out with your health care provider.

Cheers
Bernie