All of us have experienced feelings of loss of control in our lives. When I go to the women's jail in downtown LA with the GOGI women to teach yoga, it chills me to the bone to see the women who have lost their liberty. We all have experienced feelings of imprisonment and loss of control at one point or another. Still, the one thing we do have control over is our thoughts.
There have been times in my life when I felt like my thoughts were in a blender turned on high. There are ways of learning to calm your thoughts down so you can control them. Yoga of course is one way to calm your mind, body, and spirit.
When I first starting doing yoga and we got to Shavasana, or the corpse pose, which is the final resting pose, I thought seriously we're just going to lie here and do nothing? But as I matured in my practice I understood that this is probably the most important yoga pose because everything you did in your practice comes together. Patanjali's developed a series of yoga postures in the Yoga Sutra to prepare the body for meditation, which can be thought of as inner focus or prayer. Yoga takes us to the essence of our being, that can't be touched by anything but the higher power. It's the pure essence of you and never changes during your lifetime no matter what bad has been done to you or what mistakes you have made. During the final resting pose you can focus on that place, and allow your practice to bring together feelings of peace, gratitude, acceptance, and contentment.
For more by Nancy Deville, click here.
For more on emotional wellness, click here.