BKTS: Yoga
An acquaintance, a vet with a history of PTSD, recommended the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD. He said it was a game-changer. I’ll be referencing this book again in future posts, so I’ve shortened the title to BKTS for the sake of brevity. Like many others, I had a difficult childhood on top of which have been layered traumatic events in my adulthood. While from the outside I may look put together, those in my innermost circle know I suffer from trauma symptoms such as insomnia, urges to self-medicate/numb, hypervigilance or dissociation by turn, poor memory, poor stress tolerance, anxiety, unexplainable bouts of anger or crying, etc. I’ve almost finished BKTS on audiobook (the narrator is great by the way!), and as my acquaintance attested, this book is life-changing. It has put a lot of the missing pieces together for me and given me sound, scientific reasons to explain so much—including why none of the many, many different medications and OTC remedies I have tried over the past 10 years have relieved my depression, why I never feel I can fully relax, why I have to take Ambien to be able to sleep each night, and—most importantly—what the heck I can DO about it!
One of proven therapies mentioned in BKTS is yoga. When I heard the narrator cover that part in the book, I thought aha! I had tried a few classes of yoga and indeed found it therapeutic! I had only done three weekly sessions at a local studio before it closed (permanently) due to the whole thing that is COVID-19. In those three classes, I had felt more relaxed, grounded, and peaceful than I had in a long time. I couldn’t understand it at the time, but tears would be silently washing down my face in a crazy, unchecked flood during the class. Looking back, my body was releasing stress and pain I had been bottling up and hadn’t known how to let go of.
Instead of feeding on my beliefs that
the world isn’t a safe place
one has to fight to scratch by and get what’s hers (scarcity mindset)
there may not be meaning to anything—that we suffer for nothing, or worse, that we suffer for the amusement of whatever higher forces are at work
people are always looking out for themselves only
I am insignificant. My thoughts and voice are of no significance in the grand scheme of things, and no one truly wants to hear me.
I was able to suspend these ingrained, damaged thought patterns during those hour-and-a-half sessions and instead breathe in love, safety, affirmation, and significance.
I had been more than a little dubious about yoga. I had heard the warnings over and over again as I grew up in church that yoga was dangerous spiritualism masquerading as a simple physical health exercise and that to practice yoga was to invite the devil and his dark forces into your life. I had dabbled a little with pilates at home via DVD when I was an adult since that didn’t have the same bad connotation as yoga; however, neither it nor the group exercise classes I tried at my local gym made any dent at all in my depression. I can’t tell you how many people had told me the fix to my depression was simply to exercise. Exercise releases endorphins, yada yada yada. I’m sure those of you who have experienced clinical depression know the spiel I’m talking about. I remember being at the gym doing a group exercise class and I was crying there in the middle of class. Not crying as in the healing tears of my recently-discovered yoga, but the “I feel so frozen inside and this ‘solution’ isn’t doing shit” tears.
So, yes, I will continue yoga as long as I find it still serves me in my healing process. It’s not doing anyone, especially me, any good to keep on acting as though the status quo is cutting it for me. As “woo” as it sounds to some, I will continue to use yoga to find where my body is holding pain, to breathe acknowledgement, acceptance, and love into those spaces, and…. release! Release that motha-freakin’ pain and childhood trauma and quit bottling everything up as though “I got this” and can shoulder it all!! And then do it again the next week because I’ll need the reminder by then, lol. There’s a reason yoga is called a practice.
All that being said, I received an email from the yoga studio that had closed down saying they were back up and running—although based in a different state now and doing virtual classes only. I did my first virtual yoga class last week for Mother’s Day, and although it wasn’t quite the same, it was still very, very good. You’re welcome to join me if you like! I’ll be “there” in class tomorrow and weekly thereafter.
Click here to schedule your virtual Yoga class, or if your yoga studio hasn’t closed and will resume meeting in person, feel free to leave a link to the place in the comments below for others in your area to find. Be sure to mention the city and state in which it’s located.
Love,
Scheffy
Author’s Addendum 5/18/20:
This morning’s class was perfect for those who, like my partner, prefer less of the “woo” stuff in favor of more therapeutic stretching/flexibility. If you’re looking for more of an emotional exploration/strengthening, book one of Tom’s meditative yoga sessions. It’s likely that some people who are experienced yoga practitioners are able to combine a spiritual practice into the more physically-centered sessions, but I’m not there yet.