Contents
“We must attend to what hurts or bothers to improve our emotional state”
Yoga
Anna Alfaro, a coach with training in vinyasa yoga, proposes in ‘Yoga to balance your emotions’ a guide to identify emotions and learn to manage them through the practice of specific postures and exercises
It is not a sports discipline, nor is it a religion, nor is it a philosophical school. What yoga seeks is the balance between mind and body in a kind of dance between breath and movement. But it is also a journey of growth that touches and removes and a powerful emotional management tool that can help to cope with emotional states such as fear, sadness or anger and to enhance positive skills and attitudes such as creativity, calmness or self-love. This is precisely what the coach trained in vinyasa yoga Anna Alfaro proposes in her book ‘Yoga to balance emotions’ (Zenith), a guide in which she invites to explore emotional states and proposes practices to accept, integrate, enhance or attract them to live in a healthier and more balanced way.
In his work he invites us to identify emotions to know what we feel or what we want to enhance with yoga, but is it really easy to identify emotions?
The truth is that no, it is not easy at all. It takes a lot inside knowledge and I think that is a path, a job, a journey of a lifetime. We can know each other a lot but if we work and investigate we can always discover something new, often surprising.
To identify them, it is important to internal listening. Listen and connection that we get with practices like yoga and the meditation. Spending time alone or with others but going inward, simply observing what is moving, what is being expressed, without trying to label, judge or analyze. It is about seeing and asking yourself: What is there, what does it feel, what moves? Where does it come from? What is it telling us, what is it responding to? How does it make me feel? Can I move to another place perhaps more comfortable? For me silence, time alone and introspection practices are essential and of course, working with professionals, therapists, psychologists and coaching experts.
He proposes different yoga postures to manage emotions, why are some more suitable for, for example, situations of rage and anger and others are more suited to sadness and apathy or tiredness and exhaustion?
Yoga is a practice in which you seek synchronize our breathing with movement. We are moving energy throughout our entire body and it is completely mobilized, even the most subtle parts, even what is not seen and cannot be imagined. And when we move, when we stop to take more breaths in some than in others, by enhancing the opening of the chest or hips, by focusing more on some points than on others and moving in one way or another, they work, we want to or not, different emotions, just as different muscles and joints are worked.
Which of the emotions is most difficult to manage through the practice of yoga?
I think this would be talking about difficult or easy emotions, good or bad, and although it is true that it helps categorize, I think it is important to go a little further. Each one has his Achilles heel, something that is a challenge, something that is repeated, in which you usually get stuck or blocked, something that expresses itself more … We cannot generalize, it is not something fixed and the same for everyone. Each one feels how he feels, with greater or less intensity, more less frequently, with greater or less reactivity and this is something that only the person knows (or should know, because again I refer to the importance of internal listening) and therefore Therefore, their way of traveling, managing, placing or mobilizing it will be different and will depend on it and its work in this regard.
What are mantras and what are they for?
Un mantra It is a phrase, word or syllable that acts on our body physically and subtly through its sound and vibration. Mantras are capable of changing and reprogramming low vibrational (negative) thought patterns and help balance the mind. They produce great physical and mental relaxation, allow internalization of emotions and states and induce concentration so that whenever we have to work on the aforementioned they can be of great help.
In the second part of his book, called “Reach your potential”, he invites you to explore postures and practices that increase energy and promote positive emotional states. How are they different from those that seek to manage emotions that are not pleasant?
It seems more pleasant to move in this second part of the book in which I talk about emotions or emotional states to which we all aspire because they do not bother, they do not bother, on the contrary, we love them more and in the highest possible dose so, if we trust in practice, perhaps one could surrender more easily. This is like in life, the pleasant, the attractive or the harmonious usually triumph or always want more but we cannot avoid what hurts, annoys, worries … because no matter how much we flee, if it is something that is in us, that is real and that exists, it must be attended to in order to move towards a more balanced and, ultimately, healthy state or position.
As for the positions, it could happen that one wants to flee to try not to feel what bothers or hurts, such as fear or sadness, and this makes them more reluctant to dig into the wound, either fleeing from the postures that still make them feel that emotion or avoiding sitting down to meditate to come face to face with that pain. But practice and experience shows that things are just overcome, improved, working on them, remaining in the annoying. It is necessary to go through it to go towards the light, although it sounds very mystical, but yes, I feel that it is so.
How can we learn to observe and listen to ourselves?
Starting to spend more time alone. It can be a few minutes a day in which we sit to meditate in silence, to write and ask ourselves questions or to reflect on an issue that worries us or on things in our life that need review, or it can even be time that we dedicate to practicing yoga …
With what other complementary practices could we enrich yoga?
I believe in work and in the benefit that practices such as meditation and the deed. They allow us to spend time alone, in silence, observe ourselves and all that gives us great knowledge and knowledge is power. This allows us to take action, make decisions, move if we need to change things in our life. If we do not know, we go blind and both one practice and the other, if carried out repeatedly, consistently, with commitment and with focus, can contribute a lot.