Yoga, a technology of awareness
Classes online at PeacehD are coming soon!
What is Yoga?
Some people think that yoga is a religion, others think it is a physical exercise for vitality and health and others that it is a psychological system that develops the potential of the psyche. But to describe what Yoga really does, you should think of it as a technology of awareness. Yoga gives you the technical know-how of how to become aware of who you are and what your possibilities are, and gives you the tools to break the unconscious limits you have and connect with your true self, integrating the physical and the mental parts within you.
In Kundalini Yoga, we work with exercise sets called Kriyas. Each Kriya is designed to work on specific physical parts of your body (specific organs, your nervous system, the endocrine system, bone and the muscle systems) or energetic parts of the body (the electromagnetic field, the mind, etc.). Working on these can for example stimulate creativity, help you concentrate better or release stress accumulated in your body. Each Kundalini Yoga class consists of a short warm up, the practice of a Kriya, followed by a relaxation and finally a short meditation.
What I find special about Kundalini Yoga
There are many types of Yoga out there and I haven’t tried them all. In the early stages of my therapy I was recommended, as a complement to my therapy, to start doing Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a technique in which you concentrate on your breathing and when other thoughts come into your mind, you acknowledge those thoughts, and then go back to putting attention to your breathing. While during the first few Mindfulness classes I had about a million thoughts coming into my head in an overwhelming way and wasn’t able to stay still, with time I could concentrate better and sometimes I would end up falling asleep during the class from the state of relaxation that I was in.
When I tried my first Kundalini Yoga class, I expected it to be a physical experience and didn’t think that meditation and relaxation would be part of it. What I lived was an hour and a half of new breathing techniques done in different positions, some of them harder than others. Thinking about your breathing, whether your arms are at 60 degrees, your legs are above ground but straight and whether your abdominals can take another 20 seconds leaves you pretty much no space for thoughts like “What should I have for dinner?” or “What is on my to do list for today?”. Kundalini makes you work on all these different things at the same time and that’s what I find so great about it. It combines breathing techniques, stretching, workout, relaxation and you end up getting the benefit that Mindfulness gives you as well.