Do You Want to Try a Meditation in Movement?

Since last week, I've received feedback from many students about their chronic pain and anxiety. They've shared how simple chi gong movements, combined with yoga and meridian breathing, have helped alleviate both physical and emotional issues.

Anxiety is on the rise, it's no wonder that focusing the mind to guide energy internally, which is a chi gong practice, feels like a relief to reign in a scattered anxious mind.

It makes sense that focusing the mind, which is one of the tenets of the eight-fold path of yoga, known as Dharana, precedes a calm meditative mind known as Dhyana.

Memory and information are stored throughout our bodies. That's why one might find themselves crying after a specific pose. Not because the pose was physically painful, but because of the release of stored memory in that part of the body. Hence, the saying that we are releasing the 'issues that are in our tissues'.

This is deep therapeutic work that doesn't require talking, but breathing deeply and being with whatever arises, which is profoundly healing. We become less entangled in them by observing them, which is the basis of mindfulness. This provides an open, non-judgmental space that can hold the knots of pain, trauma, and fear and allow them to transform slowly.

Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score, wrote that when people are traumatized, the Broca area of the brain, which is the part that articulates speech, actually gets shut down, and so there's a limit on how much talking therapy can access and process trauma. He goes on to write about how yoga is more effective than talking therapy for those who are traumatized.

Stuck, stored memory can solidify into chronic pain. To breathe deeply in yoga or chi gong and allow emotions to arise, we can observe how they present themselves, such as a tight belly or heavy heart. Naming them to ourselves provides space between us and the emotion, and then we can focus on being the loving space that allows the emotion, rather than identifying with it. I have found this to be extremely effective and healing for myself and my students.

Many of the sayings, such as 'when we name it, we tame it,' 'what we feel, we can heal,' and 'what we resist persists,' have real merit to them.

From my heart to yours~

Namaste,

Maggie