Emotion during asana practice

This week I’ve experienced emotional moment during asana practice. I was so upset with myself and my tears uncontrollably slipped out during the class.

I’ve heard this kind of emotional situation before but couldn’t imagine much until I experienced it myself. I was so overwhelmed by the emotional feeling throughout the day, therefore, I began to do some research on the connection between the emotion and the asana.

Mind and body are actually inseparable and all the emotions (regardless positive or negative) we have in our mind has a certain impact on our body. We have different thoughts every day and some might be a little burdensome for us which we are not aware of the mental burden we carry. These negative emotions could create chronic stress that affect the body’s hormone balance and further produce the brain chemical which will lower our immune system. Furthermore, some of the ‘chemical toxic’ that we produce are kept in our body.

Therefore, yoga is always considered beneficial for our mind and body. By practicing the asanas, we are able to move and stretch on the muscles that we do not frequently use (such as back, hips and thigh muscles). Releasing these muscle tension enable us to breakdown and release the emotional tension  which store in the muscle (by crying or shouting).

For me, backbend and inversion asanas are the trigger my emotion. I felt very helpless, frustrated, sad and fear when practising these asanas. These emotion probably reflecting the motion and trauma currently stored in my body or fear due to the opposite action of what I’m familiar and comfortable with.

No matter how difficult it is, I still need to be courageous and keep practicing to overcome the emotions for these asanas. Slowly but surely, I believe I could do these asanas perfectly and also calm the triggered emotions. This is applicable to my life also, wherein sometimes I’ve the tendency to run away when things get tough, but yoga teaches me courage to face the obstacles that arise in my life.