Put some soul in your season
The soul resides within the body. The mind can help us meet it. Or stress us out.
The mind can facilitate an expansive experience for the soul, one where it’s prominence is tangible, or it can hinder it. Yoga's entire premise is this, and the tools and practice aim to tip the scales in the facilitation direction, again, and again. Respecting your starting point, based on student feedback, is one of the most welcoming aspects of Yoga Foundation. We see you, honor that you are here to grow and we curate repeated Yogic experiences to support that.
You can curb stress this season by exploring Yoga's evolved perspectives on the mind-as-starting-point for physical health via a modern scientific paradigm. Many, modern scientific fields mirror Yoga’s profound insight into human health, such as Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). PNI’s premise is that the mind, the nervous system, and the immune system constantly communicate with one another, assessing, identifying, concluding and scaling action. In Yogic terms, manomaya, pranamaya and annamaya function interdependently, along with personality and emotions, deeply abiding parts of our whole that influence our actions and reactions, interpretations and behaviors.
What happens in one system directly and indirectly causes fluctuations in all of them. Our psychological states impact our immune system, and our immune systems impact our psychological states. While our quantitative measuring tools are limited, our qualitative tools are infinite; however, the scientific measurements impress and demonstrate the power in a holistic model’s approach.
Stress, as we know, can make us sick. Or sicker. Life stress experienced at any level can cause a cascade. We know a fraction of a moment later: the heart rate escalates, blood pressure rises, body sweats, gut has sensations, muscles tense. We may gasp, scream, run or jump, cry, moan, freeze, go silent or resort to appeasing. Our nervous systems senses a threat. The hormones and neurotransmitters of stress, cortisol and adrenaline (epinephrine and norepinephrin), dopamine and serotonin, to name a few, alert the immune system to act.
How can Yoga help? We broaden our window of tolerance whenever possible, using our tools and practices, through exposure, faith and awareness. Interfacing with stressful situations doesn’t have to be so stressful, usually. Encounters which lies outside of our window of tolerance that trigger us are met with some deep breaths, our new samskara-s, courage, faith in ourselves and life itself. We show up with more of the totality of our being alive in our actions, we inhibit the barrage of health depleting can we drive the psychoneuroimmunological response in a positive direction, promoting health and a sense of wellbeing.
Yoga particularly and primarily deals with the mind, but for most of us, through the avenue of movement first. How we do that matters, and our November courses and ongoing Yoga Therapy classes optimize the experience for you.
Our November-start Foundations course teaches you (or reteaches you, if you do not have Krishnamacharya Yoga experience) how to honor where you are and progress in a balanced, step-by-step manner.
Our upcoming Children's Yoga series slip Yoga into the psyche of your children or grandchildren, so the family can develop a common language for co-regulation
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