Years ago I used to flee to the beach as an escape from overload. My tears would mix with the white sand. My experiences with yoga therapy have shown I did not need to put myself through hardship. It was always a choice.
From Burnout To Happiness
I am sitting on the beach, observing the lightning blue of the Baltic sea, inhaling the scent of the lime green dunes. The sea is like a lake, crisp and unmoving. And I am, as always, amazed how I can have these crystal white beaches of South Sweden all by myself. In Sweden, everyone goes on holiday at the same time. Out of holiday season I practice yoga on the pristine white beaches all by myself.
The root cause of stress: expectation
Years ago I used to flee to the beach as an escape from overload and turmoil, headaches, and relationship issues. At times my tears would mix with the snow-white sands. I look back and fail to understand why I put myself through such hardship. I did not need to. It was always a choice.
I was trying to live up to other people’s expectations, and my own. This was not bringing me any happiness but wearing me down, piece by piece. I did not need to be in a high-pressure career to be complete. I did not need a man nor a father for my children to create a good home. In the end, I became a shadow of myself.
I felt happy about everything in my life. I loved my university career, I loved the house that I was renovating, I loved my kids. At the same time, everything was demanding my time and energy. Unhealthy relationship attachments ‘vampired’ away my energy. I was caught up in a split between my mind and body. My mind told me I was very happy and getting everything I wanted out of life, albeit a continuous struggle.
But my body was saying “No! You’re on the edge of a breakdown”. I do believe I was in that spot for years. Just coping. But I was also struggling with reflux, recurrent headaches and insomnia. I was feeling de-energized, low, and there was far too long between my smiles. I hardly ever laughed.
Yoga for stress release
Looking back I was on an edge and I might have fallen either way. At that moment, I started going to the beach daily to practice yoga. I had practiced yoga on a less regular basis for five years. Now I became more serious about my practice. I started feeling the blood coming back to my face, I was getting stronger and finding a way back myself. Yoga carried me through this tough time. It slowly gave me back my life. At the same time, my threshold to stress had become low and I was easily put off balance. Old stress was lingering on in my body and in my mind. My experiences with yoga therapy encouraged me to find a way to release old stress and find healing at a deeper level.
Yoga grew out of India, both in practice and in philosophy, so I chose to enrol on yoga teacher training there. I set off to India.
India was full of colours and a buzzing with life. The rickshaw driver who picked me up had multiple Hindu Gods pasted, dangling and swinging from his front panel. As we drove he told me his entire life story with a big smile. I sensed I had arrived in a much more open, heart-warming, and colorful culture with a different set of values. Materialism is everywhere, but in India there was a lot more to life. I wanted to understand in depth what it is about yoga that was so healing. Moreover, I wanted to explore if I could heal myself at an even deeper level. My studies of stress told me the body remembers stress. I wanted to try to unlearn my past stresses. I had read that yoga can make you younger. Could that really be true? Past years of stress had blocked my energy and made me older. Could it be reversed?
My first course in India was yoga therapy. I wanted to test how far I could go with the healing process. Also, I wanted to know the precautions needed for yoga as much as its benefits. When used in the wrong way yoga can create as many problems as it resolves.
Releasing my past stress with yoga therapy took 3 weeks. I was radiating energy and health. Everybody noticed the change when I returned home. I was glowing. I looked 10 years younger. My local doctor told me “at my age we get certain health problems” (laughing) “but that is not exactly relevant for someone your age”. When I asked how old she was, shee was eight years younger than me. My experiences with yoga were beginning to bear fruit!
Health According to Yoga Philosophy
My own healing process and experiences with yoga made me fascinated by the concept of health embedded in ancient yoga philosophy. Previously I considered myself healthy, but I realized that my frequent headaches, lack of energy, negative thoughts, irritability, and insomnia were all signs of an unhealthy lifestyle. Prior to being introduced to yoga, I viewed health as a condition of being able to cope with life. I could manage to teach at university, do my fieldwork and write articles, renovate my house, and take care of my boys and social obligations. However, I increasingly did so with reoccurring pain, lack of energy and no enthusiasm. According to ancient yoga science, I was not healthy. Health in yoga terms is when energy moves freely in your body. When you are free of pain, you are feeling energized, happy, and having surplus energy.
I came home from India highly idealistic about the yoga concept of health. According to yoga science, good health comes from reinvigorating energy flow. Control your energy flow and you control your health. When I explained to my academic friends how health is about your energy flow: “life energy, kundalini energy, and chakra energy”, I was met by patronizing smiles. Where is the science in all this? Being a scientist myself, I was not ready to throw out the scientific basis of everything I did, even if I had experience of it in my own body.
I started studying the scientific evidence of how combining movement, breath, meditation, and mindfulness can make such a difference to people’s lives. I found plenty of support in recent neuroscience.
The Science Of Yoga
Stress alters your brain function and produces lasting changes in your behavior and physiology. Stress hormones can cause a number of conditions such as chronic pain, overweight, high blood pressure, and serious health issues such as diabetes, hyperthyroidism, and cardio problems, to mention but a few. Stress is equally a cause of mental problems such as anxiety and depression, reduced cognitive functioning, and personality change (anger, frustration, and nervousness). A fusion of modern neuroscience with ancient yoga science helps show the path to a life free of stress.
Yoga and brain research
Modern science is waking up to the ways in which ancient yoga helps create balance in heart, mind, and body. Research in neuro-plasticity indicates our brains are not fixed, and neuronal connections change over time.
When stress is chronic, each time you are exposed to a stressor the brain more easily gooes into the stress-response turns up the stress hormones. Yet there is hope, research in neuro-plasticity suggests this response can be unlearned, by re-wiring your brain. I spent five years studying how yoga changes the auto-pilot stress response to calm. Yin Yoga, meditation, and deep Yoga Nidra increase alpha waves in the brain, calming and stabilizing the mind. Keep up the practice, and you can train your brain to adopt a state of focus and calmness at will. The practice of stress-release yoga helps to build new neurological pathways which will over time reset your reaction to stress.
Back To health And Happiness
Sitting here on the beach I am contemplating how adopting a ‘yoga lifestyle’ changed my life. I became a person capable of strength, courage, and self-love. With the capacity to feel great about being alone and not being in a relationship. To find enough value in simply just being me. I am the same person, of course, same values, the same fire, and vigor, smile, and fundamentals. Yet, something has changed. My back is straight and I smile more often. Repetitive migraine-like headaches, insomnia and acidic reflux are now in the past.
To be completely honest, I can still get irritated and I can still get sad. The thing is, it no longer stays with me. I am less at the mercy of other people’s expectations, moods, and projections. The inside of me has changed. I have become calmer and in a better handle challenges. It’s a subtle change, but an important one.
Summary
Change with yoga is not like taking a pill. It is a continued effort. I can divide my days into distinctly different experiences. On the days when I practice yoga, it is as if I am wearing an amour that protects me against stress, exhaustion and other bad moods and projections. The days where I am not practicing yoga it is the opposite. Whichever form of yoga you practice it has the greatest effect if you practice every day. Personally, it is the ancient forms of yoga that empowers me to meet the world with strength, bravery, and love. I bring these practices with me wherever I go.
References
- George, Erin L. MFT, Psychological Effects Of Stress, 12/03/2019, from MentalHelp.net.
- Ranabir Salam and Reetu K., Stress And Hormones, from Indian J Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Jan-Mar; 15(1): 18–22.
October 7, 2024 
