Archive for category: Blog

Today we will talk about how to feel more confident, more powerful, centred and whole.

In the last two classes, we have been exploring the concept of “magnetising yourself”. It helped us focus on how to make life more fun and manageable.

We leave parts of ourselves in the activities and emotions of our day. So, by the end of the day, we are often quite frazzled or tired. We can restore our calm by gathering back those pieces of ourselves that we’ve left dotted about the day (week, month, year, years). This is quite simple to do on a daily basis.

Here’s how.

Take a few minutes now to sit quietly. Feel into the solidity of your body. The pressure of your body on the floor. Your back on the floor or up against the wall or chair-back behind you. Give yourself time to arrive in your body, so that you begin to feel a pleasant weightiness. Maybe give yourself five minutes just to do that. Feel your body present here.

Now, se that awareness as a magnet to help you gather back the pieces of yourself from your day. Begin to run your day again in your head, like images on a movie screen but without going into the emotion of the events too much. Just remind yourself of what your day contained. Begin to draw the pieces of yourself you left in those activities back to you now.

Keep going until you’ve completed the day and you’re back – awareness and body in the same place at the same time – and notice how you feel.

When I do this, I find everything feels brighter, colours are clearer, the edges are crisp, and I feel mentally awake. And above all, I feel more powerful and able to cope with my life.

Now, I’ve given you a practice to use as a daily clear up. We can use similar practices to heal far older wounds, and you may find it helpful once you are familiar with the daily practice to begin going back further in time. But, my recommendation is that if you want to gather back parts of yourself from traumatic experiences in the past that you do so with the help of a qualified practitioner. By all means, get in touch and I will connect you with someone if I cannot help you myself.

Yoga

Yoga is a beautiful and ancient tradition incorporating physical posture, breathing control, stretching techniques to bring peace and calm to the body and mind.

Classical Hatha Yoga is the tradition that Joanne teaches and embraces.

Joanne’s Yoga classes in Ealing teach you flexibility, how to strengthen and align your body, with relaxation and meditation elements too.

The sequences enable you to experience a sense of flow, a sense of becoming attuned to your body and to your energy and bring a deep sense of well-being.

Joanne works from the two centres in Ealing below, please ensure you check the location of any classes and private appointments.

In our yoga classes in Ealing, this week we’ve been discussing the idea of emotional resilience and self-containment.

What it means to be able to contain our energy, our thoughts, our emotions, our actions. So, we can look after ourselves and we look after the people around us.

Welcome to the start of a new blog series “Tonight in Class”. I’ll be sharing some of the yoga psychology and its practical applications that we cover week by week in our classes at the Studio. I hope you find it helpful!

What does it mean to contain oneself? Colloquially we use the term to mean to be able to hold our feelings or behaviour within bounds. To literally contain them from spilling over (and by inference, affecting other people). We might say it positively – “I’m trying to contain my excitement” – or more pejoratively “For goodness sake, contain yourself”.

In class, I wanted to explore what the concept of containment had to offer our emotional resilience and health.

When I consider what containing myself means to me, I am struck by the way I use it to mean self-care. It means being able to hold my own feelings – tenderly, with consideration for myself – without splurging them out on anyone who will listen. It feels like self-respect. I acknowledge these feelings, and I hold them as precious. It means I will share them as necessary for my greater insight and wellbeing with people who’ve earned the right and will show me and them the respect they deserve.

There is strength in containing myself, until the appropriate moment when I may unburden myself to someone who can hold me and those feelings with care. And there is also respect for others. Perhaps it’s a hazard of the job that I sometimes find myself pigeonholed by people who just want to let go, to let rip, to make their problem someone else’s, anyone else’s… but when it happens it feels like being hijacked.

I’m sure you’ve experienced it too, especially if you are a good listener.

Of course, over the years I’ve got better at handling the situation and compassionately putting boundaries back in place. Yet still – there is an energetic invasion when you splurge on someone whether they are interested or not, and we should take responsibility for that. I’ve certainly done it, and later acknowledged it and thanked the person for their forbearance in dealing with it.

So – containing myself means treating myself and others with respect. It entails strength and compassion. It also assumes in practice that I will disclose and unburden myself appropriately because that too is part of containing oneself. If I am completely overwhelmed by my feelings they will either overflow or have to be suppressed. Neither of those, in the long run, is helpful to our health and wellbeing. Continually overflowing feelings can leave people paralysed and unable to take action; continually suppressed feelings can leave people able to act but not to enjoy their life.

So we have a sense of measured unburdening, forbearance, and personal responsibility to add to self-respect. That sounds like a powerful cocktail for emotional intelligence to me. What does it require? It requires us to know what we are capable of containing. So, we put in place support measures to help. Over the years I’ve used psychotherapy, holistic therapies, retreats, personal study, yoga, friends and colleagues to help me process the emotional experience of life and keep me as available and centred as possible. This is the way I choose to live my life. In fact, that process has undoubtedly inspired the creation of the Studio as a place for people to do the same. Do let me know what you do? Or if I can help by providing a safe place and careful listening while you take inventory of your own emotional holding, it would be my privilege.

Yoga

Yoga is a beautiful and ancient tradition incorporating physical posture, breathing control, stretching techniques to bring peace and calm to the body and mind.

Classical Hatha Yoga is the tradition that Joanne teaches and embraces.

Joanne’s classes teach you flexibility, how to strengthen and align your body, with relaxation and meditation elements too.

The sequences enable you to experience a sense of flow, a sense of becoming attuned to your body and to your energy and bring a deep sense of well-being.

Trial sessions may be booked at any time by contacting Joanne.