My Hips Don't Lie

It never ceases to amaze me how yoga can truly and completely heal. I had a meh day, which turned into a pretty awful evening, and I ended my day feeling completely drained, emotional, and anxious.  But I ended up walking towards my studio, and despite the tears streaming down my face, and the shortness of my breath, I found myself entering the studio, laying down on my mat, and completely succumbing to the overwhelming emotions that were filling up in my body.

My practice began quite roughly. I had short shallow breaths, I was crying (probably freaking out the girl next to me) and I literally couldn’t just be.  During the first few poses I felt impatient and my inability to focus was tremendous.  But even if I was crawling out of my skin and wanting to curl up in a ball in my bed, I knew that this was better than sitting in my room wallowing in my sadness, and I knew it was better than going for that glass of wine and ice cream that I much would have rather indulged in.  Feeling vulnerable on my mat just resulted in me going deeper and becoming more introspective in my practice.

As fate would have it, I realized quickly that my teacher decided to choose this day, this particular class that I reluctantly walked into, to focus on hip opening positions.  I’m sure most people have heard this before, but typically hips are the center of a lot of emotions.  Most yoga teachers I have practiced with, or any articles I have read on the subject, all agree that we hold our stress and negative emotions – fear, guilt, sadness – in our pelvis and hips. While I certainly do feel frustration in hip openers, and know that this is a very tight part of my body, I had never had a particular emotional experience in any hip opening poses (like in pigeon for instance). Um…lets just say that I feel quite differently after tonight and now I get what all the fuss is about.

This was exactly what I needed.  And while I certainly had an emotional practice that began quite panicky and sad, slowly throughout the class I started to relax, my breathing deepened, and my focus completely centered.  Isn’t that so amazing? Walking out of the studio I almost couldn’t believe how a short 90 minutes completely readjusted my attitude and simply made me feel just so much better.

I strongly encourage anyone who is having a shitty, sad, angry, or stressful day to go to a yoga class, release your pent up energy and emotions, refocus your mind, and I guarantee you will leave feeling completely released and free.

And then AFTERWARDS you can go indulge in that ice cream and wine