Emotional Yoga

Emotional Yoga

Emotional yoga is the name we gave to a practice developed in partnership with our mentor Gurucharn Singh Khalsa, who was trained in Kundalini Yoga by the lineage holder Yogi Bhajan. Over thirty plus years he developed many ways of working with awareness, and brought a tremendously open heart to everything he did. This practice combines some of what he taught us about working with emotion at an embodied level with an algorithmic framing we learned from meditation teacher Shinzen Young, who works with awareness using mathematical precision.

The practice has, essentially, five parts. In the first part we establish interoceptive contact with emotions in the body, seeking out the strongest emotional flavor. Once this flavor is isolated, we focus in on the 'center' of the emotion, exploring its visceral mapping: its shape, size, density, movement, and texture. In the third part, we begin to work with sensation in quadrants of the body, moving attention through the body and harmonizing with the emotional flavor. After doing this systematically, we return attention to the original center of the emotion, and note change.

This is an advanced practice. The developer of the Restorative Practices model utilized the practice daily, for about two years, and it completely changed his moment-to-moment experience of emotion in the body in the present moment. NOTE: This is an advanced inwardly-oriented practice, so it is important to have good attentional control (see The Spotlight of Attention), good distress tolerance, and strong connection assets on-board before you do this. If you struggle with difficult emotions, this practice is a good one to work towards, but develop a strong foundation in equanimity and connection before you do. If you are prone to dorsal vagal states: depression, dissociation, and shutdown, work with those states first before engaging this practice, otherwise it may be overwhelming.

The first 10 minutes of the video are explanatory.