Recently in a yoga class I was teaching, I mentioned to some new yoga students the connection between yoga and emotions. We were practicing Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana), a hip opener, which is a pose that’s often associated with unlocking emotions. That’s because the hips are often associated with emotional storage. Moving into a hip opener like Pigeon Pose can “unlock” emotions, since you’re stretching muscles that may not have been moved that way in a while.
After class, I caught up with a student who was taking yoga for the very first time (always such an honor for me to teach!) She had tears in her eyes and thanked me for mentioning the connection between yoga and emotions. She explained she had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and felt a relief to be granted permission to embrace whatever emotions came up, without judgement.
I hadn’t noticed anyone crying during class, but I wasn’t surprised that yoga did indeed create an emotional release. I’ve witnessed many students crying in classes that I was a fellow student in. Especially for students who have experienced trauma or something like PTSD, it’s important to be aware of the mind-body connection yoga has. Simply focusing on your body, on your own mat, for 30 to 60 minutes can have a profound mental impact.
Learn more about how yoga interacts with emotions and why it’s so common to experience an emotional release while you’re in a yoga class.
How Emotions Show Up in the Body
As Harvard Health Publishing explains, emotions are often linked to the body and show up in different ways. For example, your heart might start to race, or your breath might start to get choppy if you’re angry or anxious. Feelings of fear could cause the body to tighten and tense up. Waves of sadness can turn into headaches or an upset stomach.
Over time, prolonged trauma can lead to serious health issues. A study published in “World Psychiatry” found PTSD is associated with issues such as hypertension, chronic musculoskeletal pain and cardiovascular disease. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, trauma and emotional reactions can directly impact your brain functioning and the nervous system, by:
- Triggering your brain’s amygdala and putting it in a high-alert/survival mode state
- Interfering with the hippocampus, which impacts memory
- Causing tension, pain and fatigue due to chronic stress
In addition to directly impacting the body, some people use substances or unhealthy habits, like gambling or excessive shopping, to cope with trauma. The result could be more physical and psychological damage that results in an unhealthy mind-body cycle.
Tension as a result of unprocessed emotions and/or trauma can manifest in the body’s muscles and other body parts. (The book “The Body Keeps the Score,” by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, dives deeply into how this works and may be helpful to read if you’re interested in this topic.) Particularly, as the Cicero Health Department reports, the psoas muscle is one that’s known as “the muscle of the soul”. This muscle, which connects the spine to the femur, is one that’s stretched in Pigeon Pose. Because the psoas muscle is activated during a fight or flight response, this is why this muscle may “hold on to tension” and “unlock emotions” when it’s worked in a yoga practice.
Yoga Can Trigger Emotional Release
Stretching muscles isn’t the only way yoga can unlock emotions. Some things to consider regarding how a yoga practice can trigger an emotional release include the following.
Yoga May Involve Touch
Some yoga teachers will offer hands-on assists, which means a yoga teacher may physically adjust a student to help the student achieve better alignment or to go deeper into a pose. A teacher should always mention this prior to touching a student to give students permission to not be touched. Because some students may have experienced trauma like assault or physical abuse, physical touch can be quite triggering.
For me personally as a teacher, I only typically touch students at the very end of class during Savasana (Corpse Pose), a gentle hands-on shoulder touch to encourage relaxation. I explain that students should place a hand on their stomach if they prefer not to be touched, and I skip over them.
Even when you give permission to be touched, feeling the touch could be emotionally triggering. One reason may be that you’re missing physical touch in your life – for example, you may have recently gone through a romantic breakup, and you are missing your partner. The simple act of being touched could remind you of that.
Physical touch could also unleash positive emotions, reminding you of our shared humanity and how lucky we are to be alive and practice yoga together. I’ve definitely experienced gratitude and happiness from being physically touched by a relative stranger as a student in a yoga class, like a reminder that someone cares about me in the world.
Just be aware that if your yoga teacher is offering physical touch and you accept it, it’s totally normal you may feel some emotions as a result.
Yoga Is an Act of Self-Care
As covered in this post 5 Mental Health Benefits of Yoga, yoga has a profound ability to build our self-esteem, as it’s a powerful way to practice self-care. Dedicating time for yourself on a yoga mat, even for 5 minutes of yoga a day, is an act of love for yourself. You may not be used to taking time for yourself, and yoga reminds you how important it is to do so.
Busy parents, those with stressful jobs or caretakers for others may not always dedicate time for themselves. This simple act could unlock emotions, because it makes you realize how precious and important self-care time is.
Yoga Makes Your More Mindful of Your Exceptionality
You’re awesome. You’re unique. You’re special. You may not be aware of this through your typical day, but in yoga, this is all on full display.
Many yoga studios will have mirrors. You’re in full view of your exceptional body and all its capabilities as your practice. You could even look yourself in the eye and notice how strong and capable you are.
Yoga is a meditation in motion – at least, that’s one of my core tenets as a yoga teacher. By focusing on the breath and how it impacts movement, you practice mindfulness, which increases awareness for how exceptional you are as a human.
Putting this all into focus as the forefront of a yoga practice, you may find you have a newfound sense of gratitude for your body and mind. It’s always such an amazing privilege to practice yoga in whatever form it takes. This realization can increase your sense of gratitude and happiness, which could lead to some positive emotional release in class.
Relatedly, for those who have experienced trauma and who may have shunned, neglected or been fearful to get in touch with certain parts of the body, yoga can lead to healing and acceptance. That’s why yoga is repeatedly recommended as a methodology for trauma healing. The mind-body connection is undeniable and has remarkable effects on those who have experienced trauma and who are looking for help with emotional regulation.
Yoga Can Lead to Increased Happiness
If you want to experience more happy emotions in your life, yoga can help you begin a journey toward healing or releasing stuck negative emotions and toward creating more space for happier feelings. I am not a mental health professional or a doctor. But I’ve experienced and witnessed emotional release countless times in yoga classes, and the research backs it up.
Have you experienced emotional release in yoga? Are there any insights you’d like to share with new yogis? Please leave a comment to join in the discussion.
Is there a yoga topic you’d like me to write about next on this yoga in Alexandria yoga blog? Message me.
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