Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind
Drawing on her extensive training in yoga therapy, dance, and meditation, Bija Bennett has created a groundbreaking yoga program that takes full advantage of the body-mind connection.

Based on the classical eightfold path of yoga, Emotional Yoga offers a broad range of simple body-mind techniques that can positively affect our emotional well-being, including the dynamic interplay of movements, breathing exercises, meditations, lifestyle skills, rituals, gestures, and healing sounds. Each technique is presented in a way that is true to Bennett's background in the tradition of Viniyoga, which allows the reader to adapt the program to his or her specific needs.
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Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind
Drawing on her extensive training in yoga therapy, dance, and meditation, Bija Bennett has created a groundbreaking yoga program that takes full advantage of the body-mind connection.

Based on the classical eightfold path of yoga, Emotional Yoga offers a broad range of simple body-mind techniques that can positively affect our emotional well-being, including the dynamic interplay of movements, breathing exercises, meditations, lifestyle skills, rituals, gestures, and healing sounds. Each technique is presented in a way that is true to Bennett's background in the tradition of Viniyoga, which allows the reader to adapt the program to his or her specific needs.
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Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind

Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind

by Bija Bennett
Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind

Emotional Yoga: How the Body Can Heal the Mind

by Bija Bennett

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Overview

Drawing on her extensive training in yoga therapy, dance, and meditation, Bija Bennett has created a groundbreaking yoga program that takes full advantage of the body-mind connection.

Based on the classical eightfold path of yoga, Emotional Yoga offers a broad range of simple body-mind techniques that can positively affect our emotional well-being, including the dynamic interplay of movements, breathing exercises, meditations, lifestyle skills, rituals, gestures, and healing sounds. Each technique is presented in a way that is true to Bennett's background in the tradition of Viniyoga, which allows the reader to adapt the program to his or her specific needs.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780684862774
Publisher: Atria Books
Publication date: 09/10/2002
Edition description: Original
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 410,705
Product dimensions: 7.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bija Bennett is poet, performer, philosopher, and athlete of the inner self— and outstanding communicator who is able to convey the tenets of mind-body health in remarkably accessible and engaging and ways. An internationally renowned yoga therapist with a Master’s Degree in Dance from UCLA, Bija is the author of Emotional Yoga (Simon & Schuster) and Breathing into Life (HarperCollins). A visionary leader for the post-modern spiritual set, Bija created YogaAway, LLC, an international wellness brand for the hospitality and spa industries, and has worked closely with Deepak Chopra, MD at his Ayurvedic health center and co-leading his seminars around the world. She is currently at work on The Dad Project, an art and film project featuring consecrated conversations between fathers and daughters.

Read an Excerpt

The Healing Power of Emotions

Good Medicine

Emotions are physical, not psychological. Scientists are beginning to understand this now. Emotions act as a bridge between our bodies and minds. Each of us is a psychosomatic network, but this doesn't mean that whatever we are experiencing in our bodies is not to be taken seriously — quite the contrary. Psychosomatic means that our bodies, minds, and emotions are intimately intertwined. As we alter the awareness of our emotions, we automatically alter our physical state. Managing our emotions is now considered a form of disease prevention. If we heal our emotions, we heal our bodies. Scientist Candace Pert in her landmark book, Molecules of Emotion, says, "Mind doesn't dominate the body, it becomes the body — body and mind are one." So, if we suppress our emotions, what happens then?

Western culture has been built upon the belief that reasoning is far more important than emotions. For more than 350 years, rational interpretations of behavior have urged us to believe that the judgments of our minds were the key to our actions. Descartes' cogito ergo sum — "I think, therefore I am" — elevated thinking to sovereign status. But on every level, including neurobiology, thinking can never be divorced from feeling. There is a profound connection between our emotions and our decisions, between our feelings and our logic, between our brains and the depth of our experiences.

In the East, too, there is disregard, often contempt, for emotions. Eastern spiritual traditions favor a contemplative, detached, dispassionate ideal often confused as enlightenment or nirvana. Great value is placed on the ability to withdraw oneself from all but minimal involvement with the world. Even the stereotypical view — the serene yogi sitting in exalted meditation — warns against the distracting power of emotions.

But emotions are not disruptions of an otherwise calm and reasonable experience. They're at the very heart of our experience, determining our focus, influencing our interests, giving meaning to our world. Feelings stir us. They are our inner barometers, our God-given orientation system. Emotions provide us with our most basic communication network within, helping us connect the incidents, the relationships, and the experiences that make up our lives.

Our emotions and our health are intimately connected. Moods and attitudes directly influence our bodies. Unresolved, distressing emotions that linger are toxic and a risk factor to health. But when emotions are acknowledged, understood, and expressed, they are as valuable as any healing intervention available. By getting in touch with our emotions, both by listening to them and directing them through our body-mind, we gain access to the healing wisdom that is our natural and biological right. Once we make a conscious decision to enter our body-mind's conversation, we can heal what we can feel, and this is good medicine.

In truth, "real life" occurs only when we feel deeply. It happens when we allow ourselves the adventure of nurturing our feelings of pain and fear as well as our feelings of pleasure and joy. As we engage in this play of feelings, we move through a range of emotional experiences. Our controlling, logical structures fall away, and a wondrous spontaneity arises from within, bringing real transformation and change. Feeling is an art, a rare art. But it must be practiced.

Table of Contents

Forewordix
Acknowledgmentsxi
The Yoga of Emotional Healingxv
What is Emotional Yoga?xvii
Leaves Fallxix
Part 1Stretching from the Inside Out1
1The Healing Power of Emotions3
2Yoga as Emotional Therapy5
3The Essential Principles and Tools8
Part 2The Eight Limbs of Emotional Yoga21
Limb 1Allowance23
Bringing into Awareness23
Intelligent Behaviors (Yama)28
Profound Attunement36
Limb 2Allegiance40
Joining Together40
Personal Attitudes (Niyama)42
Consciousness in Motion54
Limb 3Will and Power57
Cooperating Within57
Bodily Exercise (Asana)59
Skill in Action69
Limb 4Love109
Discerning the Differences109
Conscious Breathing (Pranayama)112
Breathing Lessons119
Limb 5Harmony134
Balancing the Parts134
Directing the Senses (Pratyahara)136
Sensing the Muse140
Limb 6Knowledge150
Remembering the Past150
Focusing Attention (Dharana)153
Sounds of Music162
Limb 7Wisdom167
Expanding What's Possible167
Sustaining Attention (Dhyana)171
Opening the View174
Limb 8Synergy184
Returning to Wholeness184
Making Life Whole (Samadhi)188
Curving Back191
Part 3Staying Supple195
1On an Emotional Walkabout197
2Growing a Practice206
Appendices
Practice as Therapy213
Resources217
About the Author218
Notes219
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