Sensing Yoga - why?

Sensing Yoga is the natural way

Sensing Yoga is innate, going back to our natural way to move and to listening to our body. Due to the fact that every movement is according to your own body and its conditions this is a Yoga for everyone. As so often the simple way is the best way and we need to make it simple. The origin of this type of yoga is for example Hanna Somatics and Feldenkrais. The knowledge that body, mind and soul are tightly connected and that our autonomic nervous system is often a part of the reason for physical pain. Sensing Yoga is developed by Mia Elmlund, Kungsbacka (www.sensingyoga.se) from whom I have received my education.

Your caring, magical body

Our bodies are magical! Your body takes care of you every minute of the day, every day, year in and year out and it only wants to make you feel good and help you survive. The system of keeping the balance in your body, the homeostasis, is unbelievably clever. It helps us keep the right fluid balance, the right blood sugar level, keeps the nutrients you need and gets rid of the ones you don't and so on. And to keep this system going we need to keep moving and help it by listening to the sensations and signals it gives us.

With Sensing Yoga you give yourself an inner massage by moving in spiraling and soft ways. This will make your fascia hydrated and fluid and helps the body to keep the cirkulation going. It will help you getting rid of acing shoulders and your lower back. Your joints will feel smoother and moving is easier. By making movements you will tell your body that it needs to produce new cells which it will continue to do as long as you live. But moving is essential!

Fight or Flight versus Rest and Digest

As human beings we are built to be able to run away or fight when we are subject to something threatening. When we are in such a situation our sympathetic nervous system sends instructions so that we are ready and alert. The effect is that our pulse goes up, our heart is pounding, our mouth is dry, we start sweating and the blood is concentrated to our muscles and moves away from the areas that are not acutely essential for our survival such as our digestion. Our adrenal gland starts producing adrenalin and noradrenalin and we are ready for fight or flight.

This was very beneficial when we were hunters and we needed to beware of "tigers". Today we are feeling threatened by other things i. e. getting hateful comments on facebook or having a job that is demanding and stressful and so on. The need to run away is not there in the same way any more, but our body reacts the same way as when we were hunters. And we stay long periods of time in this fight and flight mode. This makes our body out of balance and as a result our body reacts by getting sick. To avoid this we can give our parasympathetic nervous system room to give us the rest and recovering time it needs and one way is by doing Sensing Yoga! Your body will start producing feel good neurotransmitters like Oxytocin and Seretonin and help you to deal with stress in a new way.

Listen to your body

Your body cares about you and gives you signals of what it really needs. Just by starting to listen more to these signals and behave accordingly you can make a huge difference in your wellbeing. Interoception is the perception of sensations from inside your body. To be able to "hear" what your body says one needs to go within and listen without judging what you are about to hear! The knowledge that your body just want what is best for you makes it easier to be humble and to understand the language that it speaks.