I’m reading a lot of books these days, storybooks, books about yoga, symbolism… also life stories I listen while translating. I have a student whom I’ve been teaching yoga for many years, and we couldn’t discover the benefits of yoga with her. She is dealing with the troubles of not being able to find herself in her body and not being the way, she defines herself while existing in her own body.
I asked, “I haven’t become an art therapist yet, but let’s try to discover you through art together.” I said, “Let it be an experience for me and a change for you.”
We have 1.5 hours, when we do art therapy personally, forty-five minutes of it is drawing, 15 minutes is spent learning what we will do, and the remaining time is spent talking about the own experiences through that art work after it is finished.
I wrote a story inspired by books and my own imagination, and after reading the story, 45 minutes with her collage, she made a complete meditation. When she is alone with music to put what she feels inside on paper. A time when she could put that story with her own understanding.
It’s a 45-minute experience that allows her to dive deep in her heart, realize herself in the moments of her breath, then bring out feelings, she thought she didn’t know, one by one, and strengthen the deep and intuitive connection she established with the story, allowing herself to communicate effectively with herself and listen to the messages inside her body.
Yoga movements are actually a language we use to establish this connection. Those who get angry at themselves for not being able to do the right thing while doing the moves, those who say “I didn’t work hard with my body so I couldn’t do it at first” when they couldn’t do the moves, or those who clench their jaws during the moves, those who pay attention to themselves with a dissatisfied face or because their legs are shaking in standing poses. We do not realize that we actually continue these states throughout the day. When we encounter an annoying or difficult situation, we tighten our hands and grit our teeth with the same movements to face the situation.
However, a world of dreams, a fairy tale, invites us to bring out the deep beauties of our bodies and the states we sometimes describe as ugliness, to color them and to meet with its emotions.
Yoga exists to activate the body as a whole with its asanas, breathing exercises and meditation. To find kindness and balance instead of working too hard and becoming rigid.
Yoga puts into action a philosophy that teaches us not to use power recklessly, helps us develop our ability to care for ourselves and others with kindness, patience and compassion by combining balance. To find balance within ourselves and balance with our environment, helps us to create the fire within us in a way that does not destroy ourselves and the world.
There are thousands of ways to know ourselves. Knowing ourselves through meditation or art enables us to understand the resistances we have created and reveals the self within our hearts, with its resentments and strengths, and provides an environment for both to dance with each other in harmony.
How about taking time to stay in silence and hear yourself?
Namaste!