Find the strength to cope with life's stresses

Find the strength to cope with life’s stresses


Yoga
Lee Kennedy

It’s reassuring to know that today in Ireland, we are beginning to talk more openly about mental health. Stress, anxiety, panic attacks and depression are no longer the big taboos they once were.
It’s not just life-threatening events that spark off stress. We experience stress almost any time we come across something unpredicted or something that frustrates our goals. When the threat is small, the stress reaction can be so small we might not notice it. But it’s there, and each one is added to the last.

Taking time out
Many of my students have found that yoga has helped them cope with stress and its effects. For example, one of my students, Barbara (34), remembers how yoga helped her when she was moving house – one of the great unsettling experiences in life. She remembers savoring the last moments of family life before separating and moving – not just to a new home, but a new country too. “I was keen to move but also very reflective and nervous about the future … I noticed a tightness in my neck and chest, and a shortness of breath – side effects of living on adrenaline.”
Barbara knew she needed to do more than unpack in her new space to regain some sense of balance. “After spending those first days in my new home sleeping a lot, I unrolled my mat in the spare bedroom, took a deep breath and started to stretch. I started to feel like myself again.”
As a teacher and yoga practioner, I’m a strong advocate of practising at home. Apart from the physical benefits of regular practice, the act of taking control and managing your own health and wellbeing is very empowering.

Ground yourself
John, (48) a newcomer to yoga, says: “I have got more out of yoga than I ever expected, in addition to reducing stress, which was my incentive to join up, I have developed flexibility, fitness and a sense of calm, peace and relaxation”
Yoga can help keep us strong and flexible during hard times, and may even allow us to see a time of difficulty as an opportunity for positive change.
Working with students who are dealing with stress in their lives, I look to poses that nourish and ground by bringing energy down through the legs and into the feet, particularly standing poses, which are called ‘asana’.
My students will frequently hear me say: ‘Feel the four corners of your feet equally connected to your mat’.
The simple act of standing on ones own two feet helps you stand still in the face of adversity and not run away. Calming restorative yoga practice will help you slow down and face up to stressful situations.  The calming asana postures can help create more space and peace within the body. By learning to create this space and peace yourself, you won’t need the world to provide it. Yoga can remind us that we already have what we need to get by.

Allow the now
In the meantime, if you’re feeling stressed, pick a place at home that you enjoy (a favourite chair or space in the garden) and sit there in silence. If it’s uncomfortable, start with just a few minutes. Do whatever you’re comfortable with – don’t make it into another stress!
Pause for that moment to contemplate how much there is in your every moment. Let go of  what’s happened and what’s to come. I’ve discovered that out of nothingness a sense of true somethingness emerges. My journey with yoga helped me un-do all the doing and open up to simply being.
When we do take time to be with ourselves, when we do open up to nothing, we can see things as they really are. Nothingness invites us to feel, to be, to see, and know exactly who we are in that moment. It can give us the strength we need to carry on.

Thank you to my students who contributed to this week’s article.