Lion’s breath, protection, and emotions
This is an excerpt from the class Yoga to Aid Upper Respiratory Infection Healing in Spontaneous Yoga Membership. This class does not replace medical care or rest. This class is meant to be used in addition to medical care and enough rest.
Here is the transcript of the video.
Just like we get curious and loving with ourselves and observe the body during practice and allow ourselves to be surprised and allow ourselves to learn from the body during practice, you can do the same with the emotions
Welcome, I’m Liz, a yoga teacher with two graduate degrees I use yoga and science to help people heal enjoy this bit of class. If you’d like to take the whole class, it’s at spontaneous.yoga.
So when you're ready to, take a deep breath, and then sticking your tongue out, opening your mouth and bearing your teeth [breathes out forcefully]. You can have your eyes scrunched up, you can have your eyes open wide like you’re trying to threaten. One more when you're ready deep breath and then [breathes out forcefully].
So at the beginning of class we were talking about upper respiratory stuff. We were also talking about when we move a big karmic piece for ourselves, or when we move something that's a big shift in energy, something that's been with us for a long time. And my hunch is this, what I’m going to direct next, might be good for both things.
So once you're in your meditative position you might do the Lion's breath again or you might simply feel those places that the lion’s breath effects. Feel the places where your lip curls. Feel the place at the top back in your nose when you scrunch. Feel the muscles around your eyes. And maybe do a wide, wide eye. Widen your eyes, curl your lips, widen your face, and maybe stick your tongue out.
See if you can feel, or you might let yourself make, a snarling sound. At least feel the place in your body where the snarl would happen. This is also the place in the body where we feel the sensation of disgust. When it’s balanced, the emotion of disgust helps us know when something is wrong. When we allow that feeling, that emotion, that energy to run through the system in a healthy balanced way, there is a healthy, balanced, protection energy happening in the front of the face and head and neck. The physical expression of that energy is like a snarl, a lip curl, you might feel like a vibration, or a might feel the muscles tensing in your mouth between your mouth and your nose, wide eyes, that's the physical expression of that energy (or one of the physical expressions).
The energy of disgust, noticing right away when something is wrong, can be socialized out of us, especially if we're women or were socialized as women, that energy can be quite disrupted
Taking a deep soft breath, pursing your lips exhaling slowly through pursed lips.
Emotions are information between humans. They absolutely can get unbalanced, and be more about the past than the present. I think of emotions like I think of neurotransmitters. The way two nerve cells communicate across the gap is through chemicals called neurotransmitters. Similarly, there's two human nervous systems, two human beings or more, and there's space in between. The way communication happens between us, some of the information, is through emotion, information about behavior.
Emotions absolutely can get unbalanced and have more to do with the past than the present, but there's usually a piece that is also in the present. Then, sometimes when you balance them, they are about the present.
Just like we get curious and loving with ourselves and observe the body during practice and allow ourselves to be surprised and allow ourselves to learn from the body during practice, you can do the same with the emotions. We can run the experiment with curious, loving self observation and see what happens.
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