Last update: July 27, 2015
In recent days, life has given me a very important lesson. It has been a period of profound growth that I would like to share with you because I believe that, although in different ways, similar situations happen to everyone from time to time.
When I started my training as a yoga teacher, I learned that one of the basic principles of yoga is ahisma. Ahisma means "non-violence". We often think that this just means not being aggressive towards others, but we are not aware of the degree of violence we can inflict on our own body.
Paradoxically, this learning path in my case was born from Indian medicine, but in the opposite sense. I learned "by contrast" that there are things that can be too violent for my body.
For a week I followed a treatment that was supposed to have the goal of "detoxifying" my body, but which only served to generate a huge block from which I am trying to recover.
I'm taking care of myself, treating my body with a lot of love, tenderness, delicacy, respecting mine sensibility. I have learned that it is essential to respect our sensitivity, and that we must be the first to do so.
And it is not just a subjective perception. There is something that, as a teacher, I often teach my students: we must get to know in depth the functioning of our nervous system and ours brain, their biological mechanism.
Because we are also made of a body, and the quality of our life depends on its well-being.
It has been shown that the natural healing and regenerating power of our body is activated only when the relaxation response is also active, and not the stress response.
When something triggers the stress mechanism, all the body's healing abilities become blocked or diminished, as well as the potential of our immune system and our ability to assimilate nutrients.
Se what heals us is our body's ability to relax, what we must not do is attack our body or overload our nervous system.
On the contrary, everything that has to do with delicacy, care, listening to the body and calm, helps us enormously.
For this reason, techniques such as "biodanza" or certain forms of meditation that aim to generate positive, nourishing and relaxing sensations are increasingly in vogue. Aid techniques and methodologies move away from shock therapies, e instead they seek change through love, affection and care, the creation of a safe and comfortable space, free, of car listening.
A space in which, in a natural way, our body-mind mechanism can reorganize itself in a healthier way and tend again towards well-being, peace and happiness. All this, without having negative impacts either on the body or on the psyche.
Many people have experienced the shock of too abrupt and intense therapies and treatments, which leave the person more unstructured than they already were before starting. One of the teachings is that the most important thing to heal ourselves is always our criterion and intuition, the messages that our body sends us, which can also be in contrast with those of other people.
As I often tell my students, "you are the only ones in charge in your life".
If you want to start deepening the knowledge of yourself, I invite you to ask yourself some questions that I myself have asked myself after this experience. They will certainly be as useful and enlightening to you as they have been to me. Take a few quiet minutes to respond from within.
In what areas of life am I trusting others' voices more than my own?
On what occasions do I entrust my well-being to others instead of listening to what my body is telling me?
Have there been cases in which I abused myself?
How? What habits hurt me?
Now that you have surely realized many things, you need to take action. Because awareness without action is of little use.
My proposal is this: in the next few days, choose one of the habits or behaviors with which you harm yourself and change them. Likewise, stop exposing yourself to the influence of someone or something that is not doing you good.
You might, for example, decide to stop hanging out at a certain place or person. You can choose to stop leaving all your energy within the four walls of a gym with blaring music, and opt instead for a walk in the park, surrounded by birds, and feel at peace here and now.
Give up something that hurts you, with the goal of making your life better. Give yourself permission to take care of yourself gently and lovingly. Because you are the most precious thing you have.
