True Stress Management Techniques

When I first started writing about stress management, it was for a class onthe same subject, where I could decompress. Over the years I have been updating on the family and my fire and as of yesterday, I got back to what it was all about. My yoga teacher decided that I will start teacher training with her, period. So, in May I will begine the first 9 week course with her of practicing three times a week. I am really happy about this.

How can I do yoga three times a week while building a house and maintaining a busy household of 7 kids still at home? Since resuming yoga just once a week two weeks ago, I don't know why I didn't force myself to go right after the fire. Two classes have my body working on things and the time I spent away has my body hungry for more yoga and body work.



I am getting more body awareness. There comes moments of release with it to where I sink more in to it and get better. I was pigeon toed* as a little girl and they made me wear special shoes to bed. When I was in college taking dance classes, I told my teacher that I couldn't imagine my body past my knees as I went down in a mental exercise. I was the class klutz and a light went on in my teacher's eyes and she was so happy that I told her that-- I'd really been a hinderance to her class and drove her nuts! She sent me to a kinesiologist who asked if I wore braces on my legs as a child. I didn't, but the shoes were buckled together and I was not happy one bit with them. She said that that had a lot to do with how I related to my body. She massaged my who body and told me how connected everything was and that my legs were fine in the now that we were at, that I was strong and capable and that my body was an instrument to play with the music as I danced. After that, my dance picked up and I was invited to try out for the University of Utah's dance program in Provo two semesters later. I couldn't, but I was good!

Then there have been other things since, like the violent situation that happened to me, child birth, the fire, things that imprint on me that have been stored in my body. Yesterday I let a lot go. My instructor prays and had us have mantras that she may or may not realize came from the Old Church. We talk to our bodies as we do the yoga-- it is an odd thing, but I felt things leave me yesterday that I have carried for periods of time. My body and I are a "we"-- it serves me well and I take care of it. There is much work to be done in me yet, but yesterday was a huge purging. No one saw it, but it happened. As I worked, images came into my head. The fire stress has sat over my kidneys in my lower back and I realized this as I was doing some leg lifts on the floor-- why it sat there I don't know (because there was no room anyplace else?) and I told my body to release it, it was scary, but it took care of us and we were safe, it ws time to build more muscle. Toxins came out in my breath, I felt a snappy-sensation, and it was the same all over as I stretched and breathed and exhaled.

So now I am going back to the movement study which is critical to my very existence. I look foreward to passing what I will learn on to my own students.

*What was a problem 40 years ago is thankfully not a problem today. An orthopedist told me that they find that in most cases, the body compensates and this is unique to each person. In some cases there are problems. It's worth getting checked out.