5 Ways Yoga Has Supported Me in My Healing
Hi, I’m Abby! I’m a yoga teacher and EMDR therapist who specializes in treating trauma.
I’m so excited to bring therapeutic yoga to Reclaim Therapy.
The practice of yoga has offered me so much over the years. It’s hard to imagine myself without the tools I've gained from this practice.
This is not to say that yoga is the magic solution to all of our individual and worldly problems. (I wish it were!)
And it’s not to say that yoga will be the thing for every individual human. For you, it might be art, or cooking, time with animals, or maybe yoga.
For me, it continues to be yoga.
Before I share how yoga has supported my own healing, I want to share my “entry to yoga” story.
I grew up a dancer.
I began, as many do, with ballet and tap, progressing on to jazz, lyrical, modern, and hip-hop. I danced at a studio from early elementary on, and at the start of freshman year, I joined my high school’s school’s dance team, dancing at basketball games and competitions.
I loved it, every bit of it.
The movement, the music, the costumes, the community. At times, I felt I couldn't get enough.
Dance brought me so much joy then, and when I look back it still brings me joy. Looking back I can also sense how dance contributed to a perfectionism that had already taken hold of me.
The outward focus of the art form, at least in the ways that I was engaging in it, made it hard to think of anything other than “how does this look?”
As I started college, for reasons mainly logistical, dance and I began to grow apart.
I took ballet through my university’s dance department because psychology wouldn’t be enough credits to graduate. From there, I noticed the dance department was also offering yoga. I had never done yoga before, but I figured why not? I’m in LA and yoga seems to be all the rage. I was curious.
From the first class, I felt something different. While my focus remained outward still, I sensed a subtle invitation to go inward.
I continued to practice yoga at my college’s dance department and then I began to explore studios in the surrounding area. I noticed the different “flavors” of yoga classes and started to develop a preference.
I didn’t know this then, but with the knowledge I have now, I was beginning to discern which style and lineage of yoga I was most drawn to.
I moved to Massachusetts for my first job out of college, and I just so happened to stumble into a yoga studio that felt like home. I took classes and workshops and felt the practice deepen for me. From this point on, I would say I began to get “picky” about my yoga. I moved to Boston and found studios there that also felt aligned. I worked the front desk as a work study student so I could afford to take classes at the rate that I wanted to.
My practice and love for yoga continued to expand and deepen.
Abby Albright offers online yoga groups & therapeutic yoga near me
Upon moving to Philadelphia, I knew I needed to find the right yoga studio, and now that I had an “eye” for what I was looking for, I found it at Three Queens Yoga.
Three Queens Yoga is a studio that has roots in alignment-based hatha yoga, paying particular attention to creating a strong foundation in postures before any move into expansion. It was at this studio that I began to really understand the ways in which I’ve overextended myself literally (hello, hyper-extension) and metaphorically.
I had to unlearn so much of what perfectionism and dance had taught me - that I need to get as bendy as humanly possible to look a certain way for others’ gaze.
Practicing at Three Queens, I began to embody the knowing that I don’t need to overextend to look a certain way to others. In doing so, I was harming myself. Through all this unlearning, I developed strength and stability. I developed a strong foundation from which to expand. I never expected myself to become interested in teaching yoga, but when I learned of Three Queens 200-hour training, something within me said “do it, it’s time”.
So I did.
And, I couldn't be more grateful for all that I learned in those 200+ hours and the many hours of practice outside of that.
So now here I am hoping to share the practice of yoga with you.
Your story may be different from mine. You may find yourself in some of my story. Either way, I hope that if you join me, you will discover what it is that this practice has to offer you and perhaps what you can offer to it.
Now, a moment to share with you how yoga has supported my healing over time. A note: these learnings didn’t solidify after just one yoga class. These learnings evolve within me as I continue showing up to my mat.
1.I’m learning, slowly, how to slow down.
There’s a lot of yoga out there.
Some of that yoga is fast paced and flowy. No shade to that type of yoga, it’s just not the yoga for me (at least right now).
I’ve found, in my body, to practice in a fast-paced way can feel overwhelming and dysregulating. Slow practices have also felt dysregulating to me at times (especially seated meditation if stillness was the expectation).
I now practice a type of yoga that offers permission to move within the “stillness” and to slow down vs. speed up as needed.
I felt that I could really play with the “just right” amount of slowness for me. And in doing so, I could build up a tolerance for slowing down.
For trauma survivors, slowing down can be terrifying. Frankly slowing down in this world can feel terrifying.
And for trauma survivors and humans of this world, slowing down is an important practice to cultivate - at a tolerable pace. That’s where the healing can, and often does, happen. That’s where it continues to happen for me.
2. I’m learning to notice what’s going on in my body, when it’s tolerable.
Yoga invites our attention inward which, for some of us, can feel like a scary place to be.
In my initial moments with yoga I definitely kept my attention focused outwardly - watching what the instructor was doing, watching what others were doing, watching the clock… Over time (I couldn’t tell you exactly when this began to happen)... I started to notice subtleties in my body, both on and off the mat.
On the mat, I’d start to feel when I was pushing too hard in a stretch, and so I’d back off.
Off the mat, I’d start to notice a slight flutter in my chest when anxiety crept in, reminding me to take a breath. Or I’d notice the fatigue begin to take shape reminding me to take care of myself before it turned into full shut-down mode.
Being aware of every bodily sensation isn’t desirable all the time, and also it’s important to develop the skill of checking in, as our body communicates so much to us, day in and day out. Yoga helped me sharpen the tool of listening.
3. I’m learning discernment, the ability to ‘judge well’.
Discernment has become one of my favorite words. It is the ability to judge well, and in the context of a physical yoga practice, it’s to decide the most supportive posture in any given moment.
I know I am in good yoga hands whenever an instructor explicitly names the importance of choosing a variation that suits you.
Good yoga, to me, is having the option to explore. It isn’t always choosing the “perfect” option.
I’ve learned, through my own discernment, that I might make a choice that isn’t entirely supportive, and then I learn from it.
The number of times I’ve gone “too hard” in a yoga class…to feel it later… too many times to count.
It’s through those experiences that I’ve further developed a discernment for what might be right in any given moment.
This shows up off the mat too. I’m able to notice when I’ve gone too hard in life and even notice when I might be able to challenge myself a bit, push a bit. It’s so hard to determine, day-to-day, should I allow myself rest or should I push myself? This is the discernment we can continuously explore on the mat, to then take it off the mat.
4. I’m learning that a strong foundation is required for expansion, creativity, and flow.
In any yoga posture, it’s important to set a strong, aligned foundation. It’s from this place, that you can expand. For example, if you’ve ever practiced or seen “Tree Pose”, it’s vital to set up a strong foundation in the standing foot.
Too much weight at the front or back of the foot is a surefire way to easily topple over. Not that toppling is bad. We first place attention on the foot, get as steady as possible there, before lifting the opposite foot. We find the foundation as best we can, balancing there, and it isn’t until that’s established that we then play and expand through the arms, maybe creating movement with the “branches”. Foundation before expansion.
This is true in life. Before play, creativity, flow – we ideally want to set up a strong foundation. I know I am more creative when my space is decently organized, as an example. I also know that I can’t tap into my sense of play, if I don’t feel grounded. For trauma survivors especially, grounding is essential. Foundation is needed to feel safe enough to play, to expand, to flow, to create.
5. I’m learning how to be in community with others and show up as my Self.
Being in a community and relationship is HARD. When I first began practicing yoga, I remember so much relational stuff would come up, as it often does when we are in community - comparison, annoyance, the list goes on… Over time, this became great information for me to get curious about.
I would start to notice - “huh, it’s interesting that I felt so much competition in that space”. Or “huh what an interesting reaction I had to seeing someone else take time to rest in that way”. It was very rarely about other people, and often about my own stuff. This practice has given me a lot of great material to work with when it comes to how I show up in community.
Being in a community of other yoga practitioners has slowly evolved to be a space that isn’t competitive, but more-so a space where I get to be with and move with people, but on my own.
A teacher of mine, Mariel, often says something along the lines of “We can move together and differently”. And that has been a profound teaching for me. We can move differently, together.
What a metaphor for life.
I’m so excited to share more of myself and more of this practice with you. My hope is that we co-create this yoga space together. Again, I hope this space can be one where you discover what it is this practice might offer you and what you might offer to this practice.
To give you an idea of what it might be like to join one of my online yoga classes or therapeutic yoga groups, I’ve recorded a FREE 30 minute yoga class for you. Click here to sign up for my newsletter and get access to the class.
Until next time,
