At the heart of healing is an experience. It is the experience of being willing and able to be in the moment with your feelings. No matter how awful or repulsive or spectacular they may be, to allow yourself to stay there and feel what is there to be felt. Of course you know as well as I do we are so very creative when it comes to finding ways of mood altering out of the present moment. Alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, gambling, sex, the internet, all come to mind as ways and means of ejecting ourselves from the present moment, and into a state of dissociation from mind and body. I’ve even heard of kids taking human feces and urine and putting them into a sealed container, leaving the contents to ferment for a few days before, no word of a lie, inhaling and getting high on the fumes. It gives new meaning to the thought of the drug user being willing to do anything for a high. But I digress . . . Allowing ourselves to feel our feelings is at the heart of healing. A simple definition of healing is when we do a thing differently. Our feelings are housed in our bodies. For one reason or another our feelings get stuck and accumulate there. They need to be managed and liberated from our bodies to prevent the development of illness.

One way of liberating feelings from our bodies can be through the practice of Yoga. It works in a way traditional talk therapy doesn’t, through bypassing the thinking mind and accessing the body directly where feelings are stored. It is a safe, gentle and effective way of allowing our feelings to emerge in the present moment, being with them there, and holding this experience as a pathway to liberating them from our bodies (and by extension our minds, as the two are intimately connected). For those of us who feel the need to share our experience, talk therapy provides a wonderful environment for sharing the experience of what coms up as we allow the healing process to unfold. It too is safe, gentle and effective.  Each method will usher the willing participant into the heart of healing, and as a result, an enhanced state of well-being.