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3 Ways Yoga Changes Your Life for the Better, by Ally Hamilton

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

I'd been practicing yoga for fifteen years, and teaching for about twelve, when I found out I was pregnant with my first, my son. His conception was not without its efforts, some of which included acupuncture for a year with the requisite nasty-smelling tea, temperature charts and peeing on sticks, a trip to the Maori healers where my uterus was essentially rolfed by a friendly giant named Papa Joe, and finally, a visit to a fertility doctor who concluded quickly that my estrogen levels were a little low. The first time I went to my mat after my positive pregnancy test, I stood in tadasana, connected to my breath, and thought, "Okay, I have to be gentle, there's someone in here counting on me."

It was as if the sky parted and the gods of compassion, or all that is right with the world, yelled down, "Are you f&%*ing kidding us???!" I was well-versed in the eight limbs of yoga, had been trying in earnest to live in line with the moral and ethical foundation of the practice for well over a decade, had completed a dozen different trainings with well-respected teachers, and attended four different 10-day silent meditation retreats, along with my own daily practice. The idea that it took my pregnancy to wake me up and make me realize I needed to apply these principles of kindness, awareness, and honesty to my own practice was alarming to say the least. I thought, "Wait a minute. What am I saying? Why do I need to remind myself to be gentle when I get on my mat? There's always someone in here counting on me. Me!"

That moment changed the way I practice and the way I teach, and, I think, the way I move through the world. The wonderful meditation teacher Jack Kornfield has a quote: "If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete." I understood that until I learned how to be kind to myself for my own sake, I really wasn't going to "get it."

That moment began the second phase of my own practice, and shifted everything for me. The moral and ethical foundation of the yoga practice is known as the Yama and Niyama. They make up the first of the eight limbs of the practice, and they are known as the "shalls" and "shall nots;" they're like yoga's Golden Rules. The very first one is "ahimsa," or non-harming. I'd been vegetarian for years at this point in an effort to live in line with that idea, and made a daily practice of examining my thoughts, words, and actions, but the quality of my internal dialogue was still brutal. My loud inner critic hadn't quieted down much, and that is where I began. Below are three ways I've noticed that yoga changes your life for the better.

1. Yoga gives you the tools and the power to starve a loud inner critic and develop an inner cheerleader instead.
   When I'd get on my mat and find it was a day when I was low on energy, or feeling tight, or when the balance wasn't there, I would starve the voice that said, "You suck! Get it together! Work!," and replace that nastiness with a loving voice, one that rooted me on and reminded me that I'm human, and therefore sometimes tired. I was shocked at how often I had to do that, and realized it was an all-day undertaking. If I took a left when I should have taken a right, that unrelenting voice would pipe up and say, "You're such an idiot! You have no sense of direction! How many years are you going to live in LA before you get it together?!" Then I'd shake my head and replace that with, "You grew up in New York City. You never drove regularly until you moved to LA at the age of twenty-nine. Give yourself a break, breathe, and turn around, Chief!" For whatever reason, my loving voice calls me "Chief," "Tiger," or "Sport." These are names I would not like if someone else was addressing me, but they never fail to make me take myself less seriously when I say them inside my own head. You are free to try them out for yourself if you, too, have a loud inner critic, or come up with your own, but I think nicknames help.
2. Breathe (Yes, it's that simple!)
   There are all kinds of tools we use in the physical practice, and they all relate directly to our lives off the mat if we take them there. For example, the breath is the foundation of the physical practice. "Pranayama" means breath control; we slow down and deepen our inhales and exhales, but in order to do that, we have to pay attention to our breath. The beauty there is that our breathing is always occurring in the present, so if you're noticing your inhales and exhales, you are in the now of your experience. Also, breathing deeply calms the nervous system. The act of becoming aware of your breath and then taking control of it makes you present and calm, and that's something you can do anytime. You can do that while driving, or talking to your partner, children, and friends. You can do that while walking, or sitting in front of your computer. Awareness of breath is like a superpower we just don't use.
3. Focus
   Additionally, each pose has a focal point, or "drishti," a place where we direct our gaze. There's a saying: "Where the awareness goes, the energy flows." When you train your eyes on one point, you also focus your mind and your attention. We live in such a fast-paced, crazy world where people try to multi-task all day, but then nothing gets done particularly well. We want connection, but then we show up for lunch with a friend and find we can't focus. Or we set aside two hours for our children, or for our partner, or our passion project, and then find we're checking our Facebook account, or answering texts that really aren't pressing.Left to its own devices, the mind loves to time travel. It will pull us into our past, often with feelings of longing or regret, or drag us into our futures, frequently with anxiety or fear about events that may never come to pass. We really don't want to live in a constant state of anxiety or depression, but unless you train the mind, it's hard to avoid that. We're also wired to worry. "Negativity bias" is something we've carried forward from those days when we had to be on constant alert so we wouldn't be eaten for lunch by a saber-toothed tiger. We can handle short bursts of stress, like the kind we'd experience if we had to run from said tiger, but we don't do well with prolonged stress. However, we still seem set on focusing on all the things we don't have, and all the things that could go wrong, and now instead of tigers, we worry about money, or our relationships, or all the things we don't have yet that other people do. Stress creates dis-ease in the body. You can raise your blood pressure just by thinking about terrible things that may never happen. Your nervous system does not differentiate between an event that's happening or one that you're creating in your mind. Being able to "pick the mind up" and choose one thought over another is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself. Picking thoughts that are going to strengthen you rather than weaken you is a skill well worth honing.

It can be confusing when you see yoga represented through pictures. It's very hard to photograph a person's process, so you might look on Instagram, and see someone in a bikini on a yacht in Bali with her ankle behind her head and say, "What?!? If that's what yoga is, it doesn't apply to me!" But, yoga is about so much more than the poses. It's about tuning in and facing those places within you where you still have healing to do. It's about developing a breathing practice so you can lean into difficult emotions when they arise, and therefore know yourself. It's about strengthening your intuition, which makes decision-making so much easier. It's about witnessing your reaction to confrontation, and practicing self-compassion, so you can offer compassion to others. Yoga is a way home to yourself, so you can offer up your gifts, and create a life that feels meaningful and fulfilling. There's not a "happiness formula" that works for everyone, but yoga offers each person the ability to find her or his own way, and ultimately, if we want life to feel good, that's a journey we each must take.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2016. All rights reserved.

My wife experienced sleep paralysis a few years ago. She related to me an experience in which she awoke in the middle of the night and couldn't move. At the same time, she said a small ball of light came in through the window and stood on her chest. She told me she felt like it had a personality, and its specific intent was to mock her. Since that time, she has closed herself off to all psychic phenomena in order to protect herself. Though this sort of thing (and others like it that she had experienced in the past) doesn't happen anymore, she's also lost all the benefits of being psychic. What can she do to feel safe again? Also, has anyone ever described an experience like this to you before? She is a Pisces.

- Thomas

Dreamchaser:

What happened to your wife is actually pretty common. While it's somewhat unusual to see something with your physical eyes, many people wake up and are unable to move, and at the same time, they sense something is nearby.

When we sleep, our souls leave our bodies. There are times when, for whatever reason, our souls and our bodies do not merge back together at the same time. Sometimes we wake up and have no idea who we are, where we are, what we are doing there, etc., and it takes a minute to blink ourselves back into physical reality. When this happens, our souls hit our bodies before our minds fully awaken.

On the other hand, sometimes our minds wake up before our souls get back into our bodies. This is what happened to your wife. When this happens, we wake up feeling paralyzed. Our minds are very aware of what is going on around us, but we can't open our eyes or move our bodies. Without our souls inside of us, we aren't animated, for our souls are what make us who and what we are.

What your wife perceived as another presence was her own soul. Her human mind was very much awake and aware that there was SOMETHING in the room with her. Because her soul was not yet fully back in her body, she was unable to correctly determine what this actually was and what it was doing. It wasn't mocking her - it was just showing itself to her. For some reason, God/ Universe/ Spirit/ whatever name you use wanted her to experience this.

Please remember that our human minds will interpret whatever we see to try to make sense of it. When I saw an alien standing in my bedroom window, my mind turned it into a man with a pointy nose, brown hair and glasses. That is NOT what I actually saw - that is what my mind WANTED me to see. My mind could fathom a man in my window, but it could NOT fathom or logically understand an alien being there.

Her soul naturally entered through what your wife said was her chest, but which was actually her solar plexus chakra. I understand her fear, for this can be an uncomfortable, unnerving, and sometimes very frightening experience.

She is a truly special and gifted woman. I am sad to hear that she has shut down her psychic senses due to fear. Her psychic ability has not left her, however; she has turned it off. She was so terrified of what she experienced that she subconsciously chose to shut down ALL her spiritual senses so that nothing like this would happen again. As nothing has left her, she can choose to open up psychically again. The choice is hers.

I wish her peace-full slumber.

*****

Astrea:

Most people experience sleep paralysis at some point in their lives. In fact, most cultures have their own terms and explanations for this sort of experience. In Norway, nightmares are called the old hag. In Cambodia, they're caused by the ghost who pushes you down.

In any case, without warning one feels a malevolent entity jump onto the chest. The victim feels an oppressive weight compressing the rib cage and often feels hands going around the throat and squeezing. The person feels he or she can't breathe. This may last from several seconds to several minutes, then the lock on the person's muscles gives way, and they're able to move again.

What seems to cause this most often is fatigue. Many college students experience sleep paralysis during finals when they're sleep deprived. It's been linked to everything from self-hypnosis to alien abductions. Without a doubt, it's one of the strangest types of nightmares.

Though very few people talk about it in industrialized societies, it's a very common experience in every culture throughout the world. Because it's different than a typical nightmare, it is no longer thought to be the same as night terrors, where the person emerges from a bad dream thrashing about, yelling and screaming, and then falls back asleep.

Most of the research confirms that sleep paralysis happens to mentally healthy people, who are thrust into a bizarre alternative world for the duration of the experience. In over 28,000 cases studied in Canada, regardless of their personal spiritual beliefs, almost every person who had the experience described feeling some kind of evil shadow or presence either coming into the room or already nearby.

Many people also report the sensation of flying, floating, or some kind of astral projection occurring at the same time. A few have even said they welcome and enjoy the experience.

Average, emotionally stable people with little or no psychic ability often experience these phenomena. Some researchers believe that a propensity for this sort of thing may be genetic, so your wife should ask the rest of her family if they've had similar things happen to them.

Sleep paralysis can be a totally terrifying experience, but it shouldn't make your wife afraid to go to sleep, especially if this happened years ago. If she's still afraid of the experience, it sounds to me like she could use some professional therapy to get over this event.

I recommend you seek out researchers at a nearby university who are doing sleep studies, and find out if she can enroll in one of the many thousands of programs devoted to studying different types of REM sleep.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.