The Healing Power of Yoga

This article is written by guest contributing writer Valerie Wulf; a passionate soul with the intention of helping others heal through Holistic Nutritionist, Yoga, and Shamanism approach. For more information you can contact her on her website.

We have been fortunate enough to have Valerie on our blog for #wellnesswednesday before. She openheartedly shares her experiences working through an eating disorder. Link to this former post here: This #wellnesswednesday she once again openheartedly, shares her experiences, this time exploring how Yoga has helped her heal.

Picture provided by Valerie Wulf

So often when we dive into the journey of yoga we come with questions, desperation, a craving for change, and in pain. We’re not only seeking flexibility and physical strength on the mat - deep inside we’re searching for answers, for inner peace, and stillness. We are looking for liberation; freedom from suffering.

When I started to join my weekly yoga group 10 years ago, I desperately wanted my teacher to tell me ALL of her wisdom. I was hoping that she’d have the answers to how I’d “get rid” of my internal struggles.

I was wishing that she’d know how I could finally fill this emptiness within my chest, and how I can end my suffering & live my happily ever after. She certainly helped me tremendously — she showed me that my insane ambitions and my own harshness towards myself were causing most of my suffering. She showed me that comparison, perfectionism, self-sabotage, and replaying corrupted scenarios over and over in my head, led to my deep pain.

But... let me tell ya: embarking on the journey of yoga is quite different & more complex than just having a teacher that gives you all the answers! It’s a ride - with ups and downs, with successes and downfalls, with contraction and expansion, filled with smiles and laughter, pain and tears.

It is never as simple as having a guru or teacher that tells you how to move, how to behave and how to live… Someone who will free you from all the human pain and take responsibility for your life and choices from now on.

Actually you could do that & find yourself a fake guru like that but then you’re no longer your own prisoner, you are the prisoner of your guru's or teacher's thoughts and belief systems. 

In my eyes, a real yoga practice is teaching you all of it and it WILL give you the tools to live a happier, peaceful and fulfilled life. There are two premises though: first you gotta be patient and secondly, life will still throw irritating and painful things at you, you’ll simply know how to deal with it differently.

Once you’re on your mat you gotta surrender to the process in order to become still. For in the stillness, you’ll learn how to connect with your own inner wisdom. In this wisdom, you’ll find the whispers of your intuition. Maybe the whispers aren’t even whispers anymore but already have turned into desperate screams of your body and soul.. Screams that you probably ignored before.

It’s not so much about what the teacher has to tell you when you’re on your mat. It’s much more about how you show up for yourself in class. Are you holding a safe, non-judgmental space for yourself? Are you listening? Are you feeling into the depths of your own being? You gotta move THROUGH the discomfort in order to become comfortable IN it.

The yoga practice is about consciously moving into this discomfort - unpleasant asanas, holding your breath, being in a quiet room without distractions… all of this is perceived as icky in the beginning until you get used to it and slowly expand your capacity of being in a new discomfort… Until something that was once uncomfortable becomes comfortable in nature. 

You are learning to gently lean into the sticky, painful, forgotten, hidden parts of your being. It’s about breathing into those spaces - physically & metaphorically. Bringing light into which has long been dark, shunned, and hidden.

This is the place where you find the answers. The key is stillness, surrender, patience & observance of the process without judgment.

The more we allow ourselves to get comfortable in the discomfort in a yoga studio - the more we are able to adapt this mentality of flexibility and inner peace in the outside, the real world. And the effects of this ability are HUGE! 

I hope that yoga will offer you what it gifted me… Yoga gave me the time and the space to turn inward and gently look within myself. It gave me the space to feel ALL the feels. It allowed me to see that I am more than my body. It made me realize my divine nature. Yoga showed me that we are all one - that I’m no different to you. It led me onto a path of greater understanding and faith. While simultaneously showing me my limits - I know that I know nothing. I now understand the power of yoga through feeling, no longer logically.

I want to end my blog post and leave you with a quote from BKS Iyengar (the founder of Iyengar yoga & one of the most foremost yoga teachers in the world):

“You have to experience yoga, you can’t explain it.“

Much love,

Valérie