The language of yoga has always invited students to listen and respond to their feelings. The physical aspect of yoga builds strength and confidence. The result is that trauma patients who engage in a regular yoga practice are reporting feeling more in control of their emotions and a sense of renewed physical strength.
Stress is actually resistance to sensory inputs that are unfamiliar or disturbing. Stress, or resistance, builds up in the body with unhealthy consequences over time. Yoga, especially hatha yoga's physical regimen, provides the means of releasing stress from the body.
In order to incorporate meditation into your Yoga classes, creating an introspective atmosphere is an easy way to demarcate a period of quietude. Your own internal atmosphere as well as the atmosphere of the room are important when your are setting a meditative tone. Remember to keep your own internal state quiet. This will allow your students to relax and slow down. Additionally, dimming the lights and playing soft, meditative music for five to ten minutes, at either the beginning or end of a class, will create the space for a seamless period of stillness and peace.
Pranayama practice, which gradually progresses into all aspects of daily life, will bring wholesome and lasting healing to the body of a person. Practice and benefits start within the mind and spreads to every cell of the body. Yoga training teaches the body to heal itself and to remain in a perpetual state of wellness.
Yoga methods focus on the alignment of the mind and body, by bringing them together into a state of synchronicity, in order to smoothly transition into each fluid movement. By utilizing asanas (poses) and pranyama (controlled breathing), an individual is able to achieve a higher state of contentment, as well as feel a sense of interconnectedness with those around him.
Yoga will definitely stimulate and provide relaxation. There are certain branches of yoga that play around with laughter. Some practitioners may not be able to handle a class devoted to laughing, but it promotes happiness rather than sadness and grief.
Ultimately, yogic medicine is a way of life and not a series of exercises. Contrary to modern notions, yoga is not simply something that you do. In order to truly receive the benefits of the yogic lifestyle, practitioners must move from simply practicing yoga to living it.
Self-awakening is a path that yogic practitioners must continually travel down. In the modern world, we tend to think of absolute goals, this is not exactly the same in yogic philosophy. While self-awakening is the goal, properly traversing the path toward that goal is just as important as the desire to reach it.
Since yoga science is at its core a breathing technology, the body becomes trained in the mastery of pranayama. Suddenly, performing PTSD therapy becomes second nature; not learned behavior.
Scientists looked at over 100 different pieces of research and concentrated on 16 well-respected controlled studies to see how Yoga affected schizophrenia, depression, sleep problems, eating disorders, ADHD, and learning disabilities. They found "positive effects" on sleep ailments and mild depression, even when patients took no medications. Yoga also had a beneficial effect on symptoms of ADHD and schizophrenia in participants on medication.