We’ve all spent time in heartbreak hotel and felt the crushing pain of a love gone wrong. During these times when it feels like nothing will dull the ache of our shattering hearts, yoga can be a powerful antidote. Here’s how:
1. Our yoga mat is a safe sanctuary.
Our mat is a place of healing, a place where we can experience every aspect of emotion and never feel recrimination or judgment. It’s where we can allow the rawest part of ourselves to be revealed and still feel protected, held, and supported. We can simply be.
2. It’s a place where we can release and let go.
Instead of storing up negative or painful emotions, yoga allows us to release anything stale, stagnant, or painful. The practice of yoga provides time and stillness to process and reflect, often bringing up powerful emotions, but providing a safe place where we can let these painful emotions go and leave them behind.
3. It gets us out of minds and into our bodies.
Yoga refocuses our mind and directs our attention away from our monkey minds and back towards our bodies, where we can feel a sense of connection, stability, and reassurance. You get a reprieve from all the thoughts of what ifs, could haves, and would haves by helping you focus on your breathing, movement, and the now.
4. Yoga reminds us we are more than simply our minds and physical bodies.
Right now it may feel like everything you know and love is slipping away, and you're thinking of how you can start living your day-to-day without the person you love. Yoga will remind you to connect to a power greater than ourselves, it helps put everything in perspective.
We are part of something far bigger, far greater, and far more long lasting than our experiences in this life.
5. Yoga reminds us to focus on our breath and travel inwards.
In focusing on our breath, we calm our nervous system, clear out the clutter from the external world, and reconnect with our prana and life force grounding and anchoring ourselves into the present moment and preventing our mind meandering over the past.
It’s challenging to recover from a broken heart, but yoga provides an opportunity to ground and re-centre ourselves. It allows us to cultivate a sense of peace and positivity, helping us to build up faith and trust to open our hearts again. It truly is heartbreak medicine for the mind, body and soul.
