Yoga Health Benefits - Spiritual Growth from Emotional Trauma

ROOTS OF EMOTIONAL TRAUMA - Yoga Health Benefits and Liberation from Emotional Trauma

We all started out as babies in need. Perhaps you had wonderful parents who took care of your every need and gave the right amounts of love, encouragement, support and a little discipline when needed. As children, we are dependent solely upon our caretakers. Some (unfortunately, lots more than we would like to believe) were not so lucky and had less than fairy tale beginnings, suffering abuse and abandonment. Or, our caretakers may not have had the intention of deliberately hurting us, but may not have been able to give us the amount of love, closeness and care necessary for healthy development. When children grow up in chaotic environments experiencing emotional trauma and sometimes physical abuse, they may think of that environment as normal, even through the pain, since they know of nothing else and have nothing else to compare it to.

DEPENDENCY - Yoga Health Benefits and Liberation from Emotional Trauma

Emotional trauma happens to all of us, children and adults, at some point in our lives, sometimes on a continual basis in extreme circumstances. Even as adults, we have difficulty overcoming some of the debilitating effects. Chaos and emotional trauma become very familiar feelings when we are exposed to it on a daily basis, numbing our ability to recognize how dangerous it is to our body and soul. As adults we are sometimes drawn to those feelings due to the familiarity of having lived an early life of pain.

We grow up with the belief systems taught to us by our parents, elders and educators. Sometimes the lessons are life-long inspirations and guide us towards our best and highest good. However, sometimes we are left with a feeling that something is missing. We feel like we are completely alone, searching, but not knowing what we are looking for, and we desperately need to find the missing part; the "connection." That need for connection, if not directed to the right source, turns into an insideous desperation. We look for comfort in the wrong places. We become addicted to substances; drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food, sex, gambling, etc., to dull the pain. Often, to divert attention off of our own pain, we will become completely attached to someone else and their pain, thinking that by immersing ourselves in someone else, it will relieve us of our own pain. We then become controllers or enablers of other people instead of healing our own broken lives. Sadly, we find ourselves in even more desperation and emotional trauma, because no person, substance, object or situation will make us happy all the time. When we get to the point of being in complete despair, on our knees, and feeling like we've literally been kicked in the stomach, we may start the ascent out of the dark and start searching for light. We know there is something more, but what?

UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS - Yoga Health Benefits and Liberation from Emotional Trauma

Great suffering can produce the most spiritually enlightened Beings. Through pain comes a different kind of awareness and the opening of a new portal to rise above it. This is where the quest for greatness begins. The ancient wisdom traditions teach that there is no such thing as separation. Separation anxiety has pervaded human thinking since the beginning of our existence. We feel the need for connection, but learn at an early age that we may be abandoned by those whose support our very existence depends upon. That feeling of abandonment is at the root of much human suffering. We then cling to fleeting earthly and material things, much to our destruction.

One of the meanings of the word Yoga (root word is Yuj) is "Union" or "Yoke." Union, connection, together, yoking - these words all have something in common: ONENESS. The word Yoga means all these things. Through the study and practice of Yoga, we start to become very aware of our oneness with all things. Through the control and awareness of the breath, the mind becomes calm and the body follows. Through meditation, we begin to feel the connection of our true Self with the Eternal Highest Power, and know that the microcosm and the macrocosm are one and the same. We discover that there is no separation between the body, mind, breath and spirit and that the energy that makes us who we are never dies.

AWARENESS - Yoga Health Benefits and Liberation from Emotional Trauma

Through the practice of meditation, our minds are stilled and focused on the Oneness of all. ("Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10.) We become less and less dependent on external needs for pleasure, because the pleasure we experience in that Oneness is far greater than any external, fleeting, momentary feeling. We develop expansion of our limited perceptions. We discover that there is so much more than what we can experience with our limited senses. We no longer need to have the crutch of dependency since we feel no separation. We see that there really are no boundaries and that everything is connected in what is referred to as a "Cosmic Quantum Soup." We then feel a divine connection to everything and have no need to judge anyone or anything. We see the divinity in everything around us in a profound way. We understand that since we are lacking nothing, we have no need to grasp. We then can truly enjoy and appreciate the material things that we encounter and start to realize that abundance is already in our possession and comes to us freely and effortlessly. We need only give thanks for our overflowing prosperity.

This becomes our way of life and dramatic and astonishing changes happen as enlightenment and great truths unfold for us. Yoga health benefits and relief from emotional trauma now unfold. Healing has taken place and, for once, we feel the joy and abandonment of a child, as it is supposed to be felt.

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