Yoga can help people heal from chronic illness, which covers mental, emotional, or physical health conditions.

Julie Kent from Love Yoga Living shares with us how this is possible. 

Many people, when they think of Yoga, think of the postures, stretching and strengthening. And yes, this is a part of yoga but indeed not the whole picture. Yoga is the journey of self-realisation; it helps us realise our truth beyond our conditioned state; our truth is a space of balance and love. So why is it we are not all living from this space? 

Most of us were born in this connected space of love and peace, and then life happens! Some of our experiences in life create feelings of love, happiness and peace within us. Some of our experiences create anxiety, stress, depression, isolation, feeling alone, not enough, unlovable, and other fearful emotions. 

"We will all experience both fear and love in life". 

We will all experience both fear and love in life. But what is essential, especially during our early years of life, is that our caregivers support us to feel safe, loved and enough. If this parental support is missing when we are younger, it's easy for us to view being present with ourselves and turning up for life, as scary places. Living in this ‘fear state’ becomes routine. Chronic Illness is directly linked to living life in this way. 

Our feeling state is felt somewhere on a spectrum between FEAR and LOVE. When we live life in a chronic fear state, our nervous system gets stuck in a dysregulated state. Living this way activates either the ‘Freeze’ or the ‘Fight and Flight‘ nervous system response. Living in this fear state shuts us off from life, quite literally! Our immune system shuts down; the very cells that make up every organ and gland in our body cannot function optimally. 

They become deprived of energy and oxygen. Free radical damage can occur, and chronic illness may begin to develop. Why does this happen? Our breathing mirrors this ‘Fear’ state. Instead of breathing a slow and healthy belly breath, we may adopt upper chest breathing or hold your breath without noticing. Our breath, mind, emotions, and body are all interconnected. Yoga takes a holistic approach to healing, supporting us to find balance within the body, mind and breath. 

Yogic practices can help you to move into a more balanced state, where we begin to realise ourselves beyond our fearful beliefs. We learn to feel safe, loved, and enough to see the world as a safe place to live. As we move into the alignment of love, our immune system switches on; we move into healing. Our breath regulates. We bring in the vital energy and oxygen that every cell of our depending on for life. 

Find out more about Julie, her amazing journey from poor health to good health and her healing work with yoga over on her collaborator page.