Yoga as Part of Physical and Emotional Rehabilitation: Using Yoga to Reduce Stress

Yoga aims to create an experience of overall well-being: mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. It reduces anxiety and depression, calms the nervous system, and improves the quality of sleep.

Depending upon each individual’s needs and level, the yoga practice can emphasize an energizing "flow" style yoga or a calming and meditative slow deep stretch. Sessions incorporate physical postures, breath awareness, and visualization. Each class is taught with precise alignment instruction, and through a safe sequence of poses, leads to a blissful guided relaxation and meditation.

People who suffer addictive behavior, depression, anxiety, trauma, or eating disorders frequently avoid self-experience. Yoga offers individuals enjoyable tools to connect with their self by reuniting their body with their mind and emotions. While traditional psychotherapy relies on the past, yoga encourages the individual to focus on fully experiencing the present.

Whether brand new to yoga or an experienced practitioner, participants are invited and encouraged to create an intention for their practice and for their lives in order to:


  • Gain strength, hope, self-respect and self-confidence
  • Experience peace
  • Find clarity around a specific issue and self-awareness
  • Discover self-love, acceptance, joy, and a better overall well-being

Their individual purposes are then continually reinforced throughout the yoga practice, with the goal of improving physical and emotional health.


Yoga and Mental Health Studies

The stress-reducing and mood improving benefits of yoga have been the focus of many studies as explained in an April 2009 issue of Harvard Health Publications.  Due to such positive benefits, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., began offering yoga-based emotional rehabilitation therapies in 2009. Information from an August 2011 edition of Military Health and Fitness magazine, shows that the practice still continues.

Interested in learning more about emotional rehabilitation at Bridges to Recovery mental health retreats? Contact us today.

At Bridges to Recovery, we will put together a recovery plan that works best for you. Learn about other alternative therapies that can benefit your emotional rehabilitation:

 

Your road to overall wellness, emotional and physical, begins at Bridges to Recovery. Contact us today.