The Home Stretch: Using Yoga to Combat Everything… Including Holiday Stress
The Home Stretch
Using yoga to combat EVERYTHING … including holiday stress
I have what they call a resting (w)itch face. Yes, it’s true - I walk purposefully with small, quick steps, brow furrowed, mouth set in a line. I look at once serious, sad, and angry. It’s an interesting trait, one that definitely requires some getting used to for those around me. I’ve tried to fix it, I really have, but my face stays stoic, eternally part of me. I have the baby photos to prove it.
During the holidays, when life is simultaneously fast and slow, “thinking time” is in great excess. It can be a little much, so I’ve looked for ways to turn it off, quiet my mind, and think of absolutely nothing. After some searching, I found a solution … in yoga.
I had been exposed to yoga throughout my childhood, but first started practicing on my own accord in high school. Instead of your typical gym class, I took Fitness for Life with the ever-legendary Mary Neilon. We would have “Yoga Fridays” - a highly anticipated and appreciated ritual at the end of an exhausting week. Lying on the thick foam mats and staring up at the darkened ceiling, we thought to ourselves: everything is going to be okay; there is a whole world beyond here.
It was true; there was much more yoga to be had in college - yoga for strength, for stretching, for pain, for relaxing, for EVERYTHING! I even tried a couple’s yoga class with my roommate. Surrounded by romantic partners, it was hard not to giggle as we, quite platonically, knotted our limbs together in various poses.
After we were sent home, yoga and I had our ups and downs. For a while, we shared a gentle YouTube practice every day before bed. Then, a couple of intense hour-long virtual sessions a week with a favorite instructor from school. For a period, we lost touch. Somehow, though, we found a way back to each other.
Now deep in the throes of a completely abnormal holiday (and finals) season, the stress volcano bubbles and boils. Our faces are all, to put it mildly, a little cloudy. I reached out to Laura Solly, owner of Laura Solly Yoga in Ellicottville, to gauge her thoughts on yoga as stress relief.
“Yoga is good for stress because it taps into the deeper layers of our nervous system and consciouses through the linking of breath with movement,” Laura explains. “It tames the stress response in our body through the use of reflection and mindfulness. Both of these tools give you a better view of what is going on internally, mentally, and physically. You are able to become the witness of your thoughts and sensations rather than becoming attached to them. You can learn to see stress and let it dissolve instead of allowing it to overpower you.”
“Yoga can bring sense of peace and overall relaxation to the body,” she continues. “It’s a sense of release from tensions/worry you didn’t even realize your body was walking around with. This may in return give relief from headaches, stomachaches, or sleep difficulties.”
The beauty of yoga isn’t all handstands and elaborate contortions - it molds to fit you as a person, no matter your age, size, or physical limitations. Laura, with decades of instructional experience, offers two weekly classes at Bradley Poole’s new Warrior Fitness and Wellness Studio. These sessions are for both long-time students and first-timers; anyone can benefit - mentally and physically - from a yoga practice.
“Yoga draws me back again and again as a tool to arrive in my body,” Laura says of her own yogic experience. “It allows me time to get out of my analyzing mind and into the sensations and feelings in my body, giving me the gift of awareness, mindfulness, and time to let go of the daily demands on my life.”
Laura’s favorite posture is the final relaxation pose, also called corpse pose. For her, it’s a moment to lie on her back at the end of practice, absorb all the previous postures, fully let go, and drift into deep relaxation. It just so happens that it’s my favorite, too. I like to imagine that I am melting into the earth; the bottoms of my legs, arms, and head turn to putty as I focus solely on the sensations of being alive. When else do we let ourselves do that? We are always moving, taking the motions for granted.
From child’s pose to corpse pose to fetal pose, a whole life cycle unfolds in a yoga session. Observing life as a practice - a series of postures to improve upon everyday - makes the strangeness of our current situation slightly more bearable. (My mood dictates my receptiveness to this idea, but it’s a process!) This article is an invitation to explore and experiment with a new way of approaching personhood; being human is hard! And you never know, family yoga could become a new tradition.
