As most anyone who has been practicing Yoga can attest, emotions often arise “on the mat.”  It has been proven that there is a link between emotions and the body─that specific body parts tend to be storehouses for specific emotions.  The chest may house feelings of loneliness, the pelvis might be an area where shame is stored, anger is often experienced as back pain, and so on.  This explains why some people feel deep emotional responses during certain yoga postures.  It is not uncommon for yoga teachers to come across a weeping student while teaching a yoga class.

The Emotional Freedom Technique functions as emotional acupressure.  The technique, developed by Gary Craig, a Stanford University engineering graduate who set out to find an effective approach for treating emotional issues, is designed to reduce or eliminate emotional and physical stress by unblocking energetic meridians through tapping on pressure points.  The Emotional Freedom Technique affects the same energetic meridians as the ancient Chinese systems of acupuncture and acupressure.  Generally, the EFT practitioner works with his or her clients to uncover issues through talk therapy followed by this tapping technique.  The philosophy behind EFT is that the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.  EFT suggests that negative emotions arise as the result of the body’s energetic response to an event.  EFT maintains that since we experience negative emotions as a result of the body’s energy system being thrown off-balance, restoring energetic equilibrium will cause negative emotions to vanish.

Emotional Yoga combines yoga and EFT to cultivate physical and emotional awareness and then balances energetic disruptions.  Instead of uncovering emotional issues through the mind, it is often more effective to uncover underlying feelings through the body.  The body possesses intuitive emotional wisdom.  In fact, sometimes the physical self is aware of emotions that cannot be accessed through conventional talk therapy.  By tuning in to the body’s messages and by linking specific yoga postures with specific emotions, it is possible to unearth negative emotions that are stored within the body.  By performing the EFT tapping sequence, it is possible to achieve immediate and lasting breakthroughs.  Combining yoga therapy with EFT provides an intense emotional shift by involving the body in both the diagnosis and the treatment of the body’s emotional and energetic needs.  On their own, both yoga and EFT are very useful.  However, Emotional Yoga deepens one’s ability to induce and promote healing.

Negative emotions can be excavated from the body through yoga.  But, awareness does not necessarily bring about healing. Instead, wellness comes about when releasing stored negative energy using EFT.  Then the body’s energetic imbalances are corrected and healing can occur.   Emotional Yoga transforms lives. The techniques have helped many people to successfully break free of anxiety, anger, depression, fears, phobias, PTSD, OCD, trauma, addiction, eating disorders, stress, headaches, persistent physical pain and a host of other issues. Since the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption of the body’s energy system, then the body must be used to both diagnose and treat its issues.  Emotional Yoga increases the efficacy of both yoga and EFT and leads to immediate and lasting healing.

Providing clients with dietary recommendations such as those advertised by Liberation Wellness has helped tremendously to bring clients to a deeper level of healing.  The body and the emotions are intertwined.  It is almost impossible to feel good emotionally when one’s physical health is compromised.  But, it is also challenging to feel good physically when a person’s emotional equilibrium is off-balance.  Emotional Yoga is a wonderful way to integrate emotional and physical wellness, and another tool to help liberate you.

I recently saw Kevin Brown give a talk about the Liberation Wellness Project in which he said that Americans are “sick, fat, and confused.”  I agree!  Emotional Yoga helps to free people from the bondage of negative thoughts and emotions that keep them stuck in self-destructive mental and emotional patterns.  For example, I have a client who is a self-proclaimed chronic sugar-addict.  Even after becoming aware of the sound principles behind the diet advocated by Kevin she was unable to get herself to switch from a diet centered on carbohydrate consumption to one based on fat and proteins.

Until we began our work together, she was aware that she couldn’t stop binging on sugar but wasn’t aware why she was engaging in such self-destructive eating.  After her first Emotional Yoga session, she realized that she had confused food with love.  She ate to fill her loneliness and assuage her pain.  For her, there was an emotional payoff to eating self-destructively.  As a child she had forged an emotional link between the sugar cookies and cakes and candies that her mother fed her and feeling loved.  As an adult, she didn’t want to give up these foods because of her deep emotional need for nurturing.  I used Emotional Yoga to help her to physically release these emotional connections and she was then free to follow a healthier way of eating.  She is no longer sick, confused or fat (this client has lost 32 pounds in 2 months).

As you move closer to physical liberation I suggest incorporating practices that encourage emotional emancipation as well.  True freedom includes mental, physical, and emotional liberation!

Daralyse Lyons is the originator of Emotional Yoga.  She is a Certified Yoga Instructor. She received her Yoga Teacher Training at the Yoga Education Institute (a Registered Yoga Alliance School). She has also been trained in Advanced Level EFT. She works with individuals, couples, and groups to help people transform themselves and their lives. More information about Emotional Yoga can be found at www.emotionalyoga.info.