How this yoga practice changed my life

Once upon a time in 2016, I was a wee yoga teacher, having only taught yoga for 5 years then. I had been practicing yoga for 10 years at that point, yet I was experiencing a lot of pain in my body. I was getting a bit frustrated as to why my yoga practice was causing me pain and rigidity. After all, isn’t yoga supposed to help rather than hinder the process of healing? If so, why was I constantly feeling agitated over little things, easily stressed out, anxious, and tense?

Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had a lot of repressed emotions, pain, anger, and grief stored inside of me that showed up on the outside as an over-achieving, people-pleasing perfectionist. These are common trauma responses of not feeling validated and not having your needs met (nurture, care, affection, tenderness, etc) in early childhood. Unfortunately, the style of yoga that I was practicing then, vigorous Ashtanga yoga, was in fact exacerbating my patterns and tendencies of being overly ambitious to the point of burnout and extreme dissatisfaction.