The Power of Yoga for Growth and Healing

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Have you ever wondered if your approach to healing might be missing something essential? The journey toward growth and healing often leads us to work on ourselves in fragmented ways—treating our bodies, minds, spirits, and life circumstances as separate challenges requiring different solutions. But what if there was a single practice that could weave all these aspects together?

Yoga, at its essence, is precisely this practice. As I explore in this episode, the true meaning of yoga is "yoking"—connecting the seemingly separate parts of yourself into one integrated whole. This ancient wisdom offers us a revolutionary perspective on healing that modern approaches often overlook. Rather than compartmentalizing our healing work, yoga invites us to recognize that our body, mind, spirit, and life are inseparable aspects of one ecosystem—you.

This holistic approach is what makes yoga uniquely powerful for those on a healing journey. Whether you've experienced trauma, struggle with anxiety, or simply feel disconnected from yourself, yoga provides tools that address your entire being simultaneously. I share two distinct pathways for harnessing yoga's therapeutic potential: the indirect approach of regular practice that naturally permeates your life, and the targeted work of applying specific yogic tools to address particular challenges.

As a somatic yoga therapist, I've witnessed countless transformations as people discover how to let their bodies lead them through healing. The body holds wisdom that the mind alone cannot access—especially when it comes to processing trauma and emotional patterns. When we learn to listen to this wisdom and follow our intuition, we unlock healing possibilities that transcend traditional approaches.

The beauty of growth and healing lies not just in resolving problems but in the evolution of your soul that happens through the process. This journey leads to freedom, joy, clarity, and a deeper connection to yourself and something greater. If you're ready to experience yoga beyond the poses and discover its transformative power for your healing journey, this episode offers both practical insights and inspiration to guide your path.

Ready to take the next step in your healing journey? Reach out on Instagram @the_nourished_woman or visit my website KeriMarino.com to learn more about joining The Nourished Woman Sanctuary, where we explore these practices together in a supportive community.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to the Nourished Woman podcast, a space
for women on a growth andhealing journey who are ready to
live more joyfully and feeldeeply at home within themselves
body, mind and spirit.
I'm Keri Marino, your host,somatic yoga therapist, mentor
and mama of three.
Let's dive in.

(00:33):
If you're on a growth andhealing journey, then I want to
just pause and congratulate youfor a moment, because the work
that you are doing or about todo is going to open doors and
it's going to bring you into anew level.

(00:54):
You are being initiated in someway, and I'm not saying that
this work of growing and healingis always easy, because, let's
be honest, it is just not.
Sometimes, the beauty of goingthrough a hard thing is the
evolution of the soul thathappens inside of you, on the

(01:15):
other side, and, as a yogatherapist and somatic inner work
, I get so excited when I seemyself or somebody else going
through this work of evolving,because it leads to freedom, it
leads to joy, it leads toascension, it leads to beauty

(01:37):
and clarity and pleasure and adeepening, a deepening that is
so good.
And I want to talk to you alittle bit about yoga's role in
growth and healing, because Ifeel like the average person and
that may or may not be you doesnot understand, does not even
grasp at all how truly amazingand therapeutic and helpful yoga

(02:01):
is, how, how, like much it canoffer you on a growth and
healing journey.
So let's just unpack for amoment what yoga is.
And yoga, as I'm going todescribe it to you is, is how I
approach it as a yoga therapist,how I've grown to understand it
through all of the study thatI've done.
And so, ultimately, yoga isthis process of yoking, and

(02:25):
yoking not like an egg, but like, if you think about a horse
being yoked to something that itwas carrying like a chariot.
It's like this hooking togetherof these separate parts, and so
these separate parts of you areyour body and your mind and
your spirit and your life.

(02:45):
So it's these four pillars ofwho you are, and so yoga helps
you become yoked with yourwholeness your body, your mind,
your spirit and your life, andon a grander scale, its ultimate
aim is for you to like,experience this transcendent
wholeness and connection to yourown divine self that exists

(03:10):
inside you, that is also a partof something bigger than you,
and I know that spirituality andwords like divine can
definitely stir some concernsinside of people.
So before we get into thisfurther, I just want to pause
and say that you get to definespirit and spirituality and
divine and God and all of thatstuff on your terms.

(03:33):
Yoga has nothing really to sayabout how you define it.
It just has a lot to say aboutthe fact that it's part of you
and that it is an essentialpiece of your wholeness.
So when you're on a growth andhealing journey, very often
you're kind of working withfragmented parts of yourself.
You might specifically dothings that help you with your

(03:54):
body.
Maybe you exercise, maybe youdrink more water.
You're also going tospecifically be working on parts
of your mind, so you might beworking on being a better
witness of your inner dialogueand your mindset and directing
your thoughts and your emotions.
You might be working on yourspirituality.
You might start to readsomething again, you might have

(04:15):
a spiritual mentor, you mightstart to attend some sort of
spiritual service and you'll beworking on your life in some way
.
You might start to get yourmoney in order, you might start
to explore your work-lifebalance and things like that.
But generally speaking, we workwith these in a very fragmented
way we work with them, as ifthey are separate aspects of

(04:37):
self.
But they are not.
They are all layers of you thatideally would be woven together
so you could work with thewhole of you and balance the
whole of you as one ecosystem.
And this, my love, this iswhere yoga is so, so unique and

(04:58):
powerful and effective, becauseyoga is working with those four
pillars body, mind, spirit, lifeall in one place.
And as a yoga therapist, we getto get into all of those things
together.
And if you've ever had anexperience like, let's say,
you've done an online yogasession or you've done a class

(05:21):
and you have felt a reallyunique feeling, state, come over
Maybe you have felt a physicalrelease of some kind, an opening
of a channel in your body, arelaxation, a level of zen,
physically and mentally andspiritually and that ripples out

(05:43):
into your life off of your yogamat and into your life, then
you know what I'm talking about.
You've already felt it, you'veliterally already tasted this.
And this can all be applied towhen we're doing like deep inner
work for ourselves to reallystep up and take ownership and

(06:04):
grow and evolve or heal fromtrauma, or love ourselves more
and improve ourselves work.
Yoga moves into all of thoseareas of you and you've really
got two choices in terms of howyou tap into yoga for this
purpose.
And the first one is a lessdirect approach.

(06:25):
So this means you're going todo a yoga practice that
incorporates body, mind andspirit and life teachings, so
not just like an exercise class,but a true to the roots of yoga
, like whole self immersionexperience.
You're just going to do theyoga and then you're going to
let that yoga, that feeling ofyoga, that therapeutic practice

(06:47):
of yoga, ripple out into yourlife in a less like up, close
and personal laser focused oncertain issues kind of way.
And the other option is to takemore of a specific approach
with applying yoga, and this islargely what I do in my practice
with people.

(07:08):
So one-on-one work with me.
People will come with aspecific goal or aim.
Oftentimes it is kind of justlike integrating their
experience in a way that feelsbetter to them.
Maybe it is about working withanxiety, maybe it's about
improving self-worth or justhelping themselves untangle the

(07:28):
knots that they find themselvesin relationally and emotionally
and with their concept of whatthey're allowed to have as they
move through this life, so theycan feel more free and digest
trauma.
When, in my practice, we get towork on those targeted areas and
use your entire self as ahealing tool for you.

(07:50):
We get to unravel the thingsthat your body is holding.
We get to repattern yournervous system.
We get to let your body leadyou through the healing journey.
We get to come home to yourbody.
We get to tune in.
We get to work home to yourbody.
We get to tune in.
We get to work on the mind.
We get to work on all theemotions that are coming up and

(08:12):
building skills to emotionallybalance and working on being a
gentle witness of your innerdialogue and seeing those sort
of patterns that are playing outfor you mentally and
intellectually that are keepingyou stuck.
We work on your spirit.
We work on calling in aconnection to spirit.
We work on feeling theconnection to spirit.

(08:33):
We work on bhakti right, thispractice of devotional living.
When we work on life, it's thepractical things like am I
drinking enough water?
How am I showing up and takingcare of myself?
Oh, how am I doing in thisrelationship?
How can I be a bettercommunicator?
How can I be more alive andpresent for my experience of

(08:57):
living this life.
Yoga can be this place where youweave every aspect of you
together indirectly, by justdoing it and showing up and
receiving, or very directly,like getting in there.
I always tell people that thekind of work we do in my
one-to-one sessions is the samelevel of work you would do with

(09:20):
a psychotherapist, but I havevery different tools that we're
using.
They're yogic tools, they'resomatic tools and I want you to
know that whatever you're doingon your growth and healing
journey, if you're followingyour intuition, if you're
listening to that wisdom insideof you and that heart call and

(09:44):
your body's like visceralresponses to things, if you're
following that inner guidancesystem, then you are doing
amazing work.
And if you're not, if you'reshooting yourself, if you are
outsourcing your power tosomething else, this is your
reminder Come back and listen tothat inner wisdom.

(10:05):
And if you want to nerd out orask questions about how yoga can
help you on your growth andhealing journey, I would love to
chat.
If this episode resonated withyou, I'd love to hear about it.

(10:26):
Send me a message on Instagram,at the Nourished Woman, or on
my website, kerrymarinocom, andif you're looking for deeper
support, mentorship or a spaceto feel held.
I'd love to have you join usinside the Nourished Woman
Sanctuary.
The beautiful music that you'rehearing is from Sean Johnson
and the Wild Lotus Band, and youcan find them on all streaming

(10:49):
platforms Without mystery.
Welcome to the Nourished WomanPodcast, a space for women on a

(11:22):
growth and healing journey whoare ready to live more joyfully
and feel deeply at home withinthemselves.