Explore
"Where am I right now?"
Sit down, back straight, without stiffness. Feel the contact between your body and whatever is supporting you, the chair, the floor, the earth.
Take a breath that is a little longer than usual. Then a second one. On the third, let the exhale become slower than the inhale.
Nothing is urgent, in this exact moment. What usually stirs up the mind can, for a few seconds, settle, like cloudy water that, once still, finds its clarity again.
Now that you are anchored in calm, let's discover together what, inside you, is seeking to stabilize.
The test: Doshas and stress
Each constitution reacts differently under pressure: Vata worries and scatters, Pitta flares up and becomes sharp, Kapha closes in and freezes. This test explores how your constitution responds to stress.
Understand
"What's really at play?"
Why work on emotions?
Being able to transform your emotions is essential: it is a matter of stability and clarity. In yoga, we identify with our emotions out of attachment and aversion toward whatever triggers them: this is what is known as the Kleshas, a way of feeding suffering. Ayurveda, too, carries a body of knowledge about psychology, and about how to work with the mind and emotions in a healthy, beneficial way, in order to step out of this cycle that produces emotions destructively and generates suffering.
How do yoga and Ayurveda respond to this?
It begins with recognizing yourself: recognizing the emotion and its nature, and the bodily sensations it activates. This is also what plays out in the imprint that certain events leave on our nervous system. Yoga offers meditation as a way to observe the mind and its contents, the vritti, and to understand that these are only movements that come, stay for a while, and then pass. Ayurveda, for its part, gives us an understanding of our constitution and our tendencies: which emotion do we identify with most? A person may, for example, be identified with their fears: the challenge is to accept that this is part of them, without over-identifying with it.
The psychology of Ayurveda, like yoga, thus offers us a space: not to avoid the experience, but to experience it fully, without identifying with it. To let it pass through us, and to master this process, without losing ourselves, without avoiding the feeling. In yoga, we develop a perception, an awareness, that opens us to the experience without engulfing us in it or making us identify with it, which connects directly to the question of integrity and alignment.
What's really at play, in short: opening to what arises, while stabilizing our true self, so as to move through the experience of emotions from a clear mind, and to understand the very nature of our emotions.
What, concretely?
This is what allows us to face stress, eco-anxiety, and crisis situations, notably by looking at the link between emotions and decisions, but also to use our emotions and a stable state of mind as resources for creativity, and for nurturing positive, constructive relationships with others.
Practice
"What can I do right now?"
Shake, tremble, settle
Standing up, let your knees bend slightly and let your body begin to tremble, without forcing it, like an animal discharging tension. Bounce, shake yourself out, shake your hands and shoulders. Let out one or two roars if the urge comes (the lion). Then, all at once, stop everything and stand still, standing or seated, to feel the calm that naturally follows the release. 2 to 3 minutes.
Coherent breathing
Sit comfortably, back straight. Breathe in through the nose, counting five seconds, letting the belly rise, then breathe out counting five seconds, with no pause in between. Keep this steady rhythm (6 breaths per minute) for five minutes. This breathing synchronizes the heart rhythm and, within minutes, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the one responsible for calm. Practiced three times a day (morning, midday, evening), its soothing effect lasts well beyond the five minutes of practice.
To go further
Radiate
"What do I do with this in my life and with others?"