“Yoga is a balancing factor, a substratum across all of your life, so you do not get shifted in one direction or another. It gives you freshness, gives you light, recharges your batteries. You become a stable person. You realize what balance is, what sukha is, what contentment is, what joy is.” ~ Birjoo Mehta
Emotions are important to our well-being. They provide the spice of life, the joy, the love, the happiness. But, they can be troubling producing sadness, hurt and fear. They can also be harmful such as the consequences of out of control anger or suicidal depression. We need emotions, but we must find ways to keep them under control.
In psychology, emotion regulation is the term used to describe the ability to control emotions. It is not eliminating or suppressing them. Far from it, emotion regulation allows for the emotion to be fully felt and experienced. But, it maintains the intensity of the emotion at a manageable level and also produces the ability to respond to the emotion appropriately and constructively. Clearly, emption regulation is a key to a happier life.
Emotion regulation is most needed during times of turmoil and early adolescence is a time of intense emotional turmoil. This results from raging hormones, difficult social interactions, development of a self-concept, and tests of competency that are so prevalent during this period. So, any method that can help to develop emotion regulation could be of great benefit during this difficult period of development.
Mindfulness techniques such as mindfulness based cognitive therapy (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/10/take-command-and-control-of-your-emotions/) and meditation (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/20/regulate-emotions-with-mindfulness/) have been shown to improve emption regulation. So, there is reason to believe that mindfulness techniques in general may improve emotion regulation. There is a need, however, to explore other contemplative practices and their applicability to the development of emotion regulation in adolescents.
In today’s Research News article “Yoga and Emotion Regulation in High School Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4556863/
Daly and colleagues investigate the use of yoga to improve emotion regulation in 15-17 year olds. They compared adolescents who were taught yoga as their physical education class to adolescents who participated in the usual PE class. They found that emotion regulation increased for the yoga condition and decreased for the PE condition. In addition they found that higher levels of body awareness were associated with higher levels of emotion regulation.
These findings are interesting and potentially important. They demonstrate that yoga, like other contemplative practices can improve emotion regulation. This improvement is probably not due to the exercise component of yoga as it did not occur with traditional physical education classes. Importantly, yoga can improve emotion regulation in adolescence, a time when there is such a great need for emotion regulation.
In addition, the positive relationship between body awareness and emotion regulation suggests that yoga may be especially effective because of its emphasis on body awareness. This would seem reasonable as the first step in regulating emotions is being aware of the feelings in our bodies that are an integral part of emotion. By being sensitive to the bodies state the individual can be more aware of the presence and magnitude of an emotional reaction. Emotions can only be regulated once their presence is detected and yoga may improve this skill.
Of course more research is necessary before recommending that yoga be taught routinely to adolescents. But, the current research is suggestive that such a program could be very beneficial during this difficult phase of development.
So, practice yoga and get emotionally balanced.
“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are available at the Contemplative Studies Blog http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/