Hold Yoga Poses for Longer to Build Mental Strength

It’s challenging to post about work with all that is going on in America and the world right now. I look at my website and it reeks of white privilege.

A little about my background… please reach out if you’re seeking support during this time.

I grew up on the outskirts of New Orleans which was about 70% black in the 1970’s. My friends were white. My friends were black. Because we were living in “Cancer Alley” surrounded by chemical plants, my parents moved our family away to a small culturally mixed city. I was lucky. We had the privilege of living in a modest middle-class neighborhood. While there were plenty of times that money was extremely tight, I was lucky. I was never handed cars or homes or fancy educations or $1 as I walked out the door to hang out with friends. I started working when I was 15. I then made my way out into the world on my own as a white female. Again and again, I was lucky. I can’t imagine the strength it would take if this was not my story.

Originally posted on YogaToday.com.

Do you feel like you might lose it when you hold yoga poses for more than a few seconds? 

Do you avoid demanding classes or poses at all costs? 

You certainly aren’t alone! 

When you learn to hold yoga poses for longer, you’ll actually receive all kinds of benefits that will hopefully outweigh your aversions: let’s take a look.

Build Mental Strength By Holding Yoga Poses Longer

Building mental strength is as important as the physical benefits of holding powerful poses. A good deal of yoga classes today are more akin to a fast-flowing workout rather than what the practice was originally designed to accomplish. The physical practice was constructed to develop strong supple bodies as well as minds. The purpose is to prepare both body and mind to sit still in meditation. Given our fast-paced society, quick-moving classes may ultimately work against the purpose of this holistic practice.

The practice of holding postures for a longer period of time stems from Iyengar Yoga. This form of yoga was developed by B.K.S. Iyengar. He masterminded these techniques and made them available to all practitioners of yoga. Iyengar Yoga promotes precision within alignment, the importance of sequencing to properly prepare the body for the next postures, as well as the use of props. The focus is on quality of pose versus quantity of poses. Postures are also held for a relatively long period of time compared to other styles of yoga. This is to encourage awareness within each pose of both the body and the mind. The benefit is creating a strong, supple, receptive body, as well as a steady, understanding, and growth-oriented mindset.

To hold a yoga pose for longer is to cultivate the ability to be still and accept ‘what is’ under any circumstances. The cool part is that everything we need to know about holding powerful poses is essentially the same as what we need to know to build mental strength, all in the same process. Yoga for the win-win!

If we are solely focused on the body, all too swiftly moving through poses, then we may be altogether dismissing “strengthening” the mind. When we gravitate toward attending fast-paced classes, this is an alert. It alerts us that we may be avoiding exactly what need. To cultivate more balance in our lives, we may need to slow down.

Holding poses is challenging for the body. This coincidentally is where the mind comes into play. When we slow down, we are granted the opportunity to notice where the mind goes.

Are we complaining?

Are we berating ourselves for not being strong enough to hold the pose for too long?

Are we cursing?

Are we sending our teacher dirty looks?

If the answer is “Yes.” to any of these questions, know that this is common and not a reason to pass judgment on our personal challenges. It’s our opportunity to genuinely notice our thoughts. Then, we have the responsibility to take ownership of our thoughts so that we can better understand them. Within this style of practice, we are essentially training our brains to transmute and transform our thoughts for the better.

Build Poses from the Ground Up

Begin by holding tadasana or mountain pose for a longer period of time.

When yoga teachers speak about “building the pose from the ground up”, they are instilling two components:

1. A safe practice that creates physical strength, stability, and flexibility while allowing for longevity within one’s practice

2. A more beneficial practice that gradually allows the mind to also become strong, stable, focused and adaptable

By practicing Tadasana, or Mountain Pose, we begin to “work” the pose from the ground up, which begins in our feet. This method ensures greater stability akin to the roots of a tree plugging into the ground.

Next, we grow a stable tree trunk. First, place attention on the feet ensuring correct alignment. Depending on the style of practice, the instructions on foot placement will vary. Let’s begin with the feet hip-width apart. The outer edges of the feet should generally line up with the outer edges of the yoga mat. The body weight is evenly distributed over the mid-arch of the foot. Toes are spread wide as all four corners of the feet press evenly, rooting into the mat. The inner arches are “pulling up” while the outer ankles are “firming in”. This counteraction creates stability.

Without going into the details of each body part as we would in class, we continue to stack and align our body parts. The knees stack over the ankles. The hips stack over the knees. Then we slowly work our way up placing attention on our ribs, chest, sternum, collarbones, shoulders, and shoulder blades. Finally, we elongate through the entire spine, up through the neck, and crown of the head. Now, standing tall, the arms are relaxed alongside the body with palms of the hands open facing the top of the yoga mat.

Phew. At this point, we’ve already held the pose through several minutes when well instructed on each body part to ensure proper alignment. This is the first part of teaching the mind to focus.

Once we “find” the pose, regardless of whether it’s close to perfect or not, we take this use of our left brain, the logical and linear center, and release all instructions. Now, further holding the pose, we tap into our right brain, the intuitive and creative center, by placing our attention on the breath.

This is where it might get tricky. Thoughts will go to:

“What’s for lunch?”

“OMG, I have so much to do after this class.”

“Geez, how long is he going to hold this pose, my quads are DYING!”

The teacher may be incessantly talking. The teacher may become silent for what seems like an eternity. The body may begin to visibly tremble. The sweat may begin to cascade. The music may be annoying. The music may be the one thing getting us through every dang second. Or, the silence could be deafening.

Your job as you hold yoga poses for longer is to notice. Notice the thoughts as they drift across the mind.

This is where we train the brain to be okay with where we are right here, right now.

This is where we train the mind to be at ease with whatever is happening in this precise moment.

This is where we train ourselves not to judge our thoughts, oneself, or another.

This is where we train the body and mind to breathe and BE.

This is yoga. 

As we continue to hold the pose, the mind will stray as it always does. We bring our attention back to the breath. Noticing the breath going in through the nostrils and back out through the nostrils, over and over. We place our attention on the temperature of the breath. We consider the texture of the breath. The mind will move to what the next meal will be. And then we pull our attention back to the breath.

Next thing we know, we’ve held the pose, like, forever. We’ve kept our “monkey mind” at bay. And thank goodness, the teacher finally releases us to the next pose.

“Second side,” she says. Now we get to repeat the process!

Try becoming a mental warrior with this FREE video tutorial of Warrior II.

Click to practice a tough class with long holds on YogaToday. Your first two weeks are always free.

Hold Yoga Poses for Longer to Cultivate Patience and Loving Kindness

When we hold a yoga pose for longer, we develop mental strength. Best of all, we cultivate listening skills, patience and unconditional love. 

Ultimately, this is an embodied practice. Once we embody these tools on the mat, they are integrated into the self and become more naturally and effortlessly applied to life.

Everything we need to know about building mental strength by way of holding yoga poses ultimately becomes our process toward holding steady holistically with confidence, ease and grace.

Let's Reframe Mental Health

Why reframe mental health?

1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness each year. 

1 in 25 adults in the U.S. experience serious mental illness each year. 

These 1 in 5 adults are…

you, me, and everyone we know.

Small and large life experiences speak to us exponentially if we allow ourselves to receive. Recognizing another’s state of mental health in a moment, or in general, is a skill we must hone to improve relationships of all kinds. The awareness that another’s experience is not the same as our own, plus improving our ability to walk in another’s shoes are required. The hope is to reframe our own individual experiences which will ultimately support reframing ‘mental health’ as holistic health - our whole health - collectively.

As we move out of this global Covid-19 experience, my bet is that the statistics will rise. Our entire country has been experiencing, at the very least, continual underlying anxiety that could easily manifest into some interesting expressions through our minds and bodies over time. Now more than ever, it is imperative to break this stigma and reframe “mental health” to instead reference our holistic health which includes all realms of life.

Without stigma, more people could release any shame around seeking support. 

The shame (watch this link to the end!) around our state of mental health can be more detrimental to our mental health than the experiences that brought on the shame! 

Much of our struggle comes down to shame. This is the root cause. This is how Eastern and Western philosophies differ in improving our health and wellbeing. In the West, the tendency is to slap a bandaid on the problem, usually in the form of a pill, rather than seek out the root cause.

Shame is the root cause. This includes shame around the inability to afford mental health support given for most, this type of service is not included within our health insurance policies. Yet time and time again, clients who use health insurance for not much else physically are unable to gain coverage for mental help.

And let’s be honest, due to the stigma around seeking help, spending that kind of cash to go deep into the support that is far from fun, but necessary, is not a natural tendency in a society that now runs on instant gratification in every moment in every realm of life. 

Why go deep into ourselves when we can just “swipe right”?

Life is challenging. 

Yet as a species, we have evolved. We are all much more aware than previous generations of imprinting we picked up along the way that may not be serving our progression. It’s okay. We should be able to consciously discuss our experiences with our loved ones sans the shame train!

But keeping up appearances individually and within family systems still takes precedant, especially in the age of Instagram. The desire to make life better should not be one cloaked in shame. 

Enjoying life is our birthright.

From a newfound grounded, neutral, integrated place, we can then better recognize in one another that our more reactive or out-of-balance states are stemming from imprinting and not to be taken personally. We can then sit in the “hot seat”, speak our truths, and hear out another’s with conscious awareness that both parties are seeking interdependent progression.

Crafting the ability to hold space and even just assume that the other party also wants life to be better takes a lot - time, energy, space, dedication, money (more often than not), willingness to cultivate an overall less reactive state of being in oneself, and heartfelt desire. Phew.

We pick up imprints along the way and then create our individual strategies for no other reason than because we are human. This means you, me and everyone we know. Our families, caregivers, teachers, friends, and really any experience, large or small, that left an impact on us in any way, are all part of the concoction that makes up the human cocktail.

The parts lesser known are those that sit deep within our subconscious. Imprinting also includes modeled behavior - how all of our caregivers carried their own energy due to their own experiences with their caregivers, as well as how they all interacted with one another in our presence.

Whether it’s anxiety, depression, unresolved trauma, sleep issues, intrusive thoughts, eating anxieties, compulsiveness, control tendencies, or even “high-performance” - these can all be expressions of coping strategies we need to feel safe, secure, loved, or even to survive in varying degrees dependent on our individual situations.

This is why mental illness is deemed the “invisible illness”. It is not tactile and can even appear in disguise as what society deems to be a positive trait. It’s also usually not spoken of, keeping it taboo much like money or sex, rather than being an important part of our holistic health conversation. It is imperative that “mental illness” be brought into the light in order for all of us to live fully expressed lives.

As much as folks may dislike the “woo woo”, I will say it again and again… 

Everything is connecteD.

the ripple effect is real.

Hurt people, hurt people.

The trauma might be small, but sometimes the imprint is large and can affect every step of a person’s life including everyone they touch.

“Acting out”, whether from a teenager or 50-year old, is really just a sign of our lesser-loved or lesser-acknowledged qualities (our shadow) sitting in the subconscious keeping us from what we truly desire. Working with the subconscious, we are better able to integrate our shadows and improve life. This work, shadow work, is not for the faint at heart. But I can assure you that shadow work - works.

Modalities such as yoga and meditation can help begin this process. They support us in many ways, but in regard to the subconscious, they encourage the building of new neural pathways in our brains. Gradually, we release old patterns by creating new ones. Hypnosis, breathwork (pranayama and modern extensions of pranayama), and many more “out of the box” modalities and therapies can help break through the toughest barriers.

What makes me some so-called expert?

I know because I have used all modalities previously mentioned, including coaches, therapists and mentors, plus a handful of waaaaaay out of the box avenues for a couple of decades. (I also self-taught and practiced as much as possible because this shit gets expensive.) Then, and only then, did I move through several certifications to continually learn, hone my skills, and share with others. This doesn’t mean I have everything figured out. It definitely doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near perfect. But thankfully, the need to be perfect (sitting in the recesses of my own mind) in order receive love has been (mostly) kicked to the curb.

Essentially, this only means I have self-supported myself through some incredibly challenging times as a 100% self-made female since my formative years in America. I didn’t grow up in a family system that experienced much of their own necessary emotional/physcial/financial support. Therefore, this was not modeled for me in order to successfully model it for anyone else. I had to own my stuff and get to work. (Don’t get me wrong, I have lovely parents and my basic needs were exceeded.)

When it comes to walking this path of reframing and repatterning our own holistic health, it’s much like finding the right yoga teacher, with all of his/her nuances, that work specifically for us. This, too, will change with time! Same goes for this deeper work. Over time, we try different tools, technologies and techniques to reach and transmute what is not only buried deep in the subconscious, but also deep within our physical bodies. Another topic - the body does not lie.

It is imperative we try different therapies and healing modalities to continually integrate what we find. Here’s hoping the healthcare system will someday catch up to suit our current state of affairs, our ever-increasing rate of evolution, and public health.

It is possible to reframe mental health.

Like everything, it is not black and white. But I’m opening the conversation to reframe “mental health” to “holistic health”. I speak from my own experiences within my family and intimate relationships, and happy to share.

Tell me your story and I will tell you mine.

After what we’ve been through so far in 2020, the entire world needs support. The time to normalize the ever-shifting states of our mental health, and those who work tirelessly to support this work, is now. 

This is call for all of us to continue to step into our worth, own our stories, tell our stories, and share what we’ve learned with the world.