Dropping anchor in hot yoga
Hot yoga is my port.
No matter how I may storm into hot yoga, I exit feeling like I just dropped into the calm. I feel balanced without effort. For the moment I'm floating. No longer exhausted, I feel lightly energized. I feel patient about letting things be, basking in anticipation of more good things coming my way. All this in 90 minutes.
The big question: how to anchor all those hot yoga-earned goodies to life outside the hot yoga studio?
Where is your hot yoga bliss when the kids are all sugared up? How do you hold steady in the midst of another heated argument with your in-laws? Can you smile serenely when the boss moves up the deadline on your project? Suzanne Jones offer a technique called anchoring: a simple way to carry emotional feel-good of hot yoga into the place where it will last longer than 90 minutes.
Anchoring Your Hot Yoga
By Suzanne Jones
Hypnotherapist/Mind Interrupted Hypnotherapy
What do we mean by "anchoring your emotions?" What purpose does emotional anchoring serve?
Anchoring is a technique whereby a personal state of mind becomes associated with a unique stimulus. These emotional anchors come in many forms such as sights, sounds, power words, memories, verbal phrases and more.
We all have anchors whether we intended them or not. Some anchors we have consciously created, but most have been created for us.
Anchors that you intentionally create can be as simple as gestures you make repeatedly during a strong emotional or mental state. These gestures actually anchor the emotion in your subconscious mind, where you can call on them again and again.
Anchors that have been created "for us" happen this way: during a peak emotional state, something else is happening consistently and simultaneously and thus, the emotion and the event become linked.
Say, for example, your mother or father yelled a lot when you were a child. The tone of their voices stuck with you. Now as an adult, anytime you hear that same tone, from anyone, your mind links back to being scolded as a child and you will immediately return to those old, negative emotions.
Perhaps you failed a very important exam. You felt horrible about it. You went to your family and friends for support and each one of them patted your hand as you told of your failure. Your mind and body have now made a permanent connection between that gesture and the emotion of failure. Now, anytime someone pats your hand you experience that negative, disappointed feeling.
If an anchor is done so easily wouldn't it make perfect sense to consciously incorporate anchors into our everyday life? For the positive?
Hot Yoga Anchors
During a 'peak state', like, the complete letting go you experience in hot yoga Savasana, try tapping your first two fingers together. Be in the moment, completely relaxed in Savasana, while tapping your fingers. This anchors your feeling of calm. Try repeating this anchor in your Savasana for each hot yoga class. The more often you anchor the stronger it becomes.
Now, each time you want to experience total relaxation and can't get to hot yoga, tap your fingers together. It's a little like Dorothy tapping her ruby-slippers together: the action alone instantly transports you to the feeling-place you want to experience.
You can create an anchor any way you choose, but simple and accessible gestures are best. Depending on your lifestyle, it is ideal to create an anchor that remains somewhat hidden from view. I don't know if you want to be pulling on your earlobe in the middle of an intense board meeting!
Make an anchor for each significant feeling you experience in hot yoga. The feeling of Savasana is much different than 'joyful achievement' in your full extension of Standing Bow Pulling. They are two such different states, that you need two completely different anchors.
So perhaps you can rub your fingers together for "joyful achievement," on your left hand this time. Remember to repeat that anchor in each hot yoga class where you achieve the pose you wanted.
Once you create your anchors, use them at anytime, to get back into the chosen state. If you are having a stressful day, the anchor used for Savasana would be a lifesaver. If you are experiencing feelings of inadequacy, your anchor for 'joyful achievement' is the perfect pick-me-up.
Get to hot yoga often so you can get those wonderful feelings of a hot yoga practice. In each hot yoga class, create and repeat anchors to reinforce those feeling within yourself. Your anchors encapsulate those feelings so you can recall them easily outside your hot yoga practice, allowing you to instantly transform any situation, anytime, anywhere.
Hot yoga with anchors; it put the life you really want at your fingertips.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
Reader Comments (10)
I think this is the most helpful idea I have heard all week and I can't wait to incorporate it into my classes. I have a problem with that: I feel so good inside the studio and then I walk back out to the car and Voila, Life Awaits Me. It's kind of the same way with music, isn't it? Personally, I associate all sorts of different songs with different people and moments in my life.... But I'm very inspired by the act of physically making a slight movement in Class to extend the feel goodness of it all.
My friend calls this "shovel-to-the-forehead-syndrome: well-meaning remarks designed you bring you back to reality with a smack down, just when you're flying high. Hell,sometimes we do it to ourselves. Doing something that makes me feel good helps me duck the shovel.
Alex - you're going to have to start parking further from the studio! I find that simply doing 6 counted inhales and exhales on the walk home from class elongates the benefits and sets me up for a beautiful night and the hopeful tomorrow of more hot yoga!
I know the car is your life, but try parking up the hill and doing a few extra breaths between the door of the studio and the door of the car and see gives you 'hot yoga to go'.
Very true, Kristina - breathing while you walk to the car after yoga can get you off on the right foot after yoga class - incorporating breathwork noutside the hot yoga studio. But to me, the little physical anchors this author describes - little things like tapping your thumb and forefinger together when you just did a pose and feel great about it - are almost like creating a sacred ritual your body recognizes, to bring back that feeling of accomplishment long after the yoga pose is done.
I have made this a habit in the past few weeks... I call it my vibrational morse code.
What anchors do you use, Alex, for anchoring that hot yoga bliss to life outside the studio?
You'll see my snapping sometimes when I'm thinking... I also like take big deep belly breaths.
Alex - For me, its the deep Darth Vader breath that is my anchor, too - I take them in hot yoga and feel amazing....so I take a deep breath outside the hot yoga room to bring me instantly back to that feeling of total calm wherever I am.
I tried parking my car out in the bumble fields as I was in Walmart the other day... It gave me time to prepave my day (It was the 8 am) and think... I love walking.
Pre-paving in the pavement.... Love it.