Select a region
Feeling tense and caught up in your own thoughts? A local expert shares her tips for introducing yoga and mindfulness into your everyday life.
Carolyn Coverley is a ‘mindful yoga’ teacher who teaches yoga as a way to improve mindfulness rather than just physical fitness.
She is part of MYA Jersey, an association committed to making Yoga and Mindfulness accessible to everyone. It provides a weekly online mindfulness session and has a YouTube channel with various practices.
Video: Carolyn is part of MYA Jersey, an association committed to making Yoga and Mindfulness accessible to everyone.
Carolyn teaches both yoga and mindfulness on a voluntary basis for other organisations, such as Brighter Futures, Jersey Recovery College, the Community navigators and more recently, Cheshire Homes. She also provides yoga teaching to staff groups.
Carolyn has also trained as an Accessible Yoga Ambassador, whose mission is to make yoga accessible “to all and to honour the wider philosophy of yoga”.
“I therefore will teach yoga to individuals in chairs or wheelchairs as well as the traditional mat practice and offer variations to meet everyone’s needs,” she explained.
A child and adolescent psychiatrist until her retirement five years ago, Carolyn has had a lifelong interest in mindfulness and yoga – both of which she practiced when she was younger.
She reconnected with the practices 15 years ago and five years later, she completed her yoga teacher training before starting a master’s course in Studies on Mindfulness. Since then, Carolyn has completed various other trainings in yoga as well as mindfulness and compassion teacher trainings.
“My interest has been in making both yoga and mindfulness accessible and helping to introduce these practices into people’s everyday life,” she explained.
“I am not aiming for participants to achieve a complex yoga pose or staying in meditation for a prolonged period but for them to remember to take mindful pauses during the day, do some gentle movement and embrace self-compassion.”
Pictured: Carolyn Carolyn has had a lifelong interest in both mindfulness and yoga.
She was inspired to teach mindful yoga by her own yoga teachers and the yoga master she completed her teacher training with, who all took a mindful approach.
“In doing my mindfulness degree and teacher training over a similar period of time, it was an obvious choice for me,” Carolyn said.
“I have never wanted to teach yoga without acknowledging the mind body connection and the wider benefits.
“I have found that introducing gentle yoga into mindfulness courses often provides a way into mindfulness practice for those that find sitting practices particularly challenging and most participants enjoy the practices. Movement practices are important in mindfulness training and mindfulness is essential to yoga practice.”
Carolyn spoke to Express about what mindful yoga is and how it could benefit you...
Pictured: "Mindful yoga is any form of yoga where we stay present with the practice, bringing awareness to body, breath and our senses."
Mindful yoga is any form of yoga where we stay present with the practice, bringing awareness to body, breath and our senses. We can also be aware of thoughts as they arise without getting caught up in thinking.
Often, we can practice by synchronising breath and movement but we can also remain in stillness with an awareness of breath and body sensations. Breath awareness helps us to anchor to the present and regulate our physiology and emotional states. Focusing on the breath and body can bring us to a relaxed state, however, sometime our minds might continue to race and we can then bring our mindful acceptance to this, without judgment.
Mindful movement is part of most eight-week mindfulness courses and for some people, a more accessible way to practice mindfulness. In the West, yoga is often seen as a form of exercise but it is actually a lot more than that, it’s a framework for living life and growth.
We tend to live in our heads, caught up in thinking, but by bringing awareness to the body we can strengthen the mind-body connection. We may become more aware of tension in the body related to stress in the mind. I find that, sometimes, when something I am worried about resolves, I notice a relaxation in the body, or I bring relaxation to the body and mental tension reduces. We can also learn to tolerate a little physical discomfort which helps us manage mental discomfort.
We become more aware of our sensations which can help us develop greater insight. We can recognise our habitual patterns, do we strive and push ourselves to the extreme, do we compete or do we avoid? We can then be much wiser in our practice and do what is right for our bodies and minds. I am hypermobile and enjoy stretching, which is easy for me but I also know that what I need is more strength and integration.
Our attitude is an essential component, if we do the practice with self-compassion we can move away from our normal patterns of judgement and criticism and moved to a much greater sense of acceptance.
Pictured: "Our attitude is an essential component, if we do the practice with self-compassion we can move away from our normal patterns of judgement and criticism and moved to a much greater sense of acceptance. "
It is the attitude we bring to the practice rather than the practice itself. So, it should be part of all yoga. However, some yoga is purely practiced as exercise or physical challenge. In America, they even have competitions where they compete in forming the more demanding postures. It is in these “mindless” practices that injuries can occur.
It is for anyone and everyone. I have taught individuals with significant physical, emotional and cognitive difficulties. The practices can be adjusted and adapted for most needs. For some just a few minutes might be enough initially, before they lose concentration; for others, breath awareness may be the main focus or imagining, or sensing doing a movement when it is not possible physically. Those that have suffered complex trauma, for example physical and sexual abuse, may have a disconnect and distrust of their body. So, body and breath awareness can be initially challenging but with a gentle, compassionate approach mindful movement can have a profound effect.
The sense of embodiment, grounding and present awareness that it can instil. Often feeling relaxed both physically and mentally.
This article first featured on Bailiwick Wellbeing, your FREE guide to wellness in work and island life to help you start the weekend – and week ahead – in the right way. Sign up now here.
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.