Pause a moment and listen: what is the quality of your inner voice?

My personal yoga practice as well as the classes I teach always begin with a quick check-in in the form of a brief meditation. In Yoga, the point where our senses are completely withdrawn from the outer world is called Pratyahara and it is as important to our practice as breath-work (pranayama) and postures (asanas). Most of us lead a lifestyle that puts our nervous system into overdrive (just think of how much time we spend staring at screens). Reducing sensory stimulation and resting in inner awareness are good ways of calming our wigged out nervous systems. When we slowly draw the attention inward at the beginning of our practice, we initiate the process of learning to inhabit the present moment more fully. By doing so, we  strengthen our ability to cope with challenging emotions and thoughts. Bo Forbes, author of Yoga for Emotional Balance, believes that practicing Pratyahara is one of the key interventions in balancing our mental health. Yet, it’s not just a matter of whether we turn inward, but, also, how we do so. Do we turn inward with a softness (a quality of loving kindness) or a hardness (a quality of judgement and reproach)? In other words, what is the quality of our inner voice? 

Listening to our inner voice and its running commentary on our lives can sometimes feel unbearable, especially if we habitually talk to ourselves in a harsh, critical tone. ‘The tendency to judge the things we say or do, or how we look, even our feelings, is human’, says Bo Forbes, yet ‘at the same it is dehumanising’ and it can harm us both psychologically and physiologically (Forbes 120). According to recent studies, brain scientists have found that self -criticism can activate the same areas of the brain that respond to external threats and, as a result, increase our stress response. This involves a surge in cortisol - the hormone associated with the ‘fight-flight-freeze’ response - and in the flow of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine that increases our heart rate and our blood pressure. 

Photo by Teresa Karavida | @teresa.karavida

But just as we learned the harsh quality of our inner voice, we can unlearn it. The antidote to  a critical inner voice is self-compassion. It may feel unfamiliar and awkward in the beginning to turn toward ourselves with warmth and kindness (more often than not we reserve these qualities for others) but bringing a quality of softness and care to the self can have a direct bearing to our mental health. Through compassionate and non-judgemental observation in our yoga practice we can build the resilience to sit with both emotional and physical discomfort and cultivate our inner wisdom. On a physiological level, practicing self- compassion increases oxytocin levels (a.k.a the love hormone) and reduces stress responses, including anxiety. By fostering empathy for ourselves we change the structure of our brains, developing the ability to calm and soothe the mind and the body. 

Inner kindness will not happen overnight but as the famous neuroscientist Donald Hebb once said, ‘Neurons that fire together, wire together.’ Every time we choose to turn toward ourselves with a soft and caring voice we strengthen the fibres of our brains that are capable of self-warmth. Self-gentleness can be a radical tool for transforming our relationship with our inner self and the world around us.

References

Forbes, Bo. Yoga for Emotional Balance: simple practices to help relieve anxiety and depression. Shambhala Publications, 2011.

Payton, Sarah. Your Resonant Self. W.W Norton & Company, 2017