Resiliency can be defined as the capacity to prepare for, recover from and adapt in the face of stress, challenge and adversity. We are said to have four domains of resiliency: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
What does that mean and how can it help us?!
Physical resiliency helps us in our day to day lives. No matter what state of fitness/health our body is in, there are things we can do to improve our resiliency. Practices such as mindfulness, simple breathing practices and gentle movement practices have all been shown to help increase the physical self’s resiliency to stressors. This also helps us if sudden things happen like a fall or an accident. Having a level of resiliency helps the body to bounce back – in fact fairly literally in some circumstances! For example myofascial rebounding helps improve and entrain elastic recoil into the tissues so the body quite literally gets bouncier!
Yoga is a practice we can use to help bolster mental resiliency – or at the least to get curious about it. We often meet challenges in a yoga practice on the mental plane. Poses can be hard. Pain can be experienced. We may not be able to move in the way we would want to. We may judge ourselves against other bodies. We may meet parts of ourselves on a yoga mat we don’t like. If we can bring some of the yogic principles such as ahimsa (non violence) into our practice on the mental plane, we will help grow and deepen our mental resiliency. We can use our practice as a place to learn self love, self compassion and self acceptance, which we can then take out into the world and (hopefully) show towards others.
Emotional resiliency can be very tough in the modern world. We are taught emotional denial and even emotional tolerance – “keep calm and carry on” – but emotional resiliency is somewhat different. It is about leaning INTO the emotions and feeling them in a safe way, rather than avoiding them or even trying to change them. It’s the principle of going through to get beyond rather than trying to find a way around (whenever I write about that I always think of that children’s song about the bear hunt “can’t go over it, can’t go under it have to go through it..”). When we can nurture safety, we are able to begin to explore emotions knowing they cannot hurt us. We can use practices such as bitesizing, or have a facilitator with us to walk into the things that feel big and scary. Each time we do this and come through and beyond, we grow our resiliency. We come back to centre quicker and more easily.
Spiritual resiliency is the idea of being held by and connected to something bigger than ourselves. It is the basis, the aim and the centre of all resiliency. The greatest source of resiliency is always going to be that relationship with some form of a Higher Power. Yoga practice can help strengthen and grow that connection with something bigger than us. As we move our bodies, we feel the lifeforce energy. As we come into stillness we get to sit with God (whatever God is) with no airs and graces; just us and that Presence. We get to feel that sense of being held. We get to move WITH Spirit. We get to know that God flows in our veins and through our fascial networks and in our mitochondria and to make our practice recognising God – Love – running in and with and through everything. So much of all (w)hol(e)istic paths is about getting into that state where we can connect. Finding whatever way works for each person, for each body, for each spirit. By nurturing and growing the relationship with Spirit, our resiliency flourishes. We are always at our most resilient when our relationship with Spirit is at the centre.
In this fast paced, abrupt, surprising world, taking even a few minutes to focus on resiliency can help us to feel more grounded, more capable and less alone.
How do you connect with the realms of resiliency within yourself?
