"I Am My Own Client": Yoga for Mental Health. {Video}

By Marcee Murray King

“I’m my client still…there are days I feel that sinking feeling. I just have better tools to pull myself back out of it.” ~ Molly McManus

In the world of mental health we spend so much time in therapy, taking pills to fix our depression, our anxiety but never finding a cure. Our care is put in the hands of others, and we—on many levels—hand over the responsibility for “fixing” ourselves to others.

Some of us want to see clearly without the drugs and we sense, internally, that we need to find our own answers and cures.

Yoga is one amazing solution for stress, anxiety and depression. By this, I am not just talking about the asana practice that most of us think of as being “yoga”, but the self-examination, meditation and internal work: the actual teachings of yoga as outlined in the Yamas & Niyamas, Yoga Sutras, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, etc. The asana practice is a tool to help quiet the body in order to explore—or quiet—the mind.

Strangely, I discovered that when I switched to a deep SomaYoga practice, for the first time I have been able to be find large periods of time when I can fully present in my body.

Being fully present in my body means I have stepped out of my worries, my stresses, my concerns. And this, in turn, quiets me completely which then allows me to deepen my meditation practice, and then it allows me to become a witness to my own life and my reactions.

A new way to empower myself by being my own yoga teacher and client, it has slowly started allowing me to bring wholeness to my life in a new way.

“People feel more empowered and more connected. They are actually able to realize when they are going down one path that really they can just choose another path. And most of the time in depression we don’t feel that way—or anxiety—we feel that this is it, it is almost a snowball you keep rolling into it…and when your able interrupt yourself and say I see myself going here, and now I want to go into here….that’s a big tool…witnessing themselves and interrupting when they don’t want to go there…” ~ Molly McManus

Molly McManus, one of the owners of Yoga North Duluth/ISYI, has been one of my teachers through my 200 and 500 hour levels of yoga teacher training. Ever-inspiring me, she has helped me find a path to reclaiming and empowering myself because this has been her path as well. I am blessed to have her in my life, and found her story she shared here beautiful and inspirational.

It is why I so thoroughly believe in the healing power of ourselves and yoga in our lives. I hope you find her story inspiring too.