Blog – Page 22 – Integral Yoga San Francisco

Sound Healing

by Bettina Neumann

Have you ever wondered how sound affects you? Or why you move the way you do?

Our body is our home. It carries the stories of our past and tells us exactly where we are at present

With sound, we can awaken to the present moment. Sound can transform multiple dimensions of well-being. Combining different sound frequencies can help brainwave entrainment balance and be healthier. Listening to the rhythms and cycles of the body and nature, mindful movement rituals and body mapping are gateways to authentic artistic expression.

Movement, authentic dance, art, and nature have always informed my life and helped me rejuvenate and heal from the inside. As a result, today, I know better why I react in specific ways, why my body moves the way it moves, and how this affects who I am, how I am seen or heard, and how I present myself.

I trained in Integral Sound Healing and am in the second year of a three-year program in the Life/Art Process after being a physical therapist for many decades. The life/art process of Anna Halprin, her recovery from cancer, and her teaching at the age of 100 inspired me, and I decided on professional training with her approach. Initially, I intended to heal myself, my body, mind, soul, and spirit from past wounds and understand my stuck mythology.

In my work now, I combine all the knowledge I ever learned, including my experience as a Physical Therapist and a CranioSacral Therapist, working with Visceral Manipulation, Pilates and other manual and movement-oriented techniques. The list goes on. I have a wealth of experience working with thousands of patients in orthopedics, pelvic floor dysfunctions, cancer rehab, lymphedema, and digestive disorders. I added the sound healing training because I realized that sound and drumming opened my voice, which had been a lifelong struggle. Beyond physical therapy, I include my life experience as a mother, a cancer survivor, and a deep connection to my ancestral lineage.

The most rewarding part of integrating my experience and working from this awareness has been seeing people come into the present moment and allow healing to arise from the inside, seeing the present moment expressed artfully and creatively in place of rigidity and stress. I am looking forward to a project helping communities unite and create art and dance, instead of pain and suffering.

Stop doing and pause. Take a moment, and feel into yourself. Feel your feet placed on the ground. Sense your breath. Listen to the sounds inside of you. Listen to the rhythms. Find a rhythm and tap it on your body with your fingers, or walk the beat with your feet. Listen, and you will get the answers to what will be next. Journal: What is important to you? What brings you joy?

Please join Bettina for Awakening your Inner Rhythms – A Sound Healing Journey In-person on Sat. April 29 from 7:00 – 8:30 pm PT and be guided by sounds to release old energies that no longer serve you. Please sign up in advance, as space is limited. Om Shanti.

Bettina Neumann is a licensed Physical Therapist, a certified Integral Sound Healer, a practitioner of Health Rhythms, and a student in the Life/Art Process. She founded Aurras Transformation and Rising Sun Physical Therapy. Her life experience as a mother and cancer survivor lead her to her passion for expressive dance, movement, art, and ritual, which she calls her medicine. However, her healing journey and nature’s elements are her most consequential teacher. Thirty-five years as a physical therapist made her firmly believe the body can heal itself. Holistic, intuitive, evidence-based medicine and methods helped thousands of patients recover from cancer, lymphedema, chronic pain, and pelvic floor dysfunctions. She combines her experience, tools, and intuition to guide people through transformative journeys and open up the opportunity to lead a joy-filled life.

Sevika Ford2023-04-25T18:09:12-07:00April 19th, 2023|

Teaching of the Month: A Yogic Approach to Spring Cleaning

by Swami Ramananda

Spring is a time of transition, when the dark and barren days of winter give way to light, warmth and new growth. With the intention of making space for a fresh perspective and new ways of blooming, we chose to practice the tradition of spring cleaning for the month of April.

From a spiritual perspective, cleanliness applies to all levels of our being, from the environment that we inhabit and our physical bodies, to the inner recesses of our hearts and minds. Spring is an ideal time to de-clutter our homes and cleanse our bodies in preparation for the renewing energies of the season. Thus, Spring cleaning may mean ridding both our outer environment and our bodies of the unwanted accumulations of the past that encumber our lives and hinder our health.

Fasting is an excellent way to eliminate toxins that inhibit vitality and our potential to thrive. There are many ways of doing this to make it physically and emotionally suitable, each supporting the body’s natural ability to heal and grow. Even skipping an evening meal gives our systems a chance to cleanse themselves during the night.

Spring cleaning for our hearts and minds takes place on a much deeper level. Selfish thinking and behavior leave a psychic residue in the energy body that constricts the heart and diminishes our ability to experience love. Living with the anxiety of trying to make happiness happen, prove ourselves worthy or win affection makes for a stressful and dis-eased life.

In this deeper context, Spring cleaning means recommitting ourselves to practices that calm and quiet our overactive minds and attune us to a natural sense of internal peace. This kind of quieting can free us from grasping for happiness, and, in the stillness this can bring, the heart has room to stretch out in all directions, revealing our connection to all of life. Thus, a regular practice of meditation enables us to realign with our spiritual values, and to let those values inform our motives and guide our actions.

For example, instead of trying to win someone’s love or acquire happiness, we can experience great fulfillment from giving and serving others with compassion. We can practice forgiveness toward those that may have harmed us, releasing from our hearts the poisonous feelings of ill-will or bitterness that may otherwise dwell there. We can experience extraordinary moments of wonder by being fully present to the miracles of human life, and profound gratitude for the many blessings we normally take for granted.

All of these efforts contribute to shedding the physical, emotional and mental weight that can unnecessarily burden our being. With this intention, we can cultivate awareness of the habits and thought patterns that no longer serve us, and make a conscious choice to release them, opening the door to new ways of living that bring greater peace to the mind and joy to the heart.

Please join Swami Ramananda & Swami Asokananda for Satsang: Taking Refuge from the Storms of Life Sat. May 20 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm PT, online & in-person and for Stories as a Source of Wisdom Wed. May 24 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm PT, online & in-person .

Swami Ramananda is the Executive Director of the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco, C-IAYT, and a greatly respected senior teacher in the Integral Yoga tradition, who has been practicing Yoga for over 45 years. Ramananda offers practical methods of integrating the timeless teachings and practices of Yoga into daily life, and transforming the painful aspects of human experience into steps toward realizing one’s full potential.

Sevika Ford2023-04-10T09:54:06-07:00April 10th, 2023|Tags: Swami Ramananda|

What is TRE®?

by Maria Alfaro

What is TRE®?
TRE stands for Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises. This simple set of exercises mildly fatigue and stretch the muscles in our legs to activate a natural tremoring response called Neurogenic Tremors. This technique was designed to help release the deep tension created in the body during a traumatic experience or through chronic stress. It was created by David Berceli, Ph.D., an international expert in the areas of trauma intervention and conflict resolution based on his work with populations traumatized by war.

Adults tend to contract when they experience a threatening situation while young children in these same situations tend to shake and tremor. TRE theorizes that we are designed to contract to protect ourselves and we are also designed to release this contraction once we feel safe again. But since shaking or tremoring feels like a sign of a weakness or disease, we tend to shut it down.

This theory was used over 25 years ago to create this set of exercises that I mentioned. Using them we reactivate this natural shaking mechanism. TRE has not gone mainstream yet but it is being used by over seven million people in 86 countries.

What I like best about TRE is that it is really gentle, simple and anybody can do it. Originally designed for the severe trauma of leaving in a war zone, TRE is also very
effective for stress as stress and trauma are very similar and they create a similar reactions in the body. The difference is the degree, the intensity and the duration of the stressors. TRE is really good for anyone.

At the top of the list of benefits that people report are better sleep, improved digestion and less anxious, less fearful and less reactive responses to life’s stressors. People also report a decrease in other symptoms such as all kind of chronic pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, sciatica, insomnia and panic attacks.

We don’t have to have experienced severe personal trauma in order to be very stressed out. If you watch the news and you are aware of the wars, global warming, the civil right restrictions, the voting frauds and more, it is pretty obvious that we all need to take care of our nervous system more than ever before. Our personal lives might be okay, but we are still affected by what happens around us so everybody can benefit from this work. And the thing I like the best is that it’s easy to learn and easy to practice.

Everyone who attends on of my introductory workshops, like the one I teach at Integral Yoga, will have access to my weekly free refresher class. I have been offering this online class since May of 2020, to support and assist people with their TRE practice. Because if you do it once, you would feel some benefit. But if you keep doing it, that’s where you will experience lasting results. And, after doing it a few times, it becomes very easy to reactivate this gentle response. You can do it for a few minutes every few days and it can really improve your life.

I live in Santa Cruz, California and the founder, David Berceli, came here in 2004. I took his workshop way before there was a TRE organization. At that time, I was a full
time yoga teacher and I just attended that workshop out of curiosity and a desire to work on my own personal trauma. That class changed my life. It also showed me that although there are many effective ways to reduce our stress and trauma, such as yoga, meditation, psychotherapy and breathing exercises, there is nothing that works as rapidly as TRE. The amount of time and energy invested in it and the amount of achieved results makes TRE the most powerful and effective tool I have found so far.

That is why I became a full-time TRE Certification Trainer. By spreading this important work I feel like I’m making an important contribution to the world becoming a better place. Learn more by joining our upcoming, online TRE® (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) Intro Workshop with Maria Alfaro, Saturday, April 15 at 10:00 am – 12:00 pm PT

Maria Alfaro is a native Italian living in Santa Cruz, California. She has over 30 years of yoga experience and a background in Chinese martial arts and massage. As a senior TRE® Certification Trainer she has taught thousands of people in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and the Middle East since 2004. She assisted Dr. Berceli, TRE’s founder, in numerous trainings in the US, South Africa, Brazil and Japan and led hundreds of public workshops and over hundred certification trainings worldwide.
Maria is also the co-creator of Neurogenic Yoga™, the sister method of TRE. Maria facilitates workshops and trainings globally. She creates a supportive environment that makes people feel safe as she leads her classes with compassion and a sense of humor.

Sevika Ford2023-04-07T11:57:54-07:00April 7th, 2023|

TRE and Me

by Abhaya Hillan

As someone whose mind tends towards anxiety and whose work is fairly sedentary (with all the accompanying musculoskeletal stresses those conditions imply), I was immediately intrigued when I saw the description of Maria Alfaro’s TRE® class on the IYI-SF website.

TRE® stands for Tension & Trauma Release Exercise. Maria describes TRE® this way, “… an innovative series of exercises that assist the body in releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension and trauma. These gentle and profound practices facilitate the lengthening and relaxation of the psoas muscle and the release of physical and emotional tension and stress.”

She had me right there, but the description goes on to list some of the benefits of the practice: TRE® can:

Decrease anxiety
Release chronic tension
Discharge emotional and physical trauma
Improve sleep, mood and digestion
Decrease aches and pains
Improve flexibility
Decrease symptoms of sciatica, fibromyalgia and other chronic conditions

Bingo! I signed up.

During the class, Maria gave us information about TRE® and led us through a practice.

TRE® safely activates a natural reflex mechanism of shaking or vibrating that releases muscular tension, calming down the nervous system. When this muscular shaking/vibrating mechanism is activated in a safe and controlled environment, the body is encouraged to return back to a state of balance.

TRE® is based on the fundamental idea, backed by recent research, that stress, tension and trauma is both psychological and physical. It emerged out of Dr. David Berceli’s work with large traumatized communities while living in Africa and the Middle East. His observation and exploration led him to understand that this natural shaking/vibrating response appears to be the body’s own built-in system for quieting down the brain and releasing muscular tension as a way of healing itself from chronic stress, tension and trauma.

I could immediately relate as I have experienced my body shaking during times of emotional upset or physical shock, like the time I fell back on my spine and broke my wrist going down some stone steps.

As we started the practice, I was hopeful but a little skeptical that I would be able to feel anything. But to my surprise and delight, after being led through a simple series of exercises, my lower body began to gently shake. The tremors were very comfortable and I enjoyed the subtle, relaxing sensations. Maria creates a safe environment and makes it easy for anyone to practice, regardless of their physical condition or fitness level.

The real breakthrough for me came when I joined Maria’s weekly online sessions for alumni of her introductory course, which she generously offers free for those who can’t pay, or for a small donation (as little as $1). Through regular practice, I have been able to experience tremors throughout my body, ranging from very subtle to moderately strong. During the practice, I enjoy being present with my body’s healing process wherever it goes. It is an intimate time of self-care for me. According to Maria, “TRE®’s reflexive muscle vibrations generally feel pleasant and soothing. After doing TRE®, many people report feelings of peace and well-being.” I could not describe the effects better myself! Now that I am more experienced, I can easily practice on my own, starting the tremors within minutes. I like to practice TRE at the end of my yoga practice as a prelude to Yoga Nidra.

TRE® has helped millions of people globally and is present in over 60 countries through workshops and certification training programs. It is a simple, safe and natural way to release physical and emotional tension and stress. In this age of anxiety, what could be better?

Learn more by joining our upcoming, online TRE® (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) Intro Workshop with Maria Alfaro, Saturday, April 15 at 10:00 am – 12:00 pm PT

Nancy Hillan is a resident at the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco (IYISF) and a graduate student in Counseling Psychology. She practices TRE and teaches Yoga Nidra online and in-person every Friday at IYISF. Sign up via our Class Schedule.

Sevika Ford2023-03-29T14:59:51-07:00March 29th, 2023|

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