Make your Expression Part of your Practice
How teaching DBT improved my Yoga
“Smile,” she said, as she talked about making sure you’re not holding tension in your face, even as you hold tension in the rest of your body. This was somewhat ironic as when she smiles it often belies the tension of a forced social grace.
Not that it distracted from the message in class that day. “Sonja” is one of my favorite yoga instructors. Though I don’t know her well, you do get a sense of someone through taking their classes and practicing beside them. I would guess that she is an introvert and is yet somehow still drawn to share this Yoga, which means standing in front of a group of people.
I’ve thought about Sonja, and this specific instruction for a long time. She said it years ago, and I understood only a shallow facet of it then. Kind of how women are often told to smile, to put other people at ease. Or to be agreeable, even when you don’t agree.
Since then I’ve become a certified yoga instructor and taught in a psychiatric residential facility for children. So many of the kids I worked with suffer from social anxieties and awkwardness. Some struggle to interpret social cues and read facial expressions. Some have flat affect and express little emotion. And some have sensory issues that often interpret sensation as pain.
