Yoga as a Learning Device

When I got out of the Army I found that about once or twice a month I was laid low with debilitating lower back pain. I don't know if it was the constant movement from work in the Army, or if it was just my time, but the back started being a problem in my life. After several doctor's visits and an MRI, I was given a prescription to Vioxx and then when that was pulled, I was switched over to Celebrex. That was the doctor's plan for the rest of my life, Celebrex to manage pain. I wasn't a fan of the idea to be on medication to manage pain. 

Instead, I wanted to attack the pain, fix the pain, stop the pain. So I started going to Yoga. I have no idea what made me think to go to a yoga class, but I did. I went to a beginner's yoga at a local church, then started to go to yoga during my lunch hour at work at the gym across from my office. My goal was at least once a week, sometimes twice a week to see if my back pain lessened. After a year, the back pain was completely gone. 

My history with yoga is a very positive one. What I found was the same thing that Philomena Behmer found as she wrong in  Moving to Learn: A Meditative Yoga Approach to Teaching and Learning Anatomy and Physiology in Multiple Contexts that was a part of our reading this week. She writes in the article that she found that yoga can help create a safe and supportive learning environment that can help learners absorb and reflect on the information they are learning (p. 72).  She states on the next page, "Therefore, the positive feedback cycle of yoga, meditation, and embodied learning potentially enables students to engage in physical experiences that calm their minds, allowing for self-observation and consequently learning a new way of being in the world."

If found from my own experience with yoga that I not only was able to help with my physical pain in my back but I was also able to greatly reduce my daily stress and focus on information from work in a more self-reflective and intense manner. Several times during my yoga class, as I was learning a downward dog or mountain pose, my mind was toying with and chewing on how best to manage a project or motivate a subordinate. My subconscious mind was provided fertile ground to explore and think in a way that it could not when harrassed with the day-to-day hoi polloi at the office. 

I have been thinking about joining another yoga studio in order to help cope with the myriad of injuries that have blossomed in my life lately and knew that one of the side benefits would be the chance to distress and breathe. Now, thanks to Behmer's article I'll also look for how I can take the environment that a yoga studio creates into my work life to help trainees at my council. As I sit here and think about it, nothing comes immediately to mind, but I feel certain that with a few yoga sessions my subconscious will chew on it and come find a solution.