How Does Yoga Create Secure Attachment (if it also teaches non-attachment)? (Part One)

This wonderful question came to us - electronically - and is deserving of a thoughtful response. Since we aren't in a real time, in person dialogue, I'd like to offer this reflection in two parts. Beginning with a wider view, and then moving to a more intimate view in the second blog. 
LeaLern about our Yoga Psychology Training here
Learn about our Yoga Psychology Training here.

How Does Yoga Create Secure Attachment (if it also teaches non-attachment)?

Somatic Secure Attachment
In the process of yoga, secure attachment networks are neurologically stimulated, and interpersonally nourished. As we teach students how to have more consistent, more nourishing, more relational attitudes and considerations of their physical body as a resource, their sense of being in relationship with their body changes. How they relate to their musculo-skeletal, physiological, and neurological expressions is a reflection of one layer of their attachment networks. As historical trauma lives in the body and brain, the somatic practices of yoga - including breathing, sensing, moving, respecting, reflecting, and inviting their body to be integrated into their life in healthier ways - stimulates new ways of being in relationship with their personal ecology.

This creates a ripple effect into relationship with the larger ecology - nature itself - and all of the resources being provided each moment. Life is taking care to breathe us, to provide us with eyes that blink in the too bright sun, and with ears that hear the symphony around us, whether beautiful, neutral, or non-neutral (aka irritating). 

Innate Belonging: Interpersonal Timeless Community
In the process of practicing yoga, especially with a knowledgeable and responsible teacher, (and practicing the whole of yoga, not just asana), students are also connecting to an ages old tradition. Secure attachment networks awaken neurologically when invited to belong to a community both within the physical structure of an in person class or one-to-one session and in the more vast community of people practicing - all over and throughout time - to awaken from suffering and return to wholeness and grace. 

We become part of the yoga tradition. A skilled, responsible, well-trained yoga teacher or yoga therapist understands the importance of this internal development. In yoga we call it Sangha, community of practitioners, seekers, students, and Lineage, a sense of our teachers and their teachers before them.

In laypersons terms we can understand this as one of the accessible doorways to re-awaken a client's inner sense of innate belonging. Unconditionally. Consistently. Lovingly. Students and clients can discover that Yoga, as a path belonging to no one individually (and not to any corporation) is a wide, warm welcome to our human condition, in all of its variations and turbulences, as well as its potentials and longings.
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​Relational Secure Attachment:
And, we must include here the relationship the student has with their yoga teacher or yoga therapist (or their mental health therapist, or spiritual friend, Anam Cara).

In our training school at yogajoy, we help teachers, therapists, and providers to become interpersonal, non-judging, non-anxious resources for their students and clients, without risking burnout or overwhelm. This is a very intentional process. We must respect the relational attachment networks of the provider as well as the client and student.

Ironically, it's not about having stronger boundaries in the sense that our Western view continues to tell us to "take care of ourselves first", or not to let in the toxicity of others.

I'll follow up on this in my next blog. Stay tuned! 

How Does Yoga Create Secure Attachment (Part Two)