Gentle Somatic Yoga: Find Your “Inner Yes”

Gentle Somatic Yoga is a practice that includes techniques such as meditation, body scans, and exploring movement with the eyes closed, to accept and embody the self completely. This is to connect, align, and balance all systems within the soma while deepening into a relationship with the most sacred part of the self. Yoga means “union.”
 
Finding the “inner yes” is a way of making decisions that feel light and joyful. No matter the question, no matter the activity, there is the opportunity to check within to discover what the body is expressing about our choices. There is a certain quality associated with an inner yes that has been described variously as a softening, a lifting of vibration/frequency, a spaciousness, or even an effervescence felt from within. 

What Does Your Inner Yes Feel Like?

Begin to investigate what your inner yes feels like. Perhaps it’s a bodily sensation, such as “chills” or “goosebumps.”
 
This concept of the inner yes is intended to inspire you to use your body’s messages as an “inner GPS.” Where is your true north, i.e., your inner guiding light? Get to know yourself. 

 
Take this moment as an opportunity to begin by reviewing your body posture. Is your body comfortable? If not, make slight adjustments to see if you can find more of that place where it just feels easy or easier. The point is that from our inner yes, we can make decisions that are generative, and through this process, we come back into soul alignment. When all of the bodies—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, which are all within our energy field—come together into coherency, that is the inner yes. It’s unmistakable.
 
In contrast, an inner no might feel like tightness, tension, heaviness, hesitation, strain, or even a constriction or contraction felt from within, which the body then expresses as stress. These are signs that provide an opportunity to take an inner inventory and ask oneself, “What is this? What is going on? Somewhere in my system, I’m not in alignment with this.” It may be just a quick decision to return to alignment at that point.

How Gentle Somatic Yoga Brings Out Your Inner Yes

There is a signature experience of the inner yes in Gentle Somatic Yoga that is beautiful, exquisite, and undeniable. You can observe it in the contrast before and during a class. Before the class begins, students are excitable as they find their places, and the energy is somewhat less coherent. Then, after one or two Somatic Movement Flows, body scans, and meditations, there is a sense of the individual somas connecting into a collective soma. By the last class meditation, there is a palpable peace that has settled into the group. This is representative of our natural state, to embody peace and wellbeing.

 
The body is always the barometer of our inner yes, at the point where our energetic field reaches coherency, and we are free. Thus, rather than something we search for outside our self, finding the inner yes is a matter of returning to our true nature by going within to remember who we are at our essence. It’s the place of our inner knowing. The inner yes is a place of self-love, and once we have found it, everyone in our world benefits.

Reprinted with permission from gentlesomaticyoga.com.

James has been an E-RYT, CHSE (Certified Hanna Somatic Educator), and Integrative Therapist for 25+ years.  His passion is to inspire and encourage others to live a fulfilling life of physical, emotional, and spiritual freedom. From his combined experience as a lifelong yogi, intuitive bodyworker, psychotherapist, and movement educator, James founded a method of integrating what he discovered to be the most progressive, life-enhancing techniques into an embodied practice of mindful movement. Gentle Somatic Yoga (GSY) was born out of years of exploring means of connecting with the most profound aspects of himself.

As an architectural and interior designer, master Feng Shui consultant, and professional photographer, James enjoys designing sacred spaces and other creative endeavors that reflect his spiritual aesthetic. On a personal level, he enjoys spending quality time with loved ones while cultivating and energizing conscious community. James spends much of his time traveling the world facilitating teacher training certifications, workshops, and cultural immersion retreats.