Yoga Helps Me Heal From Narcissistic Abuse

Yoga has helped me with my healing journey after narcissistic abuse. I used to spend so much time thinking about my ex. Ruminating in anger, confusion, and fear. It felt like I was trapped with this toxic record playing over and over again in my head.

“Don’t let anyone rent space in your head unless they’re a good tenant.”

Movement is an excellent antidote for overthinking. Breathing consciously is essential in calming the nervous system. Spirituality gives one hope and strength from something higher than ourselves. Put all three of these together and you have yoga.

“Yoga is the cessation of mental fluctuations.” (The Yoga Sutras 1:2)

Fluctuations of the mind include thoughts, feelings, opinions, emotions, memories, misconceptions, etc. that are seemingly on an endless loop.

Yoga helps us to master the mind and the body through the act of conscious breathing. The practice of breathwork keeps the student anchored in the present moment, the here and now, where there are no monsters- it’s just you and your breath.

Mastering one’s breathing helps one to master the whole experience of living. You can alter your experience, your perception, through conscious breathing. Essentially mastering your reality.

Narcissistic abuse hurts every level of the victim’s being: body, mind, and spirit.

This is why a holistic care practice, such as yoga, can be so beneficial in healing. Yoga accesses and feeds the whole person.

The body, including the organs and all of the bodily systems such as the pulmonary, nervous, immune system, etc. are affected by abuse.

Trauma affects the physical brain. The hippocampus, responsible for memory and learning, storing and releasing, shrinks. The amygdala, the primal reptilian brain enlarges and takes over operations, keeping you in survival mode.

This is why trauma victims cannot simply get over it.

Repeated, incessant, insidious abuse, such as narcissistic abuse, changes the victim, physiologically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Abusive situations are stressful. Acute extreme stress or a long duration of stress, are both critically destructive to the victim.

The body’s cortisol levels raise stimulating the primal amygdala while impairing the hippocampus. This means that our brain is forcing our attention on the emotions we feel. While also restricting our ability to take in new information.

Narcissistic abuse hurts the victim in every which way there is to hurt.

Narcissistic abuse is absolutely traumatizing. The abuser is supposed to love you. Their words and their actions do not add up. Narcs cripple their victim’s confidence, make them physically ill, and break their spirit. Reality is replaced with lies. They often take away the victim’s support network. Narcissistic abuse is extraordinarily damaging because it attacks the totality of the person.

Yoga can help one to get out of survival mode.

The victim of narcissistic abuse can heal. You want to live, not merely survive!

First things first, leave the abusive relationship. Go no contact. Block the narcissist on all devices, phone calls, email, social media, etc. Build a wall, because the more cracks they can find to get to you, the more damage they can do. Block them. Do not associate with them. Do not associate with anyone who is close to them.

If no contact is not possible for some reason, take other measures to reduce your exposure to the narcissist. Consider him/her like a cancer, a poison, that you must avoid at all costs, as they are that damaging.

Refuse verbal phone calls. Do everything by email, or better yet with a mediator. If you must personally correspond with the narcissist, use the gray rock method. Be extremely boring, flat, unemotional, and direct. Hold firm boundaries. Stop ingesting their poison to the best degree possible.

Once you have gotten this far, where you acknowledge the abuse and are putting an end to it, now you can begin healing yourself.

Why does yoga work?

Yoga is a practice, which positively affects the mind, body, and spirit. Yoga gives one skills and tools to cope, reset, and get back to the present moment. Most people, abuse victims or not, get stuck in their heads, in the mental fluctuations of thought, feeling, emotion, memory, etc. And we are so much more than our thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc.

PTSD is the past replaying itself through neurological functions and chemical reactions. Abuse changes the brain, that has been proven.

Thanks to neuroplasticity, victims can undo the damage and pave new neuropathways. The amygdala and the hippocampus can be repaired through yoga, meditation, aromatherapy, and other modalities that stimulate mindfulness.

As with everything, an experience is worth a thousand words. I cannot tell you that yoga helps in healing trauma. You must experience it for yourself.

Yoga has been my saving grace.

I have seen a lot of transformation happen on the yoga mat, in myself, and in others. I have recoiled in fear. I have cried my eyes out. I have seen the same in others.

The difference in healing or not is whether we keep going back to our abuser or whether we keep coming back to yoga, meditation, therapy, or however you choose to heal.

When I do yoga, I can work a lot of the stress and the tension out of my body through the physical asana practice. I breathe evenly, fully, and to completion, in sync with every movement. This keeps my mind engaged in the present moment. And somehow the combination of this creates almost like a holy communion, a spiritual experience.

I have found my safe haven.

Sometimes this makes me cry, and that’s ok. I can let go. I feel safe, free, whole, and accepted on my yoga mat. Whether in a room full of yogis or alone, through the practice I can access something beyond me. A healer that dwells within. My spirit. My soul. Me. The real me. I am my own healer. And so are you.