Five ways yoga, dance and martial arts make people LESS in touch with their bodies

1. Intensity
– If an exercise is overwhelming it will encourage people to ignore their bodies.

2. Performance and form
– If the focus of a system is how a body looks, or conforming to a form, this will be the focus not how the body feels.

3. Authority
– if the implicit or explicit message a teacher gives is, “what I say is more important than how you feel”, people learn to ignore and mistrust the body.

4. Emotional suppression
– if the full emotional range is not allowed the body is repressed.

5. Sexual expression
– if the system does not acknowledge sexuality the body is repressed.