Yoga

How Yoga Works

Yoga is a therapeutic mind-body practice that helps you reconnect with your breath, your body, and the deeper rhythms of your nervous system. At Selva, yoga is not about perfect poses or performance. It is a grounding practice designed to support emotional regulation, physical alignment, and a felt sense of calm in your body.

Through gentle, trauma-informed sequencing, yoga helps shift your physiology out of fight-or-flight and into a more regulated state. Movement, breathwork, and mindful awareness work together to lower stress, release tension, and open space for insight and emotional clarity.

While styles can vary-from restorative to slow flow-the intention is the same: to create a safe container where your body can unwind stored stress and your mind can settle. As you move through postures, your nervous system receives signals of safety and grounding. Slow, intentional breathing activates the parasympathetic system, quieting the amygdala and helping you access more calm, presence, and inner steadiness.

A typical therapeutic yoga session may include:

Breathwork (Pranayama)

Using simple breath techniques to lower anxiety, open the lungs, quiet the mind, and regulate emotional intensity.

Mindful Movement

Postures that gently stretch, strengthen, and stabilize the body while soothing the nervous system.

Somatic Awareness

Learning to notice the subtle signals of your body-tension, ease, emotion, or instinct-so you can respond instead of react.

Meditation + Stillness

Guided grounding practices that help shift mental noise into clarity and inner spaciousness.

Integration + Reflection

A quiet moment at the end to notice what shifted, what softened, and what feels possible now.

Because yoga works on both physical and emotional levels, the benefits extend far beyond the mat. Many people describe feeling clearer, calmer, and more connected to themselves-both during and long after the session.