The Slow Art of Healing:
Finding Patience and Trust Through Yoga Therapy
The Nature of Healing
We like to think of healing as a straight path — a sequence of steps leading from discomfort to ease.
But the truth is, most healing isn’t linear.
It loops, dips, pauses, and surprises us.
There are days when everything flows — your breath feels open, your energy steady. And others, when tension, fatigue, or anxiety return, and you wonder… Am I really getting better?
Healing, like growth, takes time. Much of it happens beneath the surface, in ways too subtle for the mind to measure. Even when you can’t see the change, it’s unfolding.
The Subtle Shifts of Change
In yoga therapy, transformation often begins quietly. You might notice you’re falling asleep a little faster. Your breath deepens without effort. Or you recover from stress more easily than before.
These are not small things. They are signs of the nervous system learning new patterns — pathways toward steadiness, safety, and resilience. But because these changes happen gradually, we often overlook them or assume nothing is working.
That’s when it helps to pause and notice, looking back at how far you have come.
Remembering How Far You’ve Come
When I work with clients, one of my roles is to remind them how far they’ve come.
From waking every night at 3:00 a.m. to now, only a few times a week.
From skipping breakfast or reaching for sugary cereal to sitting down to eggs and avocado.
From persistent back pain to occasional discomfort.
Even emotionally, as we begin to soften our armor and live more open-heartedly, we might feel light and centered one day and reactive the next. Healing can feel like one step forward and two steps back.
But what matters most is the moment you notice. That pause — the awareness to course-correct — is the healing. It’s your nervous system rewiring in real time, brain and body learning to communicate with more coherence and ease.
As Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy write in The Gap and the Gain, fulfillment comes from recognizing your gains, not fixating on the gap ahead. So instead of measuring how far you have to go, look back and honor how far you’ve already come.
The Practice of Trust
One of the most profound parts of healing is learning to trust your body again, even when it aches, even when progress feels slow.
Your body is always listening, always adapting, and always trying to protect you. When you meet it with compassion instead of frustration, the healing process deepens. You can’t rush integration, but you can create the conditions for it.
Gentle movement, restorative rest, nourishing breath, and the willingness to stay present all invite the body to remember balance in its own time.
An Invitation to Pause and See
Maybe you’re in a season where progress feels invisible. If so, take a moment to notice what has shifted — the smallest ways you meet yourself differently now.
Healing doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes, it looks like staying on the path.
Staying with your breath.
Staying with your body.
Staying with your process — trusting that the seeds you’ve planted are growing, even if you can’t yet see them.
An Invitation to Deepen Your Journey
If your healing feels slow, remember: you don’t have to do it alone.
Yoga therapy offers a compassionate, structured way to reconnect with your body, release tension, and rediscover steadiness as you heal.
🌿 Schedule a Discovery Call or explore earlier reflections in this series:
When Deep Rest Feels Impossible