Yoga can bring many benefits to the lives of autistic people, such as improving sleep patterns and contributing to overall well-being. Research has found that yoga is particularly useful for helping autistic children to regulate their emotions and detect sensory overwhelm. As a result, yoga classes are being rolled out in schools, teaching autistic children to recognise shallow breathing when feeling anxious and improve their bodily awareness within an over-stimulating classroom environment. Some of the team at Autistic-Thoughts are also yoga enthusiasts and we regularly incorporate it into our daily routines.
Here are some of the ways yoga can enrich the lives of autistic people across the lifespan, as well as examples of yoga practices to try for yourself.
Emotional Dysregulation
When confronted with stress or on the cusp of an autistic meltdown, our emotions quietly brew within us until they find a means to escape. For us autistic individuals, expressing these emotions as they surface may not always be feasible, often due to feeling unsafe in our surroundings or struggling to promptly recognise and process our own emotional states – a phenomenon known as Alexithymia.
When we experience an intense feeling, such as anger or excitement, we may not be able to identify it in the moment. When this happens, these unidentified and therefore unprocessed emotions are stored in our bodies and build up until we are able to identify them, label them and eventually release them (if at all!). When we hold on to too many of these intense and unidentified emotions for a long time, this may manifest in emotional dysregulation or an autistic meltdown. Incorporating yoga into your daily routine can make you better in tune with where some of these emotions are stored in your body. Another benefit is that the repetitive movements of some yoga practices,such as sun salutations, can regulate our bodies into a baseline level of calm due to their ‘stim-like’ nature.
Rumination and spiralling
If there’s one thing that as autistic people we are excellent at, it’s rumination. Rumination is a form of passive, repetitive negative thinking – which can last for days or weeks at a time. For autistic people, this is our attempt to process and make sense of information, particularly if it is confusing or ambiguous. We may also ruminate in an attempt to gain some control over a situation in which we feel powerless. Rumination is also a characteristic of anxiety, which many autistic people experience daily. The most unhelpful thing to say to an autistic person while we are ruminating is to “just stop thinking”. If it were that easy, we would do just that!
However, there are certain yoga techniques that may help to monetarily disrupt these thought cycles. A ‘mantra’ is a syllable, word, or phrase that is repeated during meditation or at the end of a yoga practice. It is usually chanted with others, or you can do it on your own, or even in your head. Again, the repetitive nature of the mantra is similar to vocal stimming which can be incredibly soothing for autistic people. Chanting out loud while focusing on the repeated words and the voices of those around you can be trance-like and get you out of your head, momentarily. If you’re a newbie to all of this, there are example mantras and their translations below in the ‘resources’ section.
Disrupted sleep
Closely linked to our tendency to worry and ruminate, is the challenges we have with getting a good night’s sleep. Our sleep difficulties may also stem from feeling too dysregulated to relax, sensory sensitivities relating to the temperature of our bedroom or uncomfortable pyjamas, and irregular secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. Incorporating an evening yoga practice into your bedtime routine can help you ease into a state of relaxation. We recommend Yoga Nidra which involves lying down and coming into a state of consciousness between waking and sleeping, induced by guided meditation. Luckily for you, our team has produced a step-by-step guide, which you can find a link to below.
Trauma
Understanding our personal boundaries (physical and emotional) is huge for autistic people as many of us have encountered people who have exploited us. This can lead to difficulties in discerning our own preferences, making it challenging to articulate what brings us comfort and what doesn’t to other people. We may have been in a situation where we did not want to be touched or noticed, but did not know how to put up a safe boundary, which can often result in trauma. Throughout our day-to-day lives, we have our physical realities denied by others when we state that our environment is either too hot or cold, or when noises are too loud for us.
Practising yoga can help us become in tune with our bodily needs and get a better understanding of what feels comfortable or uncomfortable for us. It also gives us the permission to adjust a pose if it is painful, and celebrate and accept any physical limitations. Trauma-informed somatic yoga is particularly good for this. It is a movement practice concerned with how things feel from within, helping to retrain the brain to undo habitual learned movement patterns that can lead to pain.
Whatever stage of your journey, practising yoga can be hugely beneficial for autistic people and can have long-lasting benefits. Check out some recommended resources below, which are used by some of our neurodivergent team members.
Resources:
Downdog app (not sponsored): A meditation and yoga app with a variety of yoga practices, including sun salutations, and levels to choose from. Download it here
