I've been doing Yoga for 9 months now and although I can see how it can be good for me at the same time I keep running up against some barriers that are making it difficult for me. The attraction for me is my whole life my main coping strategy has been to rationalise everything away, I live in my head and really it has helped me so much on a cognitive level at least in that I have a million and one strategies for dealing with my issues that mostly enables me to cope with life on a daily basis, but rather at the expense of my body and emotions. I have high levels of stress so my body tends to be in a closed posture a lot, even when sleeping I'm tense, and so my muscles are very tight and up until last year I didn't exercise that much either (plus my job involves lots of sitting) but now have to because I developed Diabetes and became overweight due to the meds I was on (now stopped those). So I wanted to start yoga because I'm already in my 50's and can see myself getting less supple and flexible and that is not going to lead to a healthy old age if I don't do something about that. Also I thought it would help me relax and let go, and be more mindful.

The barriers I'm running up against are as follows:

Yoga makes me more conscious of parts of my body I try not to be conscious of - particularly my neck and stomach region both of which carry difficult memory associations due to childhood trauma - when I try to do exercises that increase awareness in those areas I start to feel dead inside or to disassociate or feel a need to self harm.

Some postures, particularly those that involve opening out my body and lying on my back, or letting go in space and trusting my body (shoulder stands for example which I can't do, or things like supported fish) really make me panicky and I have had panic attacks in sessions

On the occasions I have really been able to let go and relax in Savasana in particular I tend to startle when I suddenly realise I've lost myself somewhere and sometimes I've shouted out or just suddenly tensed up again, it's very disconcerting

Often I find myself feeling very emotional during or after a yoga session, like it makes me feel really vulnerable and tender or my barriers are down. I do realise that's on one level a good thing but at the same time it's difficult and in some sessions I have started crying for no reason or needed to curl up in a foetal ball.

Generally I am very tense and find it hard except for very brief periods to switch off my internal chatter (and when I do then I panic), and this is also reflected in very tight muscles and joints, which makes it hard to even sit cross legged for long periods.

I'm just wondering if anyone else here like me has had to deal with this and if there are ways or techniques to help get through these barriers. I think it would be easy to just give up and do something else but I can see (the rational me can see this) that the barriers are all things I really need to get through and not facing them is not going to make them go away, to do so would limit me in many ways, so I'm not going to just give up.