How Yoga Helps Reduce Stress and Anxiety

June 4, 2012 - PRLog -- I used to think it was normal to stress out over simple decisions or to get anxious about simple things like painting a room. I had the hardest time making small decisions, paralyzed in fear that I would choose the wrong way. I spent many years of my life suffering from anxiety but didn’t even realize it.

These days I come across so many people who describe their anxiety symptoms to me and I can so easily relate. I also have met so many of our yoga students who have had huge relief from anxiety through their yoga practices. Many who have even gotten completely off of anxiety meds after practicing yoga. I now realize that my own anxiety symptoms became much less as I began practicing yoga. It was after I began practicing yoga that I realized I had been suffering from anxiety..it was not until I was out of it that I could see how strong of a grip it had on me. I think what happens often is that someone suffering from anxiety thinks they just have something “wrong” with them. Constant upset stomachs, chest pain,, headaches, fatigue, excessive sweating, insomnia are just a few symptoms that lead us to the doctor to see what is wrong. These are all side effects of the cause of a problem that starts elsewhere…anxiety.

How does yoga help anxiety?
Last week I shared about yoga’s stimulation of the Vagus nerve which is the highway for the triggers of the parasympathetic nervous system. Let’s look at this again along with its relationship to anxiety. It helps to understand the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Sympathetic Nervous system (also know as the Fight or Flight System) induces:
•   increased heart rate
•   increased blood pressure
•   decreased digestion
•   blood flow to large muscles, legs, core; hence cold feet and hands
•   increased cortisol
•   increased adrenaline or epinephrine

Parasympathetic Nervous system (also known as the Rest & Digest system) induces:
•   decreased heart rate
•   decreased blood pressure
•   increased digestion
•   increased blood flow to extremities
•   decreased cortisol
•   decreased adrenaline or epinephrine

A Simplification of how Anxiety Happens
Our brains have a tiny part within them called the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for detecting if a situation causes threat or no threat. As you can imagine, this plays a vital role in our survival as human beings. Especially during the years we may have been chased by tigers and the like..without even thinking about it, our body goes into super human mode, ready to defend, protect and get away from whatever it is. The only problems is that even though now a days we are not faced with these types of life threatening situations (or hardly ever), our brain still works in the same capacity. Our amygdala is still detecting threat and danger within situations that just aren’t threatening our lives.

So, if I decide that I might make a mistake in choosing the wrong paint color and that this mistake might cause lots of problems and that how others perceive me will be compromised….I have sprung into fight or flight mode via my amygdala…whether I want to or not. My amygdala instantly decides that my life is threatened—>instantly triggers the hypothalamus to trigger the—->sympathetic nervous system and all of the above listed is triggered. Man, all of that for just paint. This, in a nutshell is anxiety. Happening over and over again, usually without us even knowing it. Our heart rates are up, blood pressure increased, cortisol being produced like crazy in turn increasing our belly fat and decreasing our ability to burn fat and on and on and on.

YOGA STIMULATES THE VAGUS NERVE WHICH TRIGGERS THE PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM!!!
The very system that INHIBITS the sympathetic nervous system. Yoga is for everything and it will knock the socks off of your anxiety. Practice and practice often. Get on your mat even when you don’t want to, this is when you need it the most. Our bodies are so beautifully equipped with the capacity to heal..we just have to be willing to listen.

For more articles on how yoga works, check out my blog at http://howyogaworks.wordpress.com/

About the Author:
Stacy and her husband Dave together own The Yoga Project
(http://www.theyogaproject.net) and Texas Power Yoga Teacher Training School. She has traveled world wide assisting and producing teacher trainings and programs and is co-founder of Live Love Teach - Advanced Vinyasa Teacher Training. Stacy continues to travel around the world leading Live Love Teach Teacher Trainings, workshops and presenting at conferences, sharing her love and passion of yoga with others.