![]() Regardless of your stance on spirituality or religion, it is impossible to deny there is a power greater than ourselves. Anxiety Fix #3 – Connection to the Divine When we regard ourselves as a dear friend, we can encourage ourselves to sit with our anxiety, and trace it back to its origin. When we feel anxious, we might feel as though we are doing something wrong, or that we shouldn’t feel that way. Loving-kindness allows us to give ourselves a break. As my confidence grew as a result of asana and related practices like meditation, I began to understand that I deserved to be treated with loving-kindness, both from myself and others. There are lots of ways yoga can bring this about for me, it was an increase in confidence. Through regular practice, we begin to strip away the lies we tell ourselves about how we fall short, or how we should be more like so-and-so. Loving-kindness is abundant in the world of yoga, and it increases our compassion for ourselves and whatever situation we might be going through. ![]() If a friend made a mistake or went through a difficult life experience, I would never criticize her or tell her she’s a hopeless loser, so why would I do that to myself? She was essentially describing loving-kindness toward ourselves. Someone once told me, when pointing out how mean I can be to myself, that I should practice treating myself as a good friend. We tend to treat and judge ourselves more harshly than we do others. It’s a common saying that we are our own worst enemy. We can ask ourselves, ‘Am I doing something I shouldn’t be doing in life, or not doing something I should be?’ ‘Am I in the wrong job, wrong relationship, wrong geographical location, and the Universe is trying to bring that to my attention?’ Anxiety Fix #2 – Loving-Kindness Toward Ourselves Only then can we begin to question what is causing the anxiety, rather than react immediately to try and stop it. A single asana practice can catapult us into a mindful state, and regular practice can make mindfulness our default state.īeing in a mindful state allows us to look at anxiety objectively and with curiosity. We are told to relax into each posture and notice where we are holding tension. When we practice asana, we are instructed to focus, to move with our breath, and to bring ourselves back to this focused attention whenever we notice our minds have wandered. Mindfulness is an invitation to turn off the stories and to experience the clarity of the here and now. The mind is powerful, and its tendency is to ruminate about the past or anxiously anticipate the future. It means seeing the truth in a situation instead of listening to the stories our mind makes up about it. Mindfulness simply means being in the present moment. Through mindfulness, loving-kindness toward ourselves, and connection with the Divine (or our higher purpose, if you’re more comfortable thinking of it that way), we can use anxiety as a teacher, and eliminate the suffering we experience as a result of trying to avoid it. In today’s post, we’ll look at three key ways yoga helps us deal with our anxiety in a healthy way. Though the postures of yoga, or asana, and learning about the philosophy behind it, we embark on a journey of self-exploration and healing. This is where yoga comes in as an invaluable tool to help us look at the root of our anxiety, and to become curious about its message. It temporarily stifles it, causing energy blockages in our systems and engrained patterns of avoidance in our minds. Attempting to escape anxiety doesn’t make it go away. With practice, we can learn to sit with our anxiety, to feel it in all its intensity without trying to escape. ![]() Only through mindfulness and a quiet, undistracted mind can we learn the lessons behind anxiety. ![]() We do this automatically it is human nature to avoid pain. We try to escape anxiety rather than look at it directly and with curiosity about what it might be telling us. We turn on the TV, scroll through our phone, take a pill, or indulge in a substance. We try to stifle it in any way we can, and as quickly as possible. Most of the time when we experience anxiety. It’s not pleasant, and it can stop me in my tracks.Īnxiety can be a gift, a message that there is something we should look at in our lives or within ourselves. In my mind, thoughts race and become dark and hopeless. For me, anxiety causes my heart to beat way too fast, my breath to become shallow and short, and my hands to sweat and shake. Whether you experience it chronically or situationally, we are all familiar with the way our minds and bodies manifest the fight or flight response.
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