How Yoga Reduces Anxiety
Posted on February 09, 2021 by Paul Stoutenburgh, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Yoga increases mindfulness, which provides an individual with a more balanced perception of the information coming from their senses.
It’s so easy these days – during a global pandemic, and a time of social and political unrest – to become engulfed in worries about the future. It’s more important than ever to find and stick with some form of embodiment practice. What makes you feel calm and in touch with your body? Common embodiment practices include: yoga, qigong, dance, stretching, and body scan meditations, to name a few.EMOTIONAL AWARENESS
In my graduate studies, I learned about interoception (which has a slightly different meaning than introspection). Interoception is the brain’s ability to perceive and understand the emotional and physical sensations in the body. When interoception is functioning well, we have more awareness and understanding of our emotions, our body sensations, and our body’s movement in space. And when we have more awareness of our body and our emotions, we have a greater ability to control our emotional and behavioral responses. The process of interoception (in short: emotional awareness) is hindered in people with chronic stress and/or anxiety disorders; however, there is an emerging body of research that supports the use of yoga as a therapeutic practice to alleviate emotional disorders such as anxiety.
HABIT FORMATION
When I first started my daily morning practice it took a decent amount of will power to get myself to do it each day, though after a month or so, it became second nature. The habit I developed of waking up and practicing my yoga / qigong / meditation sequence has stuck with me for nearly a decade. Research around habit formation shows that most people are able to form a new habit after about two months (66 days). This means that your brain begins to strengthen new neuropathways that code for practicing the habit, and thus, the practice becomes more of an autopilot function. Are you ready to form a new habit? Don’t worry if you miss a day or two, it doesn’t make much difference, just hop right back at it the next day. A great place to start in developing your own practice is by joining yoga classes. Find an open space in your home or backyard and join a virtual class or practice along with a recorded class.
