Yoga helps with anxiety in several ways. It offers specific techniques to reduce symptoms, short and long term. Because of its inward focus, yoga can help get beneath the surface anxiety to figure out what might be triggering it, such as unresolved conflicts or habitual thought patterns.
One key technique is to focus on your breath. During anxious, fearful moments, breathing may become quick, choppy, or constricted. When you are calm, breathing is smoother and more rhythmic.
Anxious breathing occurs mainly in the upper chest without fully engaging the diaphragm. In yoga the emphasis is slower, deeper and more relaxed breath, that involves expansion of the abdomen during inhalation.
One way improve inhalation is to gently engage the abdominal muscles during exhalation. Doing this you can expel a little more air, allowing for deeper, more calming inhalations.
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Yoga for Anxiety © 2023 Ruth (Day) Elliott. All rights reserved. Feel free to share this content, but please provide proper attribution by including a link back to this post and giving credit to me.