Anxiety and yoga - by Jo Ramsden

Suffering from anxiety is very common. I have suffered with it myself and I know how disabling it can be. When I struggled most acutely with it, in my twenties, I know that it can feel as if your own mind has turned against you. Everything is terrifying.

Anxiety takes many forms and looks different in different people. For example, you may have had paralysing anxiety about something specific (like social situations) for your whole life or you may have generalised anxiety about life which comes and goes when, say, you experience hormonal changes or when life is stressful. You may experience panic attacks from time to time or have particular things you feel very scared of (phobias). The way people experience anxiety varies greatly but, however you experience it, it means the same physical symptoms of heart racing and adrenalin flooding your body.

The smoke alarm

Parts of our brains are very old in evolutionary terms and these parts of our brains enabled our earliest ancestors to survive. Our fear system – the part that alerts us to danger – is one of these. It’s a part of our brain which we share with many animals. People talk about it as being something like a smoke alarm. When our fear system is activated, what it does to our body, is difficult to ignore - just like a smoke alarm. We are primed to either flee the dangerous situation or fight whatever is the danger.

Our tricky brains

As we evolved, so did our brains and we developed unique capabilities which allowed us to survive better in social groups. So, our brains have developed so that we can think, plan, imagine, reflect. We can remember the past, dream the future, empathise with other people, tell jokes, think about ourselves…. These unique skills have enabled some of our greatest achievements – we can tell incredible stories, produce art and music. We have science, medicine, philosophy, beautiful buildings. The list of our achievements because we are so visionary and conscious goes on and on.  

We can see how useful all this was for our survival. Imagine one of our earliest ancestors leaving the group to go hunting. How useful for him to have been thought about and remembered by other people (who would themselves have been able to imagine and predict the dangers). It would have meant that someone would have come looking if he (or she) didn’t return.

But these wonderful skills of ours also leave us in a mess sometimes. We are able to remember difficult events, to imagine awful things happening. We are able to ruminate endlessly on the motivations of other people or put ourselves into the shoes of someone to whom something terrible has happened. Unlike other animals, we are able to keep the threat system (the smoke alarm) going with our brilliant, creative and empathic minds. For other animals, the smoke alarm goes quiet when the threat disappears but, for us, it is easy to dream up danger, to imagine awful consequences, to create imaginary scenarios which would hurt or harm or humiliate us.

Anxiety and behaviour

What all forms of anxiety have in common is the impact on our behaviour. Anxiety (fear) always wants us to fight the danger or flee from it. Sadly what that means for many people is that anxiety can start to control their lives and behaviour.

What helps?

There are lots of things which help with any mental health problem. We know that occupation, routine, sleep, nature, community….all these things help us as human beings to manage our minds and contain our emotions.

What can also help is doing the opposite of what anxiety wants us to do. Anxiety always wants us to act – to fight or flee. The opposite of this is stillness and noticing. When we turn our attention towards the anxiety, when we notice it and acknowledge it, we are doing something difficult (because the anxiety driven instinct is just to act). Stopping and noticing helps us because usually the anxiety is in our evolved, tricky brain which is conjuring up all sorts of scenarios and reactions. When we turn our attention inside ourselves, acknowledge the anxiety and allow it to be something we are feeling then we are working to control and manage the anxiety. All this though is far easier said than done because our evolutionary instinct is so strong.

Iyengar yoga

Yoga brings our attention inwards. When we are in our postures, when our body is working to make a shape, we can’t think about much else. With Iyengar yoga in particular, with the focus on alignment, we are tuned into our body, looking at ourselves from the inside. Our yoga practice helps us develop this skill of looking inside especially when in so much of our lives we are looking outwards – at screens, at faces, at future plans.

When you are in savasana – relaxing at the end of the class – you may notice how the practice has changed things for you. Notice how the  way you have moved your body - the space you have created and the muscles you have used – mean that, as you lie down, your attention can be more easily kept inside (even though your body is no longer holding your attention by working hard to hold you in the postures). Of course our minds can drift away but your teacher will remind you to bring your attention back gently and kindly and without criticism.

Your practice and the time you have spent looking at yourself from inside will mean that you might be better able also to practice pranayama (breathing). The yoga practice of pranayama takes us deeper into ourselves and it is said that when we can control the breath, we can control the mind.

Yoga and looking inwards doesn’t mean that we are fighting or fleeing anxiety. Anxiety is often still around. In fact, you might find that in savasana - when your body is no longer working hard, it is difficut not to let anxious thoughts come flooding in. What yoga does for us though is help us practice a skill which helps our minds manage anxiety (rather than get rid of it). Our anxiety wants us to fight a monster which is often not really there.

Jo Ramsden teaches an all levels class at Yoga Metta - 7.30am on a Thursday morning