Ask Strala: How can yoga fight anxiety and depression?

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Question

I have so much anxiety and I’m always feeling depressed. I really want to fight it out. I want to be happy again. Can you help?  Are there some yoga methods I can use here?

 

Answer

The short answer is, breathe and feel.  

Anxiety makes your body and mind a home for tension and stress.  This can become a closed loop.  When you’re anxious, you become tense and immovable, in your body and in your mind.  You want to fight out that anxiety and tension.  But fighting only gets us stuck in more tension, more stress, and more depression.

You can get unstuck from this loop.

 

Rather than work for your yoga poses, make your yoga work for you.

 

Don’t worry about the poses.  Breathe deep, move easy.  Breathe and move into every inch of your body, in every direction you can possibly move.  Go slow.  Feel.

Every long breath in, feel your body lifting, expanding, strengthening.  Hold at the top of your breath a bit, see how it feels, all this new space around you.  Every long breath out, feel your body softening, relaxing, easing into this new space.  That’s your space.  You’ve just created it.  And you can do this any time you want.  It’s always yours.

 

The thing is, you feel good.  When you breathe deep enough to feel, and move slow enough to respond to how you feel, you can’t help but become your own best caregiver.  You’re very capable.

 

Anxiety has a way of shutting down this feeling pathway, making us feel less capable, which isn’t fun.  You can open things up again.  You always have this ability.  You can always create this space.  You can always release tension and stress from your body and mind.  You just need practice.

 

Use your yoga time for practicing poses, you’ll get good at poses.  Use your yoga time for practice feeling and creating space, you’ll get good at everything there is.  You can do it!

 

-Mike

 

About Strala Yoga Training

Strala combines the movement and healing wisdom of tai chi with the form vocabularies of yoga, tai chi, qigong, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine, to help people release stress, move easily through challenge, and live radiantly inspiring lives.

It begins with a mindset, that says our best way to get where we’re going is to feel good along the way. It also works miracles for whole health, helping us to find ease in our bodies and minds, and create the right conditions both for healing and optimal performance.

In our Strala Training Courses, you learn to shape your destiny on every level that counts, from your psychology, chemistry and neurology, to your chromosomes and even gene expression. The unique set of skills you develop – for connecting with yourself and others, unblocking your energy, healing what needs healing and accomplishing challenge with ease – uncovers your ability to create the life you want, and be an inspiring leader to the people around you.

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