Yoga and anxiety
Anxiety has you living in a perma-fight-flight mode. Alert, vigilant, ready.
It’s scary sidekick, health anxiety, tricks you into thinking you’re just one symptom away from ‘the end’. It keeps you hyper-aware of your body and its sensations but, at the same time, terrified of noticing anything ‘off’ that might plunge you head-first into sheer panic about your wellbeing.
Yoga has been the bittersweet escape for me. I would step onto my yoga mat one person - maybe tense, preoccupied, feeling a familiar creep of dread - and would float off it someone else entirely. Usually practising at home, I’d find online classes to suit my mood or the time of day and took it at my own pace. And it worked like a charm.
It was during my first few days of my yoga teacher training that I hit the wall. Looking back, I’d been playing it very safe and gentle with my home practice, not really pushing myself because - lightbulb moment…
Deep down, I believed my body to be fragile and vulnerable, a ticking timebomb.
It was in simply lying, supported and cosy, in Supta Baddha Konasana (reclined bound angle) with awareness of my breath, as instructed, that I felt the panic. So used to focusing on my breath to calm and soothe a panic attack that now, by familiar association, this breath awareness seemed to work in reverse by cranking up my sympathetic nervous system (that fight/flight response) into high-gear, almost out of habit, Pavlov’s Dog style. My breathing became shorter, my face felt prickly, tears started streaming down my cheeks as I hyperventilated there in the dimly-lit, quiet of the yoga studio.
The same was true in practising postures too. I quickly realised that I had ‘safety zone’ postures, ones that featured regularly in my home practice, and others that I’d subconsciously decided were off-limits for someone as “fragile” as me - inverted postures were my nemesis.
Wanting to keep up with my peers and not to make a fuss, I’d keep quiet about my panic and give the inversions a try. Taking baby steps into each pose I’d be consumed by the chattering of my mind which warned me of triggering a brain haemorrhage or undetected heart condition or stroke. The total awareness of the flow of blood to my face, my brain, my head was terrifying. The feeling of ‘pressure’, as my body flipped on its axis (or tried to), made me (and my life) feel extremely vulnerable. And the panic “won”, it kept me “safe” by making me bottle it and backing off. But that left me with another uncomfortable feeling… the shame that I'd let anxiety win.
That’s been my pattern - avoidance.
When things feel uncomfortable and scary, I flee. In this I have form. And so, even now I’m still a little unsure how it happened but, when my teacher instructed me to move into a supported headstand, I just did it. Maybe it was that I hadn’t had time to think about it, that my body was quicker than the anxious thoughts on this occasion, but there I was, upside down, facing my fear of death-by-inversion. And I was ok.
In the ancient Indian text, the Bhagavad Gita, it says: “Yoga is the Journey of the Self, Through the Self, To the Self”
And then the penny dropped.
I’d been using yoga as some kind of escapism (avoidance). It was my place to feel calm and a bit more ‘me’ and, while those feelings are definitely some of the scrumptious side-effects of yoga mat-time, it had allowed me to play safe. With guidance from a super-duper mentor, who knew my real capability, my yoga practice became like an encouraging parent, nudging me to take a few risks for my own best interest.
And that was a place of growth. And euphoria.
I didn’t die in an inversion.
My mind had held tightly to this belief, this fear, and had held me back. But that fear had been proven to be a big, fat lie. It forced me to rewrite that belief and to question others.
Instead I felt something entirely different - strength, inside and out.
If yoga is about quieting the ripples of the mind so that in the still, clear water we can see our true nature and infinite potential reflected, then it has to be about first seeing those ripples for what they are. By gently having our attention drawn to them, rather than being allowed to stay in an unhealthy comfort zone in ignoring them, we’re lovingly encouraged to let them go. And isn’t that just the hallmark of a true friend?
