Health & Fitness

How Can Yoga Help With Anxiety?

Yoga has long since been accepted as a form of physical exercise that can have a number of positive effects...

Y oga has long since been accepted as a form of physical exercise that can have a number of positive effects not only on your body but your mind as well! But how can yoga help with anxiety? What is the background behind it and how does yoga work?

What Is Yoga?

Yoga is a mixture of many physical and mental exercises, which include certain poses and holding them for some amount of time as well as ways to detach yourself from your body and mind in order to get a fresh perspective on anything that is troubling you.

Yoga has its origins in India but has been widely accepted now as a form of meditation and physical exercise to help cope with the stresses of the modern lifestyle.

What Are The Benefits Of Yoga?

A few important benefits of yoga include:

  1. Increased flexibility of the body with regular warming exercises and stretching your muscles in a way that does not cause tears in them.
  2. It certainly improves your heart rate and respiration to a degree where it can be used to prevent certain cardiovascular diseases. 
  3. It helps form a routine that helps you to manage what you find most difficult; getting out of bed! 
  4. Not only your physical but mental health also benefits greatly from regular yoga as it causes the release of endorphins and other hormones in the body that make you feel happy and content.
  5. Keeping you active, slowly with giving more time to get used to regular mindfulness is also a benefit of yoga!

Relationship Between Yoga And Anxiety

In regular terms, anxiety can have many physical manifestations, which include increased beating of the heart, feeling faint, having an impending feeling of doom, etc.

The real question is how does yoga help with any of these symptoms?

Yoga helps train your physical form to be the best of itself. It helps pace your heart rate and respiratory problems as well as calm down your mind and slow down the racing thoughts which anxious people experience.

Meditation is also a part of yoga and it helps to empty your mind of everything that is stressing you out and making you anxious. Regular practice and routine exercise can help a person with anxiety manage their symptoms in the long run.

Yoga can also help reduce the risk of chronic conditions such as immune disorders and more. In the long run, yoga has proven to be a useful tool to both medical science and an individual who is suffering.

Precautions For Beginners

Albeit yoga has so many benefits, it also comes with a few precautions that must be kept in mind while being exercised:

  1. Anyone with a herniated disc or similar condition should not opt for yoga, as it contains many poses, which are called asanas, which may aggravate the condition or even worsen it.
  2. People who have a hereditary disposition to blood clots should not be doing yoga unless they are advised so by a medical practitioner.
  3. Anyone who has eye problems such as glaucoma should not be doing yoga without asking their ophthalmologist first as it can cause an increase in the pressure of the eye.
  4. Pregnant women should only practice yoga if it is allowed by their respective gynecologists. Yoga is usually safe in pregnancy but it is important to remember that some poses may be harmful to a pregnant woman. 
  5. Severe balance problems can affect anyone, hence, it is important to make sure not to practice yoga while having such additional medical problems.

You can also let the yoga instructor know about your medical issues and they can suggest ways to switch up the exercise to help out! 

How To Start Yoga As A Beginner

As a beginner, taking help from someone who is an expert in this area is necessary to reap the mental and physical benefits of yoga. These days yoga instructors also happen to offer classes online and offline, in addition to free classes written on many online forums such as YouTube and Google. Yoga courses range from beginner to complex hence the level of expertise can always be selected.

Moreover, you should also remember to take things slowly because rushing through anything can result in a bad outcome, and in some cases, a health crisis.

Statistics in improvement can also be noted in anxious people from start to when they began their journey for yoga. This is one of the many ways how yoga can help with anxiety, so don't worry, you got this!

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