In our fast-paced lives, many of us suffer from mild anxiety from time to time. However, there is a need for increased awareness about chronic anxiety since it has the potential to drain you of all your physical energy while putting your mind under stress.
[su_quote]Anxiety is like a tree with invisible roots that grapples you and eventually binds you in its suffocating grip. [/su_quote]
There are a few ways to tackle stress, and yoga is one such remedy.
1) Find Your Inner Strength With Yoga:
Practicing yoga can help you retrace your steps to rediscovering yourself. It helps strengthen your core – waist, spine, and abdomen – which are the areas that experience most stress through your lifetime. It reduces flab around your love handles, makes your spine erect, as well as soothes back pain experienced during pregnancy or due to long hours spent at your desk. A strong core helps inspire mental strength as well. It acts as motivation to overcome the hurdles in your way and to achieve your objectives.
2) Breathe Out Anxiousness:
Yoga is not just about practicing different poses. It also involves meditation as a crucial component. Meditation is predominantly the practice of breathing techniques that help regulate your blood pressure, calm you down, and also help you focus on the task at hand. To successfully meditate, you need to let go of all your other worries and lose yourself in the power of your mind. You have to concentrate on a particular thing or an idea until it overcomes you.
3) Relax And Let Loose:
At the end of every session, your instructor will ask you to relax with the help of a pose called savasana or the corpse pose. You are expected to lie down on your back, feet and arms wide apart, and eyes closed. When you relax, you erase all your worries from your mind and surrender yourself to the power of the universe. This asana also helps restore your ‘chi’ or the energy of your soul and revitalizes your body.
4) Face Your Fears Bravely:
Yoga also poses many challenges to you as you continue to practice regularly under the tutelage of a certified yoga teacher. There are many levels of yoga that you have the opportunity to overcome, and every level is far more challenging than the previous. As you cross every bridge, it infuses you with more courage to take on life’s challenges headlong. Any obstacle on your road to success will no longer deter you from continuing on your path.
5) Reduce Muscle Stress:
Quite literally, yoga releases stress caught between your muscles. Sitting for long hours at your desk can give you neck and back pain. Yoga helps ease the tension in these muscles and makes them more flexible. It also ensures that the same muscles do not experience such stress consecutively when you diligently practice yoga. Also, during your pregnancy, it eases the muscles around your back and waist, thereby creating more room for movement and increasing flexibility for your growing womb.
Yoga ensures holistic well-being, and mental health comprises a crucial part of it. Given today’s “modern hyper-connected lifestyle”, maintaining good mental health is of vital importance and yoga, undoubtedly, helps you achieve that. It is an entirely organic process of achieving good health. There are absolutely no side effects of yoga, and it can be enjoyed by people of all age groups. So make the best of this beautiful opportunity and set yourself free from the mire of anxiety!
[Photos by a4gpa, Visualhunt, aimee, pimthida, Tom Wachtel, Missy N – CC BY]
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