How Does Yoga Help to Reduce Anxiety?

Worrying about the future, feeling panicky for no reason — anxiety is familiar to many of us. And the bad thing is we have got used to a lifestyle full of stress and worries. But it’s not normal, and this is not how we are supposed to live our lives.
Medication is not the best option in this situation. Antidepressants have a number of side effects and blunt your feelings. The best solution will be taking up yoga. Just as anxiety takes over both your mind and body, yoga calms anxiety in a holistic way. It normalizes your breath, releases tension in muscles, and calms your mind.
Why is it so effective? The explanation is simple. Anxiety is defined as an excessive and unrealistic worry about the future. And yoga is what teaches you to be “in the moment” by concentrating on your breath and focusing on poses. Even a single class will lower your feeling of anxiety. But it’s the long-term commitment to yoga that will change the way you react to things. Instead of panicking and worrying in the face of something unknown, you’ll learn to handle stressful situations rationally.
It is the broader practise of yoga (asana, pranayama, and meditation) that is the most effective. You may come across the lists of anxiety-fighting asanas on yoga websites. But, in fact, any yoga class including hot yoga and vinyasa yoga will do the job.
While going to a yoga class or rolling out your mat at home require at least some deal of willpower, breathing techniques (pranayama) can be practised right away. Have a look at these pranayama techniques against anxiety that we covered earlier.
Yoga doesn’t only reduce anxiety, but it also fights other problems caused by the constant stress. The recent studies demonstrate how yoga can help cure infertility. It has been scientifically proven that infertile women have the levels of anxiety similar to those demonstrated by patients with cancer and people who have been recently diagnosed with HIV. And the report published by Harvard Medical School shows that women who practise yoga and meditation are 3 times more likely to conceive than those who don’t. No wonder fertility centers around the world are adopting yoga.
Just as constant anxiety may bring about lots of diseases, managing it can mark the beginning of positive changes in your life. If you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, find some time for yoga and it will all get better.
* This article was originally written and published on https://yoga.com/article/how-does-yoga-help-to-reduce-anxiety