Why You Should Use Yoga to Ease Your Worry

Science tells us that yoga is good for anxiety

During the beginning of the lockdown, here in the UK, there was a marked increase in anxiety. 49.9% of people reported high levels of anxiety. Last year, during the same period, average anxiety scores were 3 out of 10. A year later, at the beginning of lockdown, they were a 5.2 out of 10.

“This is the wicked nature of the pandemic. It creates intense anxiety, but the measures that we need to control the pandemic, which centre on suppressing our ability to interact socially, make it more difficult to manage that anxiety”, explains Simon Wessely, a Professor of Psychological Medicine at Kings College London and Consultant Psychiatrist at Kings College Hospital.

Although lockdown measures are gradually being reduced, local lockdowns are now being implemented in the UK and other countries, making it more difficult to interact socially and manage anxiety experienced.

As an assistant psychologist, working with family members of people with psychosis, I have seen an increase in worry from family members too. There are often worries about if their loved one will relapse because it’s difficult for them to engage in social activities that have been crucial to maintaining their loved one’s wellbeing.

Something that doesn’t require social interaction and is something that we can do independently is yoga.

A wealth of evidence indicates that yoga can influence our mind. A recent literature review, published in The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice, found yoga, as a stand-alone therapy and complementary therapy is effective in managing and reducing anxiety.

Due to the lack of social interaction we are having and a decrease in the amount we are going out, could yoga be an effective treatment for reducing our worries and fears surrounding the pandemic?

Yoga, Anxiety and Brain Activation

Chitta Vritti Nirodhah — it means calming the mind and is one of the main purposes of yoga. Achieving a state of relaxation underpins yoga, so it makes sense that yoga can help with our feelings of anxiety.

Recently, in May 2020, a team of researchers in Brazil decided to test this. They examined whether Pranayama, which refers to yoga breathing exercises and is one of the 8 limbs of yoga, had an influence on anxiety and emotional processing.

Young adults completed a 30-day training programme of yoga breathing exercises for 30 minutes a day, 3 times a week. Also, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to examine if there were any changes in brain activation during an emotional task and a resting-state before and after the yoga training programme.

The emotional processing task involved viewing different pictures with different emotions (negative or neutral emotions) and individuals were asked to rate the emotional impact of the images. The resting state involved lying down with eyes closed for 7 minutes.

The findings of the study, which were published in May 2020 in the Frontiers in Psychiatry Journal, indicated that the practice of yoga breathing exercises significantly decreased anxiety.

Pranayama also modulated the activity of different brain regions used during emotional processing.

What was more interesting, is that after the yoga training, there was reduced connectivity between the lateral portions of the prefrontal cortex and the anterior insula. These changes in connectivity with those two brain regions were associated with changes in anxiety.

Just from this exploratory study, we can see that participating in yoga, in particular breathing exercises, can reduce levels of anxiety and bring about changes in activation of the brain regions involved in emotional processing and in regions of the brain that are associated with anxiety-prone individuals.

This evidence is one of hundreds of research studies showing the calming effects of yoga.

For example, recent evidence from March 2020 reviewed several different studies from 2006 to 2018 examining the effects of yoga postures on anxiety and depression.

The findings, published in Frontiers in Pediatrics Journal, showed that 70% of the studies examining only anxiety showed that yoga resulted in reductions in anxiety. It’s evident that yoga can have instrumental effects in helping us feel more relaxed.

How Yoga Helps Reduce Anxiety

Brain activation has been shown to change in different areas due to yoga which can impact on feelings of anxiety. But what is happening to our bodies when we are performing yoga that is resulting in these changes in anxiety?

During stress, our sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is responsible for our fight-or-flight response, kicks in and results in physiological arousal, leading to an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow, adrenalin etc. This occurs when we are feeling anxious.

“Meditation, visualization, and focusing on breathing can help with letting go of worry and fear. The overall practice of yoga can elicit the relaxation response, allowing both the body and mind to gain a sense of calm and ease”, explains Katharina Star, a Professional Counsellor and expert in anxiety and panic disorder.

This indicates that yoga decreases the activity of our SNS (as researchers Vempati and Telles have found) and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which is responsible for calming us down and decreases our heart rate, blood pressure, and therefore induces the relaxation response and decreases anxiety.

A team of researchers and professors from Brazil explain that “The increase of parasympathetic activity reduces the release of hormones associated with stress, and enhances GABA inhibition from the prefrontal cortex and insula to the amygdala, reducing its activity, and the psychological and somatic symptoms associated with stress”.

Essentially — yoga is reducing the physiological and psychological impact of stress that is experienced when we feel anxious or worried.

Even in individuals with generalised anxiety disorder, who are resistant to treatment have shown improvements when completing yoga breathing exercises, with symptom severity significantly decreasing after yoga practice.

It’s clear to see that yoga can have significant impacts on calming our body and mind.

How Do I Perform Yoga?

There are lots of videos and tutorials out there, teaching you yoga practices. This video, from the NHS is a good starting point. It connects breathing exercises with slow movements.

Although the video is 45-minutes, you don’t have to complete it all in one session. Yoga expert, Kajuan Douglas, who has 8 different certifications in yoga states, “Practice any yoga pose that you find to be stress-relieving to help your mind be at ease. For some of us, a vigorous handstand practice can help us release anxiety. For others, a simple child’s pose for 10 to 20 breaths may be the right practice for you.”

Try different yoga tutorials for different lengths of time to find a sweet spot for you. You might find a quick 15-minute session is enough or a longer 45 minute session helps do the trick.

There isn’t a perfect answer of, ‘you should do this exact yoga routine for X amount of time, for X amount of days’.

That’s the beauty with yoga. You can find a routine that fits with your life.

Final Comments

Due to the pandemic, our anxiety levels are rising, yet it’s becoming more difficult to manage our worries due to being limited socially.

Yoga, which is something we can do independently, has been shown to have tremendous impacts on our anxiety:

• It induces the relaxation response through activation of the PNS.
• It decreases activation of the SNS — stopping our stress response.
• It can create changes in the activation of the brain regions that are associated with anxiety-prone individuals.

These benefits can all contribute to reducing our anxiety.

Give yoga a go and you will, over time, see the benefits for yourself!