How Yoga Therapy can help Anxiety

My first exposure to Generalized Anxiety Disorder was when my 15 year old son began
- getting in trouble at school,
- dominating our household with what were basically temper tantrums
- not sleeping or sleeping waaaay to much
- having panic attacks where he was convinced he was dying
- talking about ending his life.

As any panicked parent would do, we sought professional help.  The psychiatrist prescribed an anti-depressant called Prozac.  This drug has been associated with an increased suicide risk in teens, so my son and I made the joint decision to seek out alternatives.  The doctor was very upset and accused me of allowing my son to suffer needlessly.  I felt awful!  But my son, with wisdom beyond his years, and intelligence very common in anxious people, wondered what was so bad about a little suffering?

In his innocence, he recognized a key spiritual truth.  As M. Scott Peck wrote in his classic book, "The Road Less Travelled", life is hard.  As Buddha, and the ancient yoga philosophers recognized, pain is part of human experience, but suffering is optional.  So what my son had intuitively realized was that resistance to his sensitivity was causing suffering.  The medication would have dulled his reactions to his sensory world, but he wouldn't learn how to do that without some other tools.  He would FEEL life very acutely, but by utilizing yogic tools he could adapt.

Do any of the following symptoms describe what you or your loved one are feeling?

1.  Physiological symptoms include:
     a) muscle tension
     b) GI distress, such as IBS
     c)  pulse irregularity or elevated pulse rate
     d)  disturbed breathing or difficulty taking a full breath
     e)  panic attacks (these feel like cardiac arrests sometimes)
     f)  sleep disruption, easily fatigued
2.  Mood issues include:
     a)  uneasiness, agitation, feelings of panic
     b)  feeling overwhelmed
     c)  irritability or anger
3.  Racing thoughts can be troublesome and can focus on:
     a)  worrying, apprehension, obsessiveness
     b)  preoccupation with potential harm
     c)  catastrophization
     d)  repetitive thoughts
4.  Behaviours that are uncomfortable for you include:
     a)  avoidance of tasks or normal work
     b)  restlessness, pacing, rapid/erratic movements
     c)  compulsive or impulsive behaviour
     d)  increased rate of speech, pitch & volume

This list of symptoms describes Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a nervous system imbalance that prevents a person from finding enough rest in their daily cycle to complete proper restoration and repair of the body and mind.  The standard clinical protocol is to prescribe medication that chemically shifts the balance of the autonomic nervous system between sympathetic nervous system dominance (stress response) to further along the continuum to parasympathetic nervous system response (rest & digest mode).  We normally shift continually according to what is going on in our sensory world without being conscious of how this shift is occurring.  For those with Anxiety, however, their nervous system has locked into more activation in the stress end of the spectrum and is having difficulty shifting on its own.

If you are interested in exploring alternatives to medication, or additional tools, here are list of interventions used in Yoga Therapy that may help you find a healthier balance in your autonomic nervous system.

1.  Physiological Symptom Help:
     a)  simple movement/stretching timed with specific breathing patterns
     b)  breathing practices such as extending the exhales
     c)  guided relaxation sessions with specific scripts to help shift nervous system focus
2.  Mood Symptom Help:
     a)  meditation
     b)  singing, chanting, mantra repetition
     c)  prayer
     d)  using the yamas & niyamas (from the Yoga Sutras) to guide in forming right relationships and right associations
3.  Help for the Thoughts:
     a)  single pointed focus meditation, like breath watching
     b)  self reflection, studying inspirational texts, encouraging a search for the big questions in life
     c)  cognitive reframing (such as cognitive behavioural therapy or pratipaksha bhavanam as it's referred to in the Sutras)
4.  Therapeutics for Anxious Behaviour:
     a)  creating structure, establishing intention (sankalpa in yoga speak)
     b)  building self restraint through selective renunciation (small self disciplines help build impulse control over time)
     c)  rituals of self care (such as aromatherapy)
     d)  performing selfless service (karma yoga)

As you can see from this list of possible practices, being super fit or flexible is not necessary.  Most of these activities are free or quite inexpensive.  All have no negative side effects and contribute to a healthier person overall.  These prescriptions are suitable for all ages.  Most people benefit from an approach that considers all four types of symptoms.

A certified and professionally trained Yoga Therapist could help you decide which combination of practices is most appropriate for you and help you develop a personalized action plan.  He or she can also meet with you over time to continue to support and encourage your path to health.

So what about our house?  How did the Anxiety work out?  My son is in grad school, lives with his partner and is still very sensitive and intelligent.  My admiration for his courage and strength while facing his pain, which was and is very real, has grown over the last ten years.  It has been really hard work for him, and for the many yoga therapy clients that I have had the privilege of sharing with, but these Sensitive People have discovered that secret.  Life can be challenging, but suffering is reduced when we let go of resistance to our true natures.

If you don't have access to a Certified Yoga Therapist (an online list is available at www.iayt.org), this is a home video from one of my teachers and provides excellent at home practices to get you started:  "Viniyogatherapy for Anxiety with Gary Kraftsow" and can be ordered through www.pranamaya.com.

Using Yoga to Heal

Open any magazine or listen to any television program about health, and they are talking about yoga, meditation, breathing or mindfulness.  So what is it about yoga (and these other practices are all part of yoga) that is catching this level of attention?

Are there secret stretches or poses?  Is there a special mantra?  Do you need to be a particular body type or personality to benefit?

Although yoga can include stretches, mantra, visualizations or breathing techniques, these are all just pathways to the same portal.  The unique combination of yoga elements that helps YOU find healing is where the professionals can help.  But healing is within each one of us and awaits you to invest in that journey.

The way we feel is so much more than a collection of bones and muscles.  As humans, we have a complex matrix of feelings, experiences and physical sensations that combine to form our current reality.  Everything that has even happened to you (even in utero!) is colouring how you interpret and catalogue today's events.  One famous experience, regarding pain management, tracked groups of people who suffered paper cuts.  One group had the injury at home while relaxing, the other while at work.  Can you guess which group reported greater pain?  Medical science is clear that the context of the sensation is highly influential on the level of suffering.

What if you could change that context?  What if you could radically alter the way you interact with your day to day world?  This is where yoga healing starts.

So much of our lives are spent improving things, judging, analyzing, ruminating, planning.  Can you remember a time, even a very brief one, where you got a sense of something beyond that?  Maybe you were watching a sunset, or listening to an amazing piece of music, or you held a new baby, and there was just this peace for a second.... a sense that the world was beautiful after all.  That realization can bring deep emotion, even tears.  And our busy minds quickly usurp our bliss and bring us back to the worrying and planning.

Yoga invites you to deliberately cultivate that peaceful, contented feeling.  It might be the only activity in your day that does that.  It's about taking time and making that commitment to develop that context that minimizes suffering.  It doesn't have to take hours every day.  Research suggests that, with practice, you can begin rearranging your brain activity in as little as 30 seconds!  Focusing on non-reacting, taking slow even breaths through the nose and thinking kind-hearted thoughts for just 10 minutes at a time can effect lasting change.

Yoga is not about mastering an impossible gymnastics move or losing 20 pounds.  Those things may happen but yoga is more about your mind as this is the place where the context will shift.  To learn more about healing yoga, please visit our website at www.yogacentreniagara.com.  If you live outside the Niagara Region (Canada), look for a certified yoga therapist credentialed by the International Association of Yoga Therapists.  That professional can advise you on how to use the ancient practices of yoga for healing and finding greater joy in your life, warts and all.

Mindful Eating: The Non-Diet

It’s the time of year that we can be filled with regret that we indulged so heavily during the holiday season.  Our good intentions on January 1 are proving a little more difficult to maintain as the cold, gray days drag on.  It’s time to take a whole new look at how we fuel our bodies, letting go, once and for all, of the label “dieting”.

 

New neurological research is helping science to understand how malleable the brain can be and giving us support in the ancient practices of mindfulness.  New technologies can actually measure brain activity and indicate the precise optimum time of intervention in a habitual behaviour (“Breaking Habits”, Scientific American, November 2014).

As human beings, we are constantly in the flow of waves of sensation.  Being mindful means recognizing the inevitability of these waves of sensation and greeting them with curiosity, openness and compassion.  Cravings and hunger cues are waves of sensation.  The model below suggests one way to greet these sensations. (International Journal of Yoga Therapy, No. 22, 2012)

 

When we react habitually to the wave of sensation, for example cravings for a sweet treat, neurological pathways in the brain are reinforced.  We may get to the end of the treat and not really have full sensory recollection of the experience.  How did I get to the bottom of the bag of Oreos anyway???

Mindful eating asks us to recognize the craving as sensation and ride that wave.  If we can complete the ride, new neurological pathways have been initiated that may help us create new, healthier behaviours.

Pausing before eating makes sense as hormones that signal hunger and satiation take time to emerge.  For example, ghrelin is often called the hunger hormone.  Its call is partly felt in the mesolimbic reward center of your brain, where feelings of pleasure and satisfaction are processed.  This hormone spikes on a schedule depending on when you are used to having this satisfaction of fuel.  Finding an alternative behaviour that also stimulates this pleasure center in the midbrain may help curb the craving.

There is leptin which is an appetite suppressing hormone.  It can take 20 minutes or more for the body fat, which produce leptin, to receive the signal that we have had enough.  For many of us, we can absent mindedly consume the cookies, some soda and some chips in that time.  There are other gut chemicals and at least two dozen other hormones that play a role.  The more overloaded the system is, the weaker the feedback loop becomes.  In other words, if we have a history of eating indiscriminately or more than we need, it gets harder to read when we really need fuel.

 So how can mindful eating help?

1. Ride the wave of sensation.  Feel the symptoms of craving food without judgement, without needing to act upon them.  Just for a few minutes.
2. Do something else.  Mindfulness practices such as breath watching meditation (three minutes is enough to initiate a change), easy stretching timed with deep breathing or focusing on physical sensations in other body parts like feet or hands can ground you.
3. Eating more slowly.  Take one or two Oreos and really register the colours, textures, smells and sounds of eating ever so slowly.  It may take 10 minutes just to eat one cookie!  
    

For a video guiding you to try mindful eating, please refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5DfLKgJP8c.

 

For more information on mindfulness, meditation and your health, please email yoganetworkniagara@hotmail.com.