Easy ways to ease anxiety

Anxiety can be caused by anything. It doesn’t have one particular trigger to shoot it. Anxiety is simply the body’s natural response to stress. One can feel anxious from an exam, an interview, or even while talking to someone. You can’t really pin-point something and say that this is the only cause of anxiety. Having and facing a little anxiety is fine but it can become a problem if it starts affecting your daily life. Slowly, it can also lead to Anxiety Disorder when it starts becoming a star of constant fear, uneasiness, and excessive worry. This is exactly where Yoga comes into the picture.

Yoga enables you to hands and face life in a much better and composed manner, without getting super anxious about it. 3 Yogic techniques that help to overcome anxiety and replace it with confidence are:

 

1.  Dhanurasana: For this asana,

• Lie down on your abdomen with the hands by the side of the body, legs             together and forehead on the floor.
• Gently, grasp your ankles with your hands.
• Inhaling, lift your thighs, forehead, and chest off the floor, while taking the         legs away from the body.
• Exhaling, slowly release the asana and relax.

 

2.  Nadi Shadhan Pranayama: For this pranayama,

• Sit in any meditative position with the back straight and eyes closed.
• Close the right nostril with the thumb and inhale from the left nostril.
• Gently close the left nostril with the last two fingers, open the right nostril         and exhale.
• Keep repeating this for a few rounds and relax.

 

Both these techniques help to cool down the nervous system and further helps to overcome anxiety.

3.  Pratikpaksha Bhavana: This technique simply teaches us to think about the opposite of every negative situation. There must be a constant awareness of our thoughts. Then with conscious efforts, we must replace our negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones. We must try to find more solutions than digging up more problems.

Yoga strongly believes that anxiety is nothing but any other emotion that we experience, and it must be treated in a similar manner. When the emotions become out of our control, we end up feeling weak. We must, therefore, use our intellect over our emotions, which is also known as Vivek Buddhi. The easiest way to overcome anxiety is by keeping the mind busy.

Another way to ease anxiety is to first realise the situation. If you can do something about it, then do it, else, there is no point in worrying about it or getting anxious. The Yogic technique of Vairagya can help in this case. Yoga says, ‘Do your job right now, with the best of your capacity, and leave the rest to the Higher Reality.’ Try to see the situation objectively without getting yourself involved in it.

To keep your mind refreshed and busy, you can also try these activities, like:

• Sitting near a waterbody
• Taking a walk in the park
• Playing games
• Learning something new

 

Whether to have positive thoughts or negative thoughts totally depends on us. What we need to do to understand this is to look at situations objectively, without getting too involved. Yoga takes us from mindlessness to mindfulness.