Overcoming Fear and Yoga

Can Yoga empower you enough to conquer your worst fears? It’s almost impossible to conquer fear without a serious effort. Fear holds us still, stops our progress and distorts our reality.

Yoga offers the path to self-realization. It is a holistic way of life. And when practiced “correctly” with the right bhavas (attitude) and devotion, it infuses and focuses your scattered energies, thereby helping to overcome ailments of fear, anxiety, and stress.

Overcoming fear with Yoga is not that simple unless you actually put in the consistent effort and enough practice. Yoga is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

Fear is unfocused energy and a scattered flow of energy. All matter is mostly composed of energy potential or kinetic energy. Yoga is a scientific system of living life correctly and regulating this flow of energy.

A focused mind, body, and soul are fearless. Yoga helps to realize and focus on this crucial balance. If you find yourself burdened with anxiety and depressed most time, they are living in the past. If you find yourself fearful and tensed, you are living in the future. Yoga aligns these dysfunctions and helps us to live in the present moment which is now.

Yoga poses, pranayamas, and meditation with proper breathing exercises help to overcome fear. Challenging postures and sequencing yoga poses help to put the right focus. Most times after the first 30 seconds, muscles start shaking and quaking. Initially, one experiences sweat and a little discomfort, and one is trying to relax, breathing heavily and trying to calm down. Eventually, you master the difficult posture, and a sense of achievement brings a smile and contentment.

Meditation also helps to perceive the insights and helps rectify the problem at its root.  There will be a temporary increase in perceived anxiety, but these feelings soon disappear once you reflect, breathe easy and ponder over the actual reason for your fear and anxiety. As you repeatedly meditate, you find yourself breathing out anxiety and fear. Holding Padmasana for 2-minutes with alternate breathing pranayama lowers the blood pressure and calms the nervous systems.

All yoga Asanas help to reduce fear, to name a few are Parvatasana, Talasana, Konasana, Chakrasana, etc. Normally, it’s not so much about the poses or the practice.  The emphasize is more importantly on the ‘bhava’ which makes all the difference.

Some of the ‘bhavas’ are:

Worry, fear, stress, and anxiety, are ingredients which work together to drain the life energy from all of us. If we allow worrying, fear, stress, and anxiety, to control our lives, we can create a negative cycle of energy which shortens our life spans. Adopting Yoga as a way of life offers solutions to your fear & anxiety and makes you stay focused with great energy.