how yoga reduces anxiety (With evidence!)

[00:00:00] Today's episode is a biggie because we're talking about something that so many of us experience, anxiety. From a low level, ongoing, niggling feeling that affects our ability to focus and feel well, right through to a clinical state that affects every aspect of life and well being.

Anxiety can be overwhelming, insidious, and completely problematic. But, it can also be misunderstood, as can the tools and mechanisms that can manage and reduce the impact of anxiety. In this [00:01:00] episode, we start off with What anxiety is including the impact that it can have on physical and mental health.

And then we look at why and how yoga is such an incredible tool in helping to reduce anxiety. And I'm not talking about waking up at 5. 30, 6 times a week to do a 90 minute practice. I promise. I'm talking about one class a week. Two if you can, more if you have the time. And your yoga can be on YouTube. I mean, we would love you to join us at Yoga Hero in Leeds, but if you don't have the financial means, or you're not in Leeds, or both, there are absolutely loads of options.

So once we've looked at the mechanisms by which yoga can help you. We then look at a realistic plan of feeding this into your life with some top [00:02:00] tips for starting your yoga practice. I feel like I say this all the time, but in the interest of full disclosure, the start of this episode, which is talking about the impact of anxiety is really, really doom and gloom, especially when we're talking about anxiety in the brain.

But I promise, promise, promise, promise that the bit about yoga's impact on the anxiety is really, really good news and really inspiring. Okay, let's go.

What is anxiety? Anxiety is a feeling that can show up in both mind and body and it often leads us to react in ways that we think will protect us. We can feel anxiety when something external happens like the stress of an upcoming meeting or a difficult conversation.

But it can also be triggered by our thoughts and memories, [00:03:00] by things that are not actually happening in the present moment, but they still cause distress. And it's really common to feel things like a racing heartbeat, trembling, shallow breath, a tight feeling in the stomach an inability to concentrate, grumpy, reactive, fractious or even like your head is about to explode.

So will take a bit more of a look anxiety, but to set the scene a little more, let's talk about fear.

Fear is a physical survival reaction that happens in response to a threat that's right in front of us. It's the fight or flight response that gets ready to act quickly in a dangerous situation.

Anxiety, on the other hand, is more of a worry that something could happen in the future or worrying about something that has happened in the past. So fear is the physiological survival response. [00:04:00] Anxiety is the mental process in response to worry. When anxiety takes over, it kind of hijacks the brain. So frustratingly, we don't always make the best choices.

If you're feeling really anxious about something that might happen in the future, it might, frustratingly, cause you to act in ways that make things worse. For example, let's say that you're really, really worried that you're going to lose your job. The worry keeps you up at night, and it takes over your brain during the day.

And this means that when you are at work, you're less focused, you're less efficient, and you're pretty grumpy, and ironically, that kind of behaviour might lead to the chances of losing your job being increased. Nightmare! So why did I mention fear? Okay. If you imagined that a saber toothed tiger was to walk into the room that you are in at the moment, what would you want to [00:05:00] happen?

What would you want to happen to give you the highest possible chance of survival? You would want access to all of your energy to fight or to run away. You would want your brain to totally focus on getting you out of the situation and not focus, for example, on that email reply that you need to send to Fred.

And you would want your immune system to step up in order to fight a potential infection caused by fighting a tiger. The really good news is that this is exactly what's happened. In this survival mechanism, blood is directed to skeletal muscles and to your brain to deliver oxygen and glucose so that these muscles and the brain have access to as much energy as possible.

A by product of this is that blood is directed away from like the digestive organs, the skin, the reproductive organs, and so on. Also, your [00:06:00] heart rate, blood pressure, and breath rate all increase to get the blood moving quicker around the body in order to deliver this oxygen and glucose.

The inflammatory response is activated to prepare to fight off infection. Like I say, this is a survival mechanism and it functions really, really well when the stressor is only around for a short time and it has an end point.

However, in the modern world we live in now, stressors generally don't last a short time and they generally don't have an end point. Stressors are less likely to be a saber toothed tiger. And they're more likely to be, what, a credit card debt, a disagreement with a family member, an increasing workload, and so on.

And the key takeaway here is that these situations are unlikely to have an end point. [00:07:00] And the impact is that this survival mechanism called the sympathetic nervous system continues to fire. Ultimately using up vital bodily resources, damaging tissues, and impeding your internal systems from carrying out their functions.

This is really relevant because all of this happens in response to feelings of anxiety too. Worrying about a saber toothed tiger coming into your room will activate all of this in your body.

I did say it was pretty doom and gloom and we are about to look at how yoga can help, which like I say is really good news and it's really inspiring. But before we do that, let's just pull out the things that can happen physically and mentally when we're anxious. The increased heart rate and blood pressure puts pressure on the heart.

That ready [00:08:00] for action in the muscles becomes tension, aches, and pains. Although the initial activation of the fight or flight response will probably make you be feeling quite alert, ongoing activation of this will leave you feeling tired, fatigued, exhausted and depleted. There's an inability to concentrate because the brain is focused on anything to do with your immediate survival.

And we're more susceptible to anxiety, and to perceiving situations as potentially dangerous or anxiety inducing in the future and this means that we get caught in an anxiety cycle. And lastly, more stress hormones such as cortisol and less happy hormones are released into the body. Phew.

That's a lot, right? Okay. [00:09:00] Let's dive into the good news. The many mechanisms by which yoga can help.

The mechanisms by which yoga can help.

Activating the opposite, the rest and digest response. The rest and digest response is the colloquial name for the parasympathetic nervous system. The good news is that when this is being switched on, the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight response that we talked about earlier, has to be being switched off.

And the amazing thing is that yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This decreases heart rate and can help reduce blood pressure, although that's kind of complicated and there's lots of things involved there. And this also will help blood flow return back to the skin, to the digestive organs, the reproductive organs, and so on.

[00:10:00]

Releasing tension from muscles. That ready for action feeling in the muscles is reduced in yoga. The methodical, and pretty yummy, stretching and strengthening of the muscles, depending on what style of yoga you choose, helps to release tension from the muscles, therefore decreasing aches and pains and muscular fatigue too.

Creating energy, not using energy. With yoga, the combination of focusing on the breath to help to bring you into the present moment, the therapy for the body is just discussed and so much more, all means that now the body can shift to create energy rather than using it up at a rate of knots, which is what happens in that [00:11:00] fight or flight state.

Hone the ability to concentrate. Now that your brain isn't on high alert for survival threats, it is more able to concentrate on whatever it is that you want to concentrate on. This sounds like not a big deal, but actually it has a direct relationship with how much joy we get from life.

By being able to concentrate on the things that you enjoy, you'll get more joy from them. By being present with the people whose company you enjoy, it's going to give you so much more satisfaction and so on.

Hone the ability to appraise situations for what they are. Okay, this is a big one. One of the things that I always think is quite troubling and insidious [00:12:00] about anxiety and stress is that more anxious you are, the more anxious you become. Anxiety creates anxiety unless we intervene and do something to actively manage it.

And there's an important, structure in the brain at play here, let's take a look at the amygdala. You may have heard of the amygdala before. It's often called the smoke alarm or the warning alarm, and essentially it is active looking for dangerous situations, looking for threats to survival.

The thing about it is, and this blew my mind. The more it's used, the bigger it gets, and so the more active it becomes. This means that if you're anxious for a little while, the amygdala becomes more anxious, so then you might perceive something that is not a threat, as a threat. [00:13:00] If you've ever been with someone where you are thinking, Oh my goodness, that person over there is looking at us so weird, or Oh my goodness, what was that noise?

And the person that you're with just isn't bothered or didn't notice and you think, am I overreacting? Or maybe you think, are they underreacting? This could be the reason why, maybe. So that's the amygdala, the warning alarm system. The amygdala, however, has what's called an inverse relationship with the prefrontal cortex, means that when we use the prefrontal cortex, it will quieten the amygdala.

And when done often over time, this will return the amygdala to normal activity. So, how do we activate the prefrontal cortex? Yes, you guessed it, [00:14:00] with yoga.

The prefrontal cortex is associated with rational thought. So, rational thought around inhale, lift the arms, exhale, fold forwards, inhale, put one foot there, exhale, reach a little further, et cetera, et cetera. This can downgrade the alarm system. In fact, a study from 2018 from Rotterdam showed that over a five year period, individuals regularly practicing yoga showed a consistent decline in amygdala volume. How cool is that?

Rebalance stress, hormones, and happy hormones. If you have any kind of background in endocrinology or neuroscience or anything like that, you will find this really basic and for that I'm sorry. But my highest priority is [00:15:00] giving everyone tools and information to work towards managing and reducing anxiety.

We've very briefly talked about cortisol before. The ongoing release of cortisol, a stress hormone, can have huge impacts on body and brain. However, when the stress response is downgraded through activities that activate the rest and digest response, such as yoga, cortisol production should return back to balance.

In fact, a 2016 study showed that in individuals regularly practicing yoga for just 8 weeks, their cortisol levels decreased. In theory, the reduction of cortisol will generally make you feel better, sleep better and will mean that this anxiety cycle, that cycle of anxiety creating more anxiety, that is [00:16:00] interrupted.

There's also norepinephrine and epinephrine, also known as noradrenaline and adrenaline to talk about. These are released in times of stress and the release of these decreases the release of some hormones named happy hormones such as gaba, however, a theory proposed by Gebag and Streeter proposed that slow, controlled breathing, like that kind of breathing that we do in yoga, can increase GABA. Another huge tick there.

Okay, let's take a breath because that was a huge amount of information. So before we bring this important episode to a close. I'd like to summarise and then do a little intention setting to help you start or restart or deepen your current yoga practice. [00:17:00] So in short, frustratingly, when anxiety is left to its own devices, it tends to increase in intensity.

However, yoga helps to manage and reduce anxiety by downgrading the stress response, returning the breath rate to balance, encouraging us to be mindful, activating the part of the brain that deals with rational thought, which quietens the alarm system, and by rebalancing stress and happy hormones.

This is all backed by evidence. Studies show that practising yoga does have all of these benefits. It's really, really incredible. That magical combination of moving the body in a mindful way, focusing on the breath, and activating the rest and digest system is just so, so beneficial for body and mind.

So [00:18:00] Hero, have a think about your average day or your average week. And have a think about where you could fit in a very short yoga practice, five minutes, or maybe where you could fit in half an hour or even an hour. Perhaps you get into the habit of going one evening a week after work. Perhaps you bring yoga into your workplace and you practice a lunchtime a week or two lunchtimes a week.

Perhaps you're an early bird, you wake up early and you generally tend to sit and read the news and have a coffee. Maybe one morning a week you swap that time for practicing yoga. From my heart, my advice would always be start small, experience the benefits, and then gradually build on that [00:19:00] practice with the understanding of the benefits in your body and mind.

Remember Hero, whatever you do will have a benefit. Just one minute, five minutes a day, an hour a week, it might be in your PJs before going to sleep, might be first thing in the morning, yep still in your PJs, it all adds up. Please don't let this episode be something to beat yourself up about. Start gradually, fit what you can in, where you can, and go from there.

And as always, happy, happy practising.