Yoga for Anxiety: A List of Yoga Asanas to Help Alleviate Your Anxiety

Anxiety is a mental health disorder that a large number of people have to deal with every day. Common symptoms of anxiety include panic, excessive worry, shortness of breath, nausea, fatigue, fear, and restlessness. These are difficult symptoms for a person with anxiety to live with, and they have to deal with one or more of these symptoms every day. Anxiety can be triggered, but it can also be a constant state for some people. It can prevent people from getting on with the things they either need or want to do and interferes with a person’s ability to function in society. This difficulty may be alleviated through various methods, including practicing yoga.

How Yoga Helps Anxiety

Yoga has been known to be a calming and empowering practice, especially for people who struggle with anxiety. Certain yoga poses and techniques teach people how to regulate their stress and take notice of how they are feeling. It’s ordinary in this day to live in a constant state of activity and stress because society claims that being busy is good for you. This often leads to burnout, and most people lack an understanding of how to handle this.

Yoga teaches people that it’s both okay and good for you to slow down and take a moment away from the busyness of daily life. Not only does it force you to sit with yourself and your thoughts, but it teaches you to understand yourself so that you can better handle situations that may be triggering. It brings together mental and physical practices that both calm you down and improve your physical capabilities. Here are four yoga poses that you can do practically anywhere and anytime to help with anxiety.

Yoga Asanas That Help with Anxiety

1. Child’s Pose (Balasana)

Ensuring your head is placed comfortably on the mat, take 5-10 long inhales and exhales. Return to a comfortable seated position once done.

Benefits:

• Laying with the head on the ground helps a person to feel comforted by themselves. It is a non-judgmental pose where the look of it doesn’t matter. It’s a calming pose because it allows you to focus inward on your breathing and makes it easy to block out the anxieties of the world.
• Additional benefits include a deep stretch in the hips and an elongation of the back muscles.

2. Corpse Pose (Svasana)

Laying with your hands either next to your sides or on your hips, take at least 3 minutes in stillness whilst focusing on your breathing. Use your hands to lift you back up to a seated position when you are done.

Benefits:

• Svasana is a pose of stillness. To be comfortable in the pose, you have to completely let go, which is relaxing and takes all tension out of the body.
• An additional benefit of Svasana is that it helps you go into a meditative state, which makes meditation easier whilst in the pose.

3. Seated Forward Fold (Paschimottanasana)

Use a yoga block or pillow to support your head and hold the pose for 10 breaths before using your hands to lift back up to a seated position.

Benefits:

• When folding in towards yourself, you are creating a safe space. This calms the nervous system and allows for deeper breathing.
• An additional benefit of a forward fold is that it stretches your hamstrings and over time can make you more flexible in that area.

4. Legs Up the Wall Pose (Viparita Karani)

Lying with your hands on your hips, hold the pose for 2 minutes before releasing and coming back to a seat.

Benefits:

• Legs up the wall pose helps to take away pressure from the head and neck area, producing a relaxing and letting-go effect.
• Additional benefits of legs up the wall pose include that it circulates your blood and can take pressure off of your lower back.