Yoga for anxiety

Welcome to your yoga for anxiety class. I created this class for you if you’re having a shit time and feeling anxious. 

I hope this class brings you back into your body rather than your busy mind and makes you feel grounded.

I grew up atheist, non religious, so the spiritual side of yoga when I first did my yoga teacher training, meant that I was quite weary of the yoga philosophy. 

However since teaching since 2016 and practicing yoga on and off for years. I felt that the parts of yoga philosophy did resonate with me.

This is the thing with practicing yoga, you may want to do a fancy pose or you may have started because it’s trendy at the moment. 

You would have felt something though while in a yoga class, you would have felt lighter, calmer and perhaps a little happier. 

Personally I have felt huge benefits from practicing yoga, more emotionally than physically. It also slowly introduced me to meditation, which I’d highly recommend if you’d like to find another practice to help with your anxiety.

This is why I’m finding it a little hard to share this class with you, anxiety and overthinking really does trouble me the best of times.

I’ve been hanging onto this video, unedited for months, but I’m taking little brave steps to show this to you and I truly hope that it helps to ease your anxiety.

It feels vulnerable to share that anxiety is definitely something which I feel quite often (thanks overthinking), however the one thing that does make my anxiety better is to move. 

To move out of my head, back into my body, to go for a walk or do yoga. 

Remember that it’s ok to feel anxious, that your feelings are valid, how you feel is valid but anxiety doesn’t have to define who you are.

Try just a teeny tiny bit to be kinder to yourself, I know this can be hard if you’ve spent year after year beating yourself up or talking negatively to yourself. 

Would you talk to your best friend or a family member this way, all the time? No you wouldn’t because that negative voice is mean. 

This is what yoga and meditation has taught me, that I am not my thoughts, that I have no power whatsoever to control what is going on in the world (I’m saying this as its July 2021 and we’re still in a global pandemic). 

You can control how you react to the world around you though, it does take a lot of practice. 

Yoga is a tool that you can use, to slow down, feel less anxious in your mind and more grounded in your body, more present. 

This video was filmed on a gorgeous sunny autumn day, on the hill overlooking the valley of Kurohime ski field over Mount Myoko with its rich autumn foliage. 

Yoga for anxiety sequence:

1. Child’s pose
2. Moon salutation
3. Downdog
4. Sun salutations
5. Downdog
6. Pigeon Pose (right)
7. Pigeon Pose (left)
8. Downdog
9. Lizard pose (right)
10. Lizard pose (left)
11. Forward fold
12. Warrior 2
13. Extended side angle pose
14. Triangle pose
15. ½ Moon pose (right)
16. ½ Moon pose (left)
17. Child’s pose
18. Nadhi Shodanna 
19. Shavasanna

I really hope that this yoga video makes you feel better, please let me know in the comments below how you felt and hopefully less anxious.