Yoga is an ancient Indian science that began thousands of years ago, long before the first religions and belief systems born. .
The aim of Yoga is to bring balance and health to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the individual. “Yoga” means “Union” of the individual consciousness with the Universal Consciousness in a super-conscious state of mind and spirit, known as Samadhi.
Yoga is popularly understood to be a sequence of physical postures (called “asanas”) and breathing exercises (pranayama = breath control). Practicing yoga, each breath is connected to each movement of the body, calming down the mind and bringing to a state of super consciousness with the Universe.
Yoga entered the Western world in the 19th century with the translation of some yogic texts. In 1893 Swami Vivekananda introduced yoga to the USA and authored many books. After that, many teachers who studied in eastern countries, mostly in India, moved to the United States founding yoga centers and publishing books that aided the growth of yoga practicing in the USA.
Publishing yoga books helped spreading and popularizing the benefits of yoga in the Western world.
Yoga is not a religion, it is the science of the well being, for those who seek balance, peace of mind and connection with the Self.
Beyond the physical aspects of yoga, which are important and effective for strengthening the body, medical yoga also incorporates appropriate breathing techniques, mindfulness, and meditation in order to achieve the maximum benefits for people’s health.
A lot of medical studies have shown that yoga can improve and preserve our health in different ways.
In this article I want to talk about healing anxiety through yoga. This is a topic that impassions me a lot, being that in my family we all suffered from anxiety from generations.
For those suffering from anxiety Yoga can be life-changing, and that’s why nowadays doctors are increasingly recommending the yoga practice as a complementary therapy.
And here’s my story with yoga and how I found my purpose as yoga instructor.
Some time ago my young daughter started manifesting physical symptoms, associated with hypochondria. She's always been a smart, strong and courageous woman, since she was 12 she decided she wanted to travel across the world, in fact at the age of 19 she moved to the United States, where she is currently studying and living her life.
I did never found out she was hypochondriac, although at a certain point, for any unknown reason, she suddenly started manifesting symptoms and nobody could understand why.
Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong in her body, her medical exams were good so nobody could explain the why of those symptoms…. dizziness, light headedness, symptoms like hot and cold sensations in different parts of the body, tingling, muscle spasms, electric shocks…. this situation last for months, almost a year….
It was difficult to me to deal with a young girl who was constantly thinking she was going to dye. She started manifesting anxiety first and compulsive obsessive disorder later.......because of her excessive worrying about health and death.
Desperate for help, we made many appointments with her primary-care doctor, many specialists, chiropractor, acupuncturist, therapist, hypnosis .... We really tried everything.
But there was something that came up in my mind and that we did not try yet, Yoga.
I knew that Yoga could help her relax her mind, be more aware of her body and emotions, and handle what was happening.
I have to confess I was quite worried and I did not know what to do to calm down her mind and all the bad thoughts that were constantly growing and floating in her head. I knew I had to find a solution. Doctors could not explain what was happening to her and the only possible reason why she was having all those symptoms had to be anxiety and stress, Doctors too were recommending holistic activities to calm down her mind, like yoga and meditation.
We never had any answer from the medical science, and never would…. This is the reality.
We started having together yoga classes three or four days a week, and within few months she was sleeping better and her bad thoughts had almost gone away. Also the symptoms had progressively reduced.
The breathing helped, and being present in the poses taught her to stay in the moment and observe what was happening.
Yoga was such good for me and my daughter and I'm so grateful I had to go through this undesired moment in my life that enlightened me. This is how I found my purpose, which is helping other people overcome anxiety and stress, let go negative thoughts, release pain and find balance through Yoga.
After practicing yoga and meditation for a while, my daughter’s conditions were getting better till symptoms almost completely disappeared.
That’s why I bought my flight ticket to India and got my teaching certification. I feel so grateful I could turn such an undesired event of my life into something greater for myself and for other people. This is my story with yoga, and maybe what I had to go though happened for a reason.
Why did I tell you my story with yoga? If you are suffering from anxiety or are experiencing stress-induced disorders, I believe you would find benefit through practicing yoga, and I would be glad to help you through this.
Stress and stress-induced disorders like hypertension and angina are growing very fast in the modern society. This is the result of our stressful life, full of worrying and worrying, doing and doing.
It is proven that Yoga is the best way for preventing many disorders as well as managing stress and anxiety. In fact, while practicing yoga one connects to its breath, and breathing deeply and slowly has the effect of calming down the mind.
Calming the mind has the effect of giving balance and calming the body, and disorders stop to manifest.
Many researches have shown yoga to have an immediate down-regulating effect on hypothalamo pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic nervous system.
Medical studies show that yoga decreases levels of salivary cortisol, glucose, hypertension and blood pressures.
Yoga, together with relaxation and meditation, has been also shown to have psychological effects, decreasing anxiety and increasing good feelings of well-being.
Since the 1970s, meditation and other stress-reduction techniques have been studied as possible treatments for depression and anxiety, although in that period yoga received less attention in the medical literature. Later on it has become more and more popular and now yoga science is spreading fast all over the world.
By reducing perceived stress and anxiety, yoga appears to modulate stress response systems. This, in turn decreases physiological stimulus, reducing the heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and improving respiration. There is also evidence that yoga practices help increase heart rate variability, an indicator of the body's ability to respond to stress in a more flexible way.
In 2008 some researches were conducted at the University of Utah, through MRI’s, between two groups of patients, people practicing yoga and people not practicing yoga, and it was found out that the yoga practitioners had the highest pain tolerance and lowest pain-related brain activity during the MRI.
This study validated many alternative techniques, such as yoga, as activities that can help a person regulate their stress and pain responses.
In some other studies, it has been found that people practicing yoga can achieve a state of deep psychosomatic relaxation associated with highly significant decrease in oxygen consumption within 5 min of practicing savitri pranayama which is a slow, rhythmic and deep breathing, and shavasana, the most important pose in yoga when one relaxes and looks to be asleep.
In 2011, Harvard researchers analyzed a nationally representative sample of people and found out that 3 percent of the population had been advised by their health care practitioners to use holistic therapies like yoga and meditation. More than a third of those prescriptions were referred to people diagnosed with anxiety.
Over the world a lot of seminars and meeting are taking place on yoga and meditation, over and over.
This is the sign that the world is changing, people are becoming more aware and interested in non-drug alternatives to treat anxiety.
Yoga can work and instead of just treating the symptoms like drugs do, it actually helps people to learn to overcome their worries and live a better quality of life.
When you’re anxious, your mind can get crushed away with worrying about things that might happen, or might never do, and that actually makes you feel worse and can cause insomnia.
Meditation can help with this, since it teaches staying in the moment, recognizing worrying thoughts when they’re happening, and preventing them from getting worse.
For many patients dealing with depression, anxiety, or stress, yoga may be a very good way to better manage symptoms and calm down their mind.
By the way, my daughter is now a completely different person, good feelings are back in her mind and heart, she is again the strong, joyful and brave girl she's always been.
I believe that Yoga will save the World.
Namaste.
Sabina Liberatore
#BenefitsofYoga #StressManagement #StressInducedDisorders #MentalHealth #Wellness #YogaTherapy #MindBodyConnection #HolisticHealth #YogaForStress #YogaHeals