5 Ways Yoga Helps You to Live a Stress-Free Life
The world we live in today makes it almost impossible not to experience stress in our day-to-day lives. Our society has such a strong focus on do, do, DO that we often don’t give ourselves that much needed time to relax and unwind. In the last decade, yoga has grown in popularity and we can’t help but wonder if perhaps these two have a direct correlation with one another.
First, What is Yoga?
If you aren’t aware of what yoga is, we’ll provide you with a brief and clear glimpse into this ancient Indian practice. Yoga is a spiritual practice incorporating mind, body and soul, which aligns our physical body with our breath through different postures and positions. Much of yoga is focused around breath control as well as releasing emotional and physical build up in our bodies. So how exactly does this tie-in with stress?
Second, What is Stress?
According to an article by BBC Science, “Stress is the hormonal response that stimulates the production of adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones are essential when it comes to our ‘fight or flight’ response which are ideally triggered in life-threatening events.” However, it seems this hormonal reaction is happening on a much more frequent occasion, putting our bodies and our minds in a consistent state of pressure and fatigue. Doesn’t it seem like what we are in need of is a practice incorporating both our bodies and minds that allows us to release this build-up of tension and cortisol? Well, luckily for all of us, such a practice already exists.
Living a Stress-Free Life with Yoga
To dedicate yourself to the practice of yoga is clearly an initial and very vital step to this process. However, there happens to be another step that is equally as important. When referring to yoga in its most primordial definition, it directly translates to union of body, mind, and soul. This connection between the layers of ourselves is something that must bleed into every aspect of our daily lives beyond the walls of our supportive and calming environment of a yoga studio. Not only will we cover the ways in which yoga lowers your stress levels, but how these very same tools can be applied to the rest of our lives.
1. Relaxing the Body
It often takes one yoga class to realize the extent of the tension we hold within our bodies. Many postures and poses within the practice of yoga provide a deep amount of comfort and release. Two of my favorites happen to be forward fold and any form of inversion. The subtle surrender of each and every muscle that are used to being balled up in tension is an experience that words may never be able to capture. Although some styles and practices of yoga can prove to be more strenuous, the higher rate of activity can be equally met with the drawn out postures which elongate our muscles and tissues. Applying this physical relaxation to our lives outside of yoga can benefit our posture as well as our calm and ease within our bodily homes. Welcoming a more consistent state of bodily peace can rewrite many of our neural pathways from unconsciously allowing stress to settle in our bodies.
2. Relaxing the Mind and Calming our Thoughts
Meditation is known to be one of the greatest antidotes when it comes to stress. The practice of yoga is a collaborative effort between the two as your breath becomes the central point of focus as you flow into each distinctive pose. Stress can create quite a mess in our minds and cause us to even enter into a state of panic and frenzy if we are not equipped with the tools to calm ourselves down. The power of awareness around our breath gives us the space to breathe without the insistent nagging of stressful and negative thoughts that may so often occupy our mental space.
Yoga creates a gentle opening into the practice of meditation, creating a more appealing approach by aligning the breath with our movement and still providing for a short integrative meditation session at the end. Developing this awareness can influence every moment of our lives by choosing to become mindful of our breath and calm down any thoughts that are surging through our heads.
3. Deepen our Connection with our Breath
When you are stressed, there is a good probability that you aren’t being mindful of your breath. Our sympathetic nervous system goes through a certain level of shock when our body registers stress and adapts to ensure our survival. Basically, when adrenaline and cortisol are released in our body we aren’t allowing for nice deep breaths of oxygen to flow through our lungs. Short, rapid breaths lack awareness and presence, not only with the air moving through our nostrils, but with our entirety of being.
In the practice of yoga, breathing becomes more efficient and utilizes full-lung inhales and exhales as well as an activation and inclusion of our diaphragm. Certain breathing techniques were created specifically for treating symptoms of stress and can be further researched and practiced. But overall the long and deep breaths encouraged throughout yoga are enough to calm your body and mind as well as create a deeper relationship with your breath.
4. Unifying our Body and Mind
When anxiety and tension plague our bodies and our minds we create a sense of separation between the two. The stressful thoughts bombarding our minds may push us to keep going when our bodies could be telling us they need a break. This is when we see injuries occur and even illnesses develop from this very disconnect as the result of stress.
Entering a container that is supportive and encouraging of emptying your mind and relaxing your body allows for that bridge to reconnect. Intuition plays a very big role in all of this. When the mind and body become united there is a seamless form of communication between the two that allows us to sense when we need to adjust our foot or flatten our backs, all in order to prevent injury or to release tension building up.
When we bring this connection outside of the yoga studio, we can nurture this communication and develop respect for our own boundaries we may not have been aware of before. This can assist us in mindfulness in our physical movements.
5. Releasing Emotional Energy
Each and every one of the above tips all work in assisting us to release emotional energy. Believe it or not, emotions are stored in the body, and the more tense your body is the more tense your emotional state is as well. Moving through our tension with mindful breathing creates a comfortable and soothing opening for us to release a lot of pent-up feelings.
Stress can wear many masks that often disguise many of our true feelings as something else. Instead of stepping into the vulnerability to admit our emotions, we often project them in some other way and onto some other thing. Yoga has a way of eliminating this kick the cat syndrome and curates such an environment that allows for individuals whom are burdened with whatever emotional luggage can find a way to slowly let go, even if they aren’t aware of it.
Many of the postures engage our hips, backs and shoulders, which tend to carry most of our tension– emotional, physical and psychological. By opening up these parts of our bodies we soften many of the areas we have hardened that make stress such a habitual reaction for ourselves. This then allows for us to feel many of our repressed emotions as well as have more opportunities to respond from authenticity rather than reacting from stress and tension.
As you can tell from the 5 tips above, yoga goes beyond what we practice in the yoga studio. To truly incorporate its teachings there must be an acceptance for it to permeate all aspects of our existence. In doing so, stress becomes a less frequent reaction in our day to day lives and opens up the possibility to respond from a place of awareness that will actually feel good. To feel peace and calm in both our physical and mental states is an experience every human being should have access to. Yoga is that opportunity. To practice yoga is to be given the key to moving beyond our society’s demands and open our bodies and minds to the potential of living a stress-free life.
References:
https://www.doyouyoga.com/6-ways-yoga-can-help-you-reduce-stress/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/21685448