Anxiety can occur when we are mentally thinking about something that has either already happened or has not happened yet. Our bodies can experience an event just by rethinking or rehearsing it. It doesn’t know the difference.

Our bodies listen to our anxious thoughts and words.

And then our bodies respond with degrees of stress response. Our nervous system sends messages to our brain that all is not well: Our heart rate increases; our blood vessels narrow; our appetite and digestion slows or stops; and we feel like shite. This can even happen in small doses without you even noticing because you’re too distracted to notice. And then maybe it shows up in your body and whacks you down.

Anxiety is a state that is innately not restorative, not self-balancing and not self-healing.

If you want to be in another state, you have to BE in another state.

If you have chronic anxiety or stress, you will greatly benefit from moments where you just give up the ghost and actively relax. You can’t read your way into this change in physical and mental state, or think it. You have to physically disrupt your mind and your body’s response by physically changing how you move and breathe.

So how can we work with anxiety, especially when the perceived problem or stress, may not go away any time soon? Sometimes we can feel anxiety of just living, even when things are going ‘well’. Then we start to think that we are our anxiety. But we can change those labels by retraining the brain and nervous system connection. Through yoga practice.

By yoga I don’t mean putting your foot behind your head. That’s not yoga. Asanas (or postures) are hardly even mentioned in Yoga’s original text. Yoga’s sole purpose is to still the fluctuation of the mind. Sure, if we’re distracted by our bodies we need to release physical tension. But the purpose of that is so you can meditate and attend to calming the mind away from the labels and experiences of anxiety that we give ourselves.

To reduce anxiety, change your current state. The first line in Yoga’s ancient text is this: Now Yoga Begins. NOW. Not when things calm down. Not when you think you have time. But now.

Because who you will become is because of who you are now. And who you are now is because of where you’ve been.

So, we need to spend moments (40 minutes a day will create transformative change) and drop our stuff and just focus on now. Even taking one deep breath will change how you feel. Right now.

BeCalmed Studio’s Restorative MindRest classes can help transform anxiety to calm using gentle shapes, deep breathing, slow releases and the stunning guided meditation of Mind-Rest (Yoga Nidra). Relaxation happens in the moment. You don’t do anything other than what the body is designed to do. Rest and restore.

Restorative yoga helps to transform anxiety through intentional physical and mental calm.

Your body, your thoughts, your breath, your hopes, your experiences - they are all meshed together. Change one, something shifts. Loosen one, another strengthens. Our mind is powerful and likes to lead, so let’s trick it. In restorative yoga we can intentionally replace an anxious thought and body experience with “I am Calm:’ I – you, no one else, not the thing that you think is causing you the anxiety; AM – right now, this is what you are; CALM – the body, mind (and everything between and around) feeling of release from mental tension. A dropping down into a calm experience of now. And therefore your life.