Yoga for Anxiety

Yoga for Anxiety

The fundamental aim of this class is to support participants to tame the stress response. By reducing perceived stress and anxiety, yoga appears to modulate stress response systems. This, in turn, decreases physiological arousal — for example, reducing the heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and easing respiration. There is also evidence that yoga practices help increase heart rate variability, an indicator of the body’s ability to respond to stress more flexibly.

This class aims to work on activating the para sympathetic nervous system which provides our bodies with cues to ‘rest and digest’. This is achieved by using a carefully considered set of postures to support the nervous system to relax and to soothe the bodies alarm system and offers opportunities to calm the body down and self regulate.

This class will offer practical anxiety management strategies and opportunities to decrease feelings of agitation, distress and disconnection due to the constant effort needed to keep calm.

When it comes to the broader practice of yoga, many experts agree that a combination of asana, pranayama (breathing), and mindfulness (or some form of meditation) is likely to be most effective at quelling apprehension — on a basic level, meditative practices can help calm an overactive brain. “Anxiety is essentially worrying about the future, about bad things that haven’t happened yet and probably won’t,” says Jenny Taitz, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at The American Institute for Cognitive Therapy in New York. Anxiety tends to be future focused, therefore anything that keeps you in the moment is helpful.” And that’s exactly what yoga and meditation do. By paying attention to the way your body feels in postures or holding your mind on the feeling of the breath moving in and out of your nostrils, you keep yourself firmly anchored in the present moment.

By practicing regularly, you lower your baseline level of emotional arousal so when something bad happens or you have a worried thought, you meet it with presence, curiosity, and patience rather than fearful reactivity.

This class offers a safe space to explore these techniques, the class will be limited to 10 participants. This is a 8 week course and must be pre booked. Classes are 60 minutes for group sessions and are held at Pax Centre in West Leederville. Please contact us or call 9455 5440 to discuss your suitability for the group sessions.

Medicare rebates are possible through your GP for 6 classes. The rebate for this class will not impact your Medicare funded rebate for your individual therapy. Download a copy of a letter to present to you GP here.

Download GP Letter