How Yoga & Somatics Can Help Soothe Anxiety

This article was first published in Om Magazine

Survival mode on constant alert

Stress reactions are an important part of our self-defence mechanisms, they bring fear and negative thinking to save our lives in dangerous situations, but these thinking and emotional whole mind-body responses can become stuck when life seems relentless challenging. When we react to people or situations in ways that can seem inappropriately strong, it is a sign that the 'fight-or-flight' stress response has become stuck in hyperarousal and continually signals that the world is 'unsafe'. This is part of the stress response via the sympathetic nervous system, which is there for self-protection and survival, but is only able to respond in a primal, whole body way.

Yoga has shown in many studies to bring down this 'constant alert' and allow the self-soothing mechanisms of the opposing and calming parasympathetic nervous system (1). Addressing this sensitivity to jump to a heightened nervous system can have a knock-on effect to other expressions of the same root cause; sleep, addictive tendencies, mood swings and the ability to act reflectively rather than impulsively under stress.

How Somatic practice adds into this effect:

Somatics offer movement that are more pulsatory and explorative than 'traditional' yoga asana or postures. This offers an opportunity to drop away from getting somewhere, or attachment to an endpoint or idealised body form. This can offer the mind a rest from the drive and pull of doing more and achievement, letting into drop into more curious modes that foster the embodied awareness that of where are and how we truly feel; beneath what we might think we feel. This is where the process of fostering safety within our bodies needs to begin and keep coming back to. 

 
Stilling the agitated mind - the research

The mind-quieting or 'stilling the mind' (according to Patanjali) that is the aim of yoga is the state where racing mind tendencies of anxiety can fall away. Practicing yoga with an emphasis on increasing interoception (noticing and feeling our inner landscape) helps the body awareness that switches off left-brain chatter. Holding a compassionate space to feel whatever physical and emotional sensations that arise can help those whose inner voices may tend towards catastrophising and fearful thinking. Feeling these as tones and flavours rather than needing to interpret or analyse is part of the route to mental peace.

Studies have shown that postural, meditative and breathing yoga practices increase levels of the calming neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-amino butyric acid), shown to be low in those with anxiety levels in the body (3) (4). GABA is sometimes referred to as the brain's peacemaker, as it inhibits persistent and worrying thoughts (literally 'stilling the mind'), allowing us to regulate brain activity, relax and sleep.

How Somatic practice adds into this effect:

Movement that is allowed to be curious and expressive takes up our attention and allows us to feel where our boundaries and sense of 'enough' might lie. This helps ease the mind from more 'top-down' constant decision-making and running the show, handing over the reigns to more nuanced 'bottom-up' moment-to-moment inner perceptions and trust. 

Breathing ourselves calm

Stress and anxiety use up oxygen at a fast rate and can create dominance on the inhalation, even to the point of hyperventilation. That's why modern yoga teaching often focusses on the releasing exhalation, not because it's more important, but because we need to address this imbalance from over-stimulated to self-soothing.

Allowing spacious out-breaths that go right to their end point can help increase oxygenation, spare vital nutrients, reduce heart rate, relax muscles and reduce anxiety. Our brains needs three times more oxygen than the rest of the body, so increasing this supply can have immediately positive effects on how we feel able to respond to the world around us by all-over communication throughout the body, including that between the brain, spinal cord and nerves.

Even becoming aware of where we might breathe in over the end of the exhalation can help, especially if practising stronger postures. It is part of yogic consciousness to find the ease within strength that doesn't set the pattern that our practice is any way another stressful event.

The resilience and adaptation that yoga can help has shown to help reduce emotional interference; when we have fast reactions from the fear-based and emotional limbic system - part of our more ancient and survivalist brain. A recent study stated that "yoga may help improve self-regulatory skills and lower anxiety", from 45 yoga practitioners and 45 matched controls, it showed that "The yoga group presented lower emotion interference...... (and) rated emotional images as less unpleasant and reported lower anxiety scores relative to controls." (2)

How Somatic practice adds into this effect:

Fostering consciousness of breath rather than simply get into the 'doing' of breath techniques offers the embodied awareness that lets us know we are listening in to our own states, needs and boundaries. Finding the release and emptying out of the exhalation in relation to protective and softening movements helps to lay down new associations with breath and our nervous system states. 

 
Example Practice: Belly Circling

When the brain is busy and telling us all kinds of stories, focussing into what is actually true deep into our bellies can help convince our whole mind-body that everything is actually safe. Circling from the belly creates a moving meditation at both soothes and catches up the mind's attention.

From any seated position, from a lifted spine begin to circle the whole torso, making circles with the crown of your head. Keep the shoulders uninvolved and the chin drawing lightly into the throat, so that the movement comes from the belly and the front brain, jaw and eyes can stay soft.

Allow yourself to get caught up in the rhythm of the movement and it may feel organic to inhale as you lift round and back and exhale as you sweep around forward. Change direction when it feels right and fully experience the difference in flow and ease counter to the way you picked first.

As with all mindful practices, when your brain (naturally) wanders, notice and bring it back kindly, but firmly – as you would a small child, without judgment or criticism. In this way, you train your mind towards more steadiness and ability to drop beneath distraction and stories of what is happening. Focus on the actual experience in your belly instead to drop down from any agitation in the mind.

How Somatic practice adds into this effect:

Listening into guidance from the unconscious realm of the belly (rather than the often ambitious pull of the mind) can let us feel the nuances and subtleties of what we need moment-to-moment; this helps us navigate and explore the potency of 'less is more'. 

 
Practices for Processing, Assimilating and Integration

Whilst stronger, standing poses can be beneficial to help regulate stress hormones and  create resilience in life, focussing on practices that are cooling, calming and literally more grounding can have a profound effect on anxiety and agitation that is here now. Being physically close to the ground can create a real sense of safety when much of anxiety-provoking modern living has us lost up in our heads. The ground is a supportive and trustworthy place to come back to and can help us receive the signals that there is nowhere to fall, that we don't need to be supporting ourselves and if we can lie or sit down, we must be safe, nothing is chasing us. Any practice that involves sitting, lying or being on all fours can evoke these feelings.

Laying on the ground in whichever way feels most supportive, for a minimum of fifteen minutes allows our nervous systems to come to a deep, somatic state where full release and relaxation are possible.

How Somatic practice adds into this effect:

Much of mental agitation comes from not knowing where our body is when we live 'from the head'. Movements that pulse, rock, twist and rebound can help wake up parts of us that may have become stuck as we cultivate our ability to self-soothe through embodied awareness. These can help create a sense of presence and spaciousness that allows us to move inwards with compassion in practices such as savasana. 

 
References:
1. Health Psychology Review, 2015; 15:1-18
2. Psychological Reports, 2015; 117(1):271-89
3. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 2010; 1145–1152
4. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2015; 15:85

If you'd like to study more on these mindful, somatic and therapeutic practices I invite you to look at my Therapeutic Somatics for Yoga Teachers certification. The 170 CPD hours are made up of my Somatics for Yoga Teachers course and Yoga & Somatics for Healing & Recovery.