Are you feeling anxious?
Signs of anxiety may include feelings of worry or dread which can’t necessarily be defined, feeling jittery, a racing heart, butterflies, inability to relax or sleep, muscular pain and difficulty concentrating. Anxiety and stress can be confused, however stress is often a response to specific situations, such as a work deadline, whereas anxiety may arise for no apparent reason.
You could use this anxiety checklist from Beyond Blue to check if you have signs of generalised anxiety disorder, but if you’re like many people, you may sometimes experience anxiety. When anxiety starts to effect your every day life and limit you, it is definitely time to seek help. Kinesiology and yoga are two effective ways of relieving feelings of anxiety.
How can Kinesiology help anxiety?
Kinesiology can help you understand the reasons behind your anxiety and help you feel more relaxed and at peace with yourself. It can help you to process your feelings and emotions in a healthy way. Over time it can help you gain more understanding about yourself, rather than feeling at the mercy of your emotions or like you need to suppress how you feel.
It can also help to release the tension in your body – which may include tightness in your heart area, stomach pains (sometimes digestive problems), muscular pain in the shoulders, back, jaw or other areas of the body, headaches, etc.
Yoga and anxiety
When you’re feeling anxious, your body releases higher levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline from the adrenal gland (part of the fight/flight response) which can make you feel edgy and restless. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle!
A quick way to relieve these uncomfortable feelings is to do some high impact exercise, such as sun salutes. Increasing your heart rate and blood flow in this way seems to neutralise the anxious feelings.
Research also suggests that yoga increases the levels of GABA (a neurotransmitter regulating nerve activity), which helps improve your mood and decrease anxiety.
Try it and see! Listen to your body but five sun salutes on each side should be enough to feel a difference. Leave a comment to share what you noticed 
And if it’s too hard doing yoga by yourself, go see Nadine for a class in the Docklands!
What else have you found that helps anxiety?
Image by mikebaird
I have been trying to do around 5 rounds of the sun salute each morning for the last few weeks. I find that my mind really races throughout. Does anyone have any ideas to focus the mind while completing this sequence?
The best thing I’ve found for anxiety is meditation – either to a guided CD or to music. If I can do this daily, I find my ability to notice and calm my thoughts when they start to race at other times in the day improves.
Hmm it sounds like the meditation is more relaxing for you than movement maybe? Do you find walking quietens your mind or not necessarily? Anyway it sounds like you have a good solution for you. I really like meditating when I do it but I find I easily find excuses not to!!!!
x