An antidote to anxiety: My yoga journey
I have always been an anxious person, someone who agonizes over every blunder, blight and disturbance in life. Junior year, though, and its interminable complications inflated my anxiety to the brink of complete mental breakdown. Life turned pallid and thinned into a gaunt substitute for its summer counterpart.
My deliverance came from an unexpected source. It was not tender words of consolation nor was it a sprouting sense of self-conviction and resolution. It was the soothing guidance of a digital yoga teacher, and its subsequent hush of my inflamed angst. It injected a measure of unwavering calm into my headspace, able to weather even the most piercing and harrowing self-criticism.
Before yoga, I was still an active person. I played sports during my first two years of high school and continued to incorporate physical activity into my routine as a junior. I always cycled when possible and made sure to work out frequently. Yet all of this physical exertion was still different from yoga. It agitated and energized me; it didn’t soothe me. It distracted me from my problems, anesthetizing my worries instead of curing them.
In yoga, there is always an active search for tranquility. Its objective is not, like other sports, to burn and excite. Instead, it is to instill a solid serenity, releasing tension from tendons and stress from the muscles. The energy that embodies the action becomes singular and dense, sturdy and stolid. The movements are controlled, and the stretches are lengthy, interspersed within the practice. The instructor continually reminds you to breathe — to feel yourself inhale and exhale.
Yoga is the physical embodiment of the tenets of Buddhism. Yoga despises the frenetic, transient whims of the mind. Thus, yoga quietens the mind’s thrashing tremors into a muted hum. It focuses on only the facilities of the mind which are requisite for the task at hand. Yoga directs your consciousness to concentrate only on breathing and performing bodily contortions. The mind becomes an observer of the body, instead of vice versa. The mind quietly absorbs its environs instead of occupying all visible space with its own troubles, like it usually does. Essentially, yoga engages in meditation, both in the body and the soul.
The tranquility begotten by yoga lasts long after it ends as well. It instills a greater sense of clarity, which hovers above your travails throughout the rest of your day. Of course, one must repeat the exercise of yoga to perpetuate its benefits. But the euphoria after the activity lasts a lot longer than other workouts because it exercises the mind as well, in the art of restraint and detachment.
I must assert that yoga is not a panacea for all your grievances. It will not instantaneously cure your depression or your anxiety. But it is a wondrous way to cope, especially when your mental messes are less than severe. And although it is not a cure, yoga does venture beyond palliative care, when one adopts the perspective of yoga, a view that emphasizes a passive and appreciative observance of the world. Mental and physical issues can and have been laid to rest due in part to this restorative philosophy.