Yoga saved my sanity….it’s true. Really.
I felt compelled to write this post the other day. As I write this, we’re approaching September and a new school year. There’s always a sense of excitement but also a bit of anxiety. Back into the regimented schedules. Busy days ahead. New projects on the go. My kids have new experiences ahead of them that they need help navigating. It’s a ‘full’ life. Then I remembered how much yoga helped save my sanity a while back. Even though I do yoga every day now, I don’t always use it in the most effective way. Sometimes it’s more about stretching than it is stress-reducing.
I had tried to get into yoga many times throughout my life and just didn’t get it…it was way too slow for my cardio addicted body and mind.
I don’t respond well to someone telling me to just ‘do’ something. Don’t just tell me that I should do yoga (or drink water or eat vegetables). I want to know WHY I should do yoga (or drink water or eat vegetables). I took a course at my local community centre to find that out. But even that didn’t help me to make yoga a regular part of my life.
It wasn’t until a few years ago when I started to have unexplained anxiety, that I gave yoga another try and it ‘stuck’.
This Stress Was Different
Like many people, I’ve always felt stress physically, but this was different. I would be standing at the counter at work and suddenly feel tightness in my chest for no apparent reason. It felt like I was having trouble breathing and that my heart was beating faster, but I’m not sure that either of those things was actually happening. It felt out of my control. I also experienced some new digestive stress and headaches, probably related to the distress I felt with this unexplained anxiety.
Meditation was the first thing that popped into my head. I should start meditating…it helps with stress.
But the idea of sitting still for any length of time and trying to stop my mind from racing seemed like an impossible task. And that made me more anxious!
Then I thought about how yoga is like meditation in movement. You use breath and focus while moving in a sort of meditative state. This is how my perception of yoga changed and allowed me to be more open to trying it again. This time, it worked. It was like magic.
I can’t put words to the emotional RELIEF I felt when doing yoga this time. And several years later, I still feel this way.
Yoga and Stress Relief
How I Got Started
I consulted good old Google and searched ‘Yoga for Stress Relief’. There were lots of YouTube videos to choose from. I decided to start with a short 15-minute video for beginners and did this for a few days in a row. Low and behold, I started to feel better. My digestive stress calmed down quite soon after and the headaches lessened. I started to look forward to these yoga videos and decided to try some longer ones. I could feel the tension leaving my shoulders with each ‘child’s pose’. I literally felt my muscles release.
It got to the point where I was doing 60-90 minutes a day. I didn’t have time for this but it seemed so essential to my health and well being that I made it work with my schedule. I tried all different types of yoga and various instructors. At that time, I preferred the slower moving Yin or Restorative Yoga. As my flexibility and health improved I looked to see if I could use yoga for strength and cardio fitness to replace some of my regular workouts. This is when I discovered Power Yoga.
My Favourites
Currently, my two favourite YouTube Yoga go-tos are Sean Vigue Fitness and SarahBeth Yoga.
Both have a huge variety of videos in varying lengths, for every level of experience. They offer lots of tips along the way on how to do the poses properly and how to modify based on your needs and skill level. Both instructors have paid sites as well, but I’ve only ever used their free content.
I like Sean’s references to 80’s tv shows, movies and music, and he doesn’t engage in a lot of typical ‘yoga speak’. He just gets right down to it in his sweat pants, tank top and ball cap. Sean’s expertise is Power Yoga but he has lots of other slower-moving videos too. One of my favourites is his 7 Day Morning Yoga Challenge.
SarahBeth is the one I go to when I need to relax and deal with stress, or if I have pain that I want to alleviate. She has videos for all sorts of symptoms and talks about how she uses yoga to relieve symptoms of IBS.
What I Do Now
I still do yoga every day, usually in the morning and the evening before bed. It might be for 15 minutes at a time, or it might be 45 minutes. Sometimes I go to a class (I love Hot Yoga) at a local gym but I usually use YouTube and just do yoga at home. I decide based on how I’m feeling and what I want to achieve with yoga that day.
I love the feeling of being flexible. I don’t moan and groan when I stand up from the couch like many of my peers do. I can easily sit down on the ground and jump back up. I don’t have those unexplained anxiety symptoms anymore.
Afterthought
Several years ago, before yoga, I started experiencing episodes of back spasms that seemed to come out of nowhere. This was new to me…I’d never had back issues before. It started one morning when I awoke with shooting pains in my middle back that actually caused me to yell out loud! My family didn’t know what was going on. As the morning progressed and I dragged myself to work, the pain eventually lessened and the yelling stopped but I had residual pain for a few days. This would happen every few months and I still have no idea what the trigger was. However, I realized after doing yoga for a year that these spasms didn’t happen anymore and I’ve not had one since!
Yoga helps me to feel younger.
Yoga helps me deal with stress and anxiety.
Yoga saves my sanity.
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