Anxiety is a mental disorder that plagues many people across the world, myself being one of them. Though there are hundreds of medicines one can take to help control their anxiety, sometimes it is not enough. Others may have the weight of stress on them that the anxiety medicine cannot lift. Many people do not like to take medicine or have difficulties finding one that works for them. However, there is an alternate solution. Meditation, especially in yoga has been proven to help with anxiety. Some people practice it in addition to medicine, and others use it to treat their anxiety alone, without an accompaniment of any drugs or other treatments. At first this may seem crazy, and may make people wonder what makes it so beneficial and how is it so beneficial to people with mild to severe anxiety. Meditation in yoga makes the practice of yoga beneficial to people with anxiety because it makes it easier to meditate, and deals with the stress, pain, self-awareness, and confidence in people.

Medicines are one of the most widely used treatments for anxiety, but can be very costly, dangerous, and difficult to figure out which works best with each person. Medicine either blocks or produces more chemicals to treat anxiety. Yoga is a good treatment for anxiety because it is useful to relax and calm down. It also relieves bodily pain and strain that can be caused from excessive stress and anxiety. A treatment for anxiety besides medicine and yoga. Medicine is probably the most common one that many people use. If people are unable to take medicine or do not wish to take medicine they can try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Beck Cognitive Behavior Therapy’s website says that “CBT is a time sensitive, structured, present oriented psychotherapy directed toward solving current problems and teaching clients skills to modify dysfunctional thinking and behavior,” (Beck). It includes a variety of different techniques used to make a therapy for each individual. This was researched by Rebecca Gould. It states that CBT is effective for anxiety in adults (working-age people), but is less effective in older than working age people (Gould).

Yoga is commonly viewed as a form of exercise today. However, in an article written by Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, it is stated that yoga was originally was a “discipline involving postures and physical exercises, breath regulation techniques, and the control of attention and enhancement of mindful awareness through the practice of meditation,” (Khalsa). This form of meditation helped for people to grow spiritually and to gain a better understanding of themselves and their body and mind. There are various benefits that are linked to the practice of yoga, such as: “stress reduction, emotion regulation, improved mood and well being, improved cognitive functioning, enhanced respiratory function, improved physical flexibility, muscular strength, and neuromuscular performance,” (Khalsa). The abundance of benefits that stem from yoga are part of the reason that it has been practiced by millions of people for centuries. The benefits help to improve oneself mentally and help in self-discovery. Yoga has begun to become populated as a form of therapy for anxiety only in recent years, though. In 1971, the first study for yoga as a therapy took place (Khalsa).  This shows that researchers are not only finding new treatments for anxiety, but also new purposes for spiritual practices from centuries before us. The expanding studies and uses for yoga and the more links they find for yoga benefitting people with anxiety could possibly lead to people learning how to treat anxiety specifically for each individual and to gain knowledge about oneself and help someone maintain a healthier and more normal lifestyle that is not as impacted by anxiety. Self-awareness and confidence are things that people gain through the practice of yoga. Self-awareness is becoming more knowledgeable of oneself and understanding oneself to the fullest. Confidence is believing in oneself and being self-assured. Yoga can help to achieve this because through meditation, many people develop a stronger sense of self and learn more about themselves. This creates a stronger feeling of security in people which can lead to lessened anxiety because they are more sure of themselves and know what to do and how to react. They feel like they know who they are and what their purpose is. This feeling of belonging can create people to have an understanding of themselves and makes them feel needed and wanted. Having confidence can also help people to step outside of their comfort zone and do things that anxiety would have prevented them from doing.  

Meditation is a practice that is difficult to master. If one is able to master this, the benefits are abundant and aide in so many ways. During traditional meditation one would sit and clear their mind, just trying to focus on breathing, but that makes it easier for the mind to stray and get distracted. Meditating in yoga makes it a little bit easier because you are focusing on the motions you are doing and your breathing, which helps to clear the mind and focus on oneself. It can help one be at peace with themselves and to be present in the moment and focus on their breathing. Meditation helps to focus on what you are doing in that moment and to focus on the breaths taken. Through doing this, it is easy to find oneself and discover who you really are and your purpose. It leads to a plethora of realizations about oneself and can benefit someone in several ways. It can increase self- awareness, give purpose, make someone become self- actualized, and create a confidence in themselves that can lead to many self- discoveries and make one more social and less anxious.

Yoga helps to deal with various types of pain, and is beneficial to many different kinds of pain. Carlo Faravelli and a group of other researchers did a study searching for ways to be able to tell if someone has anxiety, because the mental disorder can be very discreet. He discovered that the only thing that really separated people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder from people without it was muscle tension, especially in the lower back (Faravelli, et. al.).  This is a small indicator, but may be helpful to figure out if people have anxiety. This muscle tension can be helped through yoga. Yoga helps to stretch and loosen the muscles, as well as to bring peace and calmness to the mind. The combination of this is part of the reason it is so useful for pain. It does not allow one to focus on the pain, and works on healing it. In another study, Jordan Karp and other researchers studied the effects that anxiety has on older adults with lower back pain. They found that when someone has anxiety and CLBP (chronic low back pain), it results in many negative impacts such as people not being as functional and being less healthy. Luckily there are many possible treatments, some that may be used with each other (Karp, et.al). Anxiety has many negative impacts on people. It can be associated with stress, paranoia, fear, and can sometimes lead to irritability.

Though there are many benefits to yoga, some people think otherwise, and focus on the negatives of it, although the positives outweigh the uncommon negatives by a landslide. Some of the arguments that have been said was by a mental health blog, Mental Health Daily. They do not argue that meditation is bad for people, but they argue the dangers of it.  They argue that one needs to be aware of what kind of meditation they are practicing, because that can impact the brain differently and possibly cause them to have more anxiety (Mental Health Daily). Although they argue this, it has been scientifically proven that the practice of the kind of mediation in yoga is beneficial for anxiety.  They also argue that the duration and frequency of meditation can harm oneself. (Mental Health Daily). It is true that it should not be practiced overly often or for prolonged periods of time. Yoga classes generally last for about one hour and people go a few times a week, because many people do not have time to go every day. This helps to regulate how often people go to yoga and how often they perform that type of healthy meditation. They also argue that the technique is critical and one needs to be sure that they are practicing with an experienced and qualified instructor who uses and teaches proper techniques. This is to avoid people getting upset or frustrated which could increase their anxiety. It also could cause injuries if the instructor you are working with is not a professional. (Mental Health Daily). The people at yoga studios are generally very practiced, professional, and knowledgeable about yoga and how to properly practice it with good techniques. They need to get certifications to work and train. This helps to protect against any mishaps from occurring.  

Anxiety and yoga is an important thing to research because some people are medically unable to take medicine and for others it is against their religion to take medicine. People also may not find a medicine that works for them, or works how they want it to. Having the additional option to practice yoga can be affordable, helpful, and is all natural. It is especially beneficial for people who have severe anxiety. This is because their medicine may only help with some but not all of it, so the additional treatment of the practice of yoga would be very beneficial. Since so many people are affected with generalized anxiety, there are countless reasons to continue research and to broaden the understanding in hopes of finding an even better method to help the treatment for anxiety one day.

Many people have shared personal experiences involving the benefits of yoga to help their anxiety. In one article, Ginny Graves discussed the story of a woman named Eden Posner. Posner developed anxiety much later in her life. She had been prescribed medication by a psychiatrist, but “didn’t like the way it made her feel because it blunted her feelings”. She then went and talked to her primary care doctor and one of the first things they suggested for her to do was yoga. Within one month of doing yoga three times a week, the amount of panic attacks she experienced had lessened (Graves). In this article, many other examples are given of doctors recommending yoga for patients with anxiety. Another story was told by a woman who spoke on TEDxTalks named Shannon Paige. She was a woman who battled cancer at the age of 21 and toward the end of her treatments, she went to yoga. She was very depressed and anxious, but through doing yoga she had been enlightened and returned to her normal self. (Paige). Her story was inspiring because she talked about how depressed and unlucky she felt even though she survived and put on a fake happy face to make those around her know that she was okay. She says that going to yoga helped to get her ‘back in her body’. She said that it made her feel better. These stories are just a few stories of proof of how anxiety really benefits people in real life.

There are many reasons that yoga works to decrease anxiety. There are various changes that go on in the brain and the body when someone is participating in the practice of yoga. Studies show that people who practice yoga typically have a higher level of amino acids. Amino acids aide in the functioning of the brain and the central nervous system. They also increase calm feelings. People who do yoga also have higher levels of GABA, which is linked to better moods. GABA is an amino acid that sends messages to the nervous system to tell the brain and body what to do. The three parts of yoga, (posture, breathing and meditation) produce positive changes in immune functionality, metabolism, and insulin levels. This is important because insulin helps to produce serotonin, which makes people feel good and happy (McKay).

Yoga has been proven to be a beneficial and useful practice not just for relaxation and exercise, but for help to decrease the severity of anxiety in people. Many people with severe anxiety practice yoga in addition to taking medicine in order to help control their anxiety even more so. This is helpful because people can get more from their treatment and can feel immensely better. A combination of the two treatments helps to ensure that one has a significant decrease in anxiety and to ensure that they can live as happy, normal, and stress-free of a life as possible. Some people who do not wish to take medicine with mild anxiety choose to just practice in yoga and it works just the same. It is important to have these options available to people, and to be able to give many methods that can overlap because one method may work, but not enough as they would like.

Thousands of studies have been done on yoga and how it is linked to anxiety. Anxiety is also the leading mental disorder in America. This makes it very relevant for people to understand and be able to help and use to aide in their treatment of anxiety. Anxiety is a disorder that can be very difficult to cope with, and can be very severe. There are countless ways that anxiety is helped by the practice of yoga, as shown in the various examples above. Meditation in yoga makes the practice of yoga beneficial to people with anxiety because it makes it easier to meditate, and deals with the stress, pain, self-awareness, and confidence in people. Without studies to discover this, people could have worse anxiety than they currently have. The link between anxiety and meditation in yoga is a critical discovery that has benefited millions of lives across the globe.
