Yoga + Anxiety

I craft my yoga classes to surprise, delight, and challenge students.? Finally, I include a dash of the unknown. This cocktail of uncertainty and appropriate but not overwhelming difficulty (aka STRESS) makes my students strong. I constantly change my teachings to prevent plateaus in strength and stamina.? Students never know what will happen next…uncertainty keeps them engaged.

While too much uncertainty induces anxiety, removing anxiety entirely makes the person laissez-faire and lax.? Dealing with uncertainty and anxiety is more useful than trying to banish anxiety altogether.? A study of appropriate stress levels found that some stress makes the brain appropriately stimulated while too much stress can be debilitating.

For several years during the pandemic, we lived with so much certainty that addiction, suicide, and depression increased.? A recent British study showed that those who learned to embrace the unknown and accept uncertainty had a fierce resiliency that reduced their COVID 19 symptoms.?? This study linked failure to cope with uncertainty to avoidance, substance abuse and reclusive behaviors.

How much anxiety and uncertainty are beneficial?

According to Dr. Wendy Suzuki, author of the book Good Anxiety, stress is necessary to grow and achieve new skills.? Simply taking deep breaths can help the body fight anxiety.? Additionally, physical exercise relieves tension and stress.? In my complex, challenging yoga classes, I teach students to breath and move to manage stress.? My classes build confidence: students complete my demanding yoga regimen and they have yoga tools to cope with stress.

My students know I work for their best interest but that doesn’t win me popularity contests.? One student forgot to mute her microphone in a recent zoom class that tortured the hamstrings in devilishly innovative ways.? I heard a litany of words so extensive, explicit, and excoriating that I had to smile and yell, “You’re not muted.? I don’t care if you don’t like me!”

I purposely cultivate antifragility and toughness.? For example, those rigorous chair yoga sequences when a student feels as if she might die, make her more robust and impervious to stress in profound and meaningful ways.? Completing my class builds confidence and resiliency.? To all students who survive my classes and love to hate me-- you’re welcome for the perfect blend of uncertainty and stress to make you strong and healthy.

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Nicole Payseur, the Yoga Diva