I like to think that, most of the time, my mind and my mental state are like this:
_____________________
But all it takes is my car’s illuminated check engine light to transform my mind into one big pile of this:
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
This is what my mind used to be like all the time before I began practicing yoga. I’m not surprised when anxiety happens – just unaccustomed. And that’s precisely what’s so unnerving about going from straight line to squiggles. It’s a reminder of how things used to be before I knew how to breathe.
Prana is the vitality of your being
In yoga, the breath or lifeforce is called prana; and pranayama, commonly referred to as yoga breathing exercises, accurately translates in Sanskrit to the “expansion of life.” In this sense, when the breath is lost the ability to expand is also lost, quite literally in the chest. If you’ve ever felt anxious (who hasn’t?) or live with anxiety you know this intimately.
After a breakup four years ago, I had anxiety for about three months. My breathing was shallow, my chest wouldn’t expand and neither would my worldview.
Any inconveniences, from a check engine light to the end of a relationship, can disturb the mind’s smooth flow. Of course, difficulty happens when all the mechanics are closed. It happens right before a busy day at work. Essentially, you lose control of the circumstances, and along with it you lose the breath.
A dog in a storm
It’s not unlike what happens when a thunderstorm rolls in and my little dog gets anxious. She whines, barks, pants and tries to follow me as close as possible wherever I go. No matter how much I try to sweet talk, bribe with treats or distract her, she returns to that anxious state until the storm stops.
When inconvenient things happen, I find that I still do the same, though it’s nowhere near that level of anxiety I felt years ago (and haven’t felt since). Even though I know everything will turn out as it should, and that I’m blessed at all to have a car and a job and a little dog to worry about and take care of, my mind in the moment cannot be stopped. “It’s a check engine light for crying out loud!” I think. But problems are relative, and nothing can be gained by comparisons.
There’s nothing to be gained by wanting to exit the anxiety as soon as it happens, either. Denying that you need to pant or whine in order to find your way back to normal only leads you further from normal.
Our own bodies come with a built in “check engine light” – we just need to be patient and actually work on ourselves, just as you would a car.
Take a deep breath, or two or three
This simple yoga breathing exercise for anxiety, adapted from Yoga for Depression by Amy Weintraub, was the first pranayama exercise I ever did. It gives me quick results every time – a deeper breath and a stilling of the racing hamster mind. If your “check engine light” is on, it’s time to reignite the breath:
- Sit or lie down comfortably.
- Close your eyes and inhale deeply through the nose to a count of four.
- Exhale in the same way to a count of six. If it feels stifling to exhale through the nose, blow the breath out the mouth, working toward a nasal exhale.
- After several cycles of deep breath, increase your exhales to a count of eight.
- Continue in this way until the breath becomes fluid. Before you know it, the mind will become calm.
Repeat as often as unnecessary until you truly begin to believe that your mind deserves to travel the straight line path.
