Are you ready for the release of The Strange is Beautiful alternative self-help guide and yoga videos this spring 2016? I’m totally STOKED to present to you 46 pages of alternative self-help, interviews and more in our guide, plus four yoga classes on anxiety, two types of depression, and panic attacks.
I finished filming a beginning yoga for anxiety video on Friday, June 19 at YogaWorks Pasadena! The video is one in a series of four yoga for anxiety and depression videos for my mental health blog The Strange is Beautiful (thestrangeisbeautiful.com) and for my 300 hour yoga teacher training project. I’m so grateful to have such talented, helpful and loving friends – Christian Soriano, Corey Strong and Nadia Adella – who gave their time to make this video possible and a brilliant yoga mentor, Ashley Rideaux, to help me design the yoga sequence. A huge thanks to YogaWorks Pasadena, to the manager Ken, for letting me use the studio to film and for moppping/turning the air on so the room wasn’t a sauna for the shoot! :)
The placement and direction of your breath is key to calming down when anxious. When you’re anxious, notice if you mainly breathe in your chest and if your shoulders lift. Anxiety causes a disconnect with our first three chakras; root, sacral and solar plexus. This disconnect forces us to breathe up, up, up the body, into our chest causing anxiety. When anxious, breathe into your belly and direct your exhales down your body and into the Earth. Lengthen your exhales so they become longer than your inhales. This will bring breath back into the first three chakras to calm and center you.
Warrior 2 (Virabhadrasana 2) is an externally rotated standing position in yoga. Standing positions increase strength and focus. When the mind is cluttered with overpowering thoughts of depression or anxiety, focusing can be extremely hard. Rather than being still in a pose when our mind is disturbed, the pose dynamically connects our breath with movement. This connection will help increase focus and clear our minds.
Yoga is a discipline and practice to find peace within the mind, body, and soul. It’s a life-time journey or process of reconnecting the self (you, me) with the universe, and being one with the universe. Learn more here about the different types of yoga.