If you search for "Yoga for Anxiety" (which is probably why you ended up here), you'll get a lot of listings suggesting you practice a specific nine or twelve poses. While there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing these poses, it's not the real mental health benefit of yoga.

So how does yoga help? The trick is simple: Start doing it as soon as possible, and stick to it a few times a week for the foreseeable future. The more often you practice, the better you will be able to understand your body, your mind, and how they relate to each other, which opens the door for you to find many techniques useful for dealing with anxiety.

8 Ways Yoga Helps Control Anxiety

1. Provide grounding tools

Grounding is a word that is often used in yoga. This means a strong connection to the body, which can be used to anchor the mind if it starts to spin. Movement is grounded. The same goes for breathing. Your breath anchors your body to its physicality, shifting your attention from your thoughts to your body.

2. Focus on the moment

Yoga practice pays attention to your breath. Sometimes we speed it up or slow it down for a specific effect, but sometimes just noticing it without changing anything is enough. Focusing on movement and breathing can also make it easier to live in the present moment, which can be helpful when worrying about what might happen in the future triggers anxiety.

3. Increase body awareness

Anxiety can produce physical symptoms that you may not notice unless you're used to what it's like to live in your skin. As you become more aware of your body, you can learn how to combat anxious physical manifestations by doing things like relaxing tense muscles and deepening shallow breathing.

4. Awaken a new sense of self

Even when you sit down and meditate for a short while, you start to witness your thoughts without interacting with them. When you experience the activity of your mind as an observer, it becomes clear that you are not your mind, which makes it easier to separate yourself from the unproductive spiral.

5. Promote acceptance

Every time you show up on your exercise yoga mat, you get a lesson in accepting who you are now. It doesn't matter what you did yesterday, what you plan to do tomorrow, what you had for lunch, what matters is what you're doing now. It's not an easy class to take, but it comes when you get enough time.

6. Improve concentration

The physical intensity of an asana practice is so high that it grabs all your attention. You often come out of yoga only to find that you don't have time to think about anything else for an hour.

7. Promotes tolerance to discomfort

Each new pose puts you on the verge of dealing with your own discomfort. This feeling of learning to control your body with low risk is an excellent training for your brain.

8. Improves Well-Being

What kind of yoga can help relieve anxiety?

More good news! No matter what yoga you do. Fast, slow, group classes, home exercises, any temperature, any method. Yoga comes in many flavors, so you may have to try a few to find the right one, but there is a yoga for everyone.

Are you afraid to start yoga because you are worried?

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