Yoga for anxiety: What helped me through a moment of fear
Feel the fear and do it anyway
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway is the title of a great book I read many years ago by Susan Jeffers. It felt apt for this blog post about a recent experience with fear.
I’d been invited to give a presentation with the highlights of my Sleep is Magic course. I’ve taught this course many times in the studio and am very comfortable doing so.
But, about an hour before the event was due to start, I was overwhelmed with nerves. Since agreeing to give the presentation, I’d had it in the back of my mind and there’d been slight flutterings of anxiety, but nothing as crippling as what I was experiencing now. I was completely baffled by the level of anxiety I was feeling.
There was no way out of it, so I had to take some action to dampen down the anxiety and fear, and to calm my nerves. It all felt so ridiculous and irrational but that’s not helpful when you’re dealing with such strong feelings and emotions.
Digging into my toolbox
So, in this moment, I really had to dig deep into my toolbox for something to help me get through this crippling fear.
Step 1: Feeling validated
The first thing I did was reach out to my son, who validated my anxiety by saying how challenging he’d find it to do such a presentation. This made me feel a whole lot better; he didn’t just brush my feelings aside.
He also made a really good point that many people who come to yoga for the first time are experiencing exactly the same anxiety as they enter unfamiliar territory. This was now happening in reverse for me, as I was facing an unfamiliar group in a corporate setting.
Sharing how I felt helped to reduce the anxiety a little, but it was still quite high.
Step 2: Turning to the tools of yoga
I thought to myself, “What would I do if someone came to me with this?”. I then implemented exactly what I’d advise.
I found a quiet spot where I wouldn’t be interrupted. I placed my feet on the ground and felt into the sensations of this. I closed my eyes and took 3 deep breaths, breathing in through the nose, with long slow exhales through the mouth.
If you want to read more about the science of how breathing exercises can help calm the nervous system, Oxygen Advantage explains this really well.
In simple terms, by breathing out long slow exhales, we can shift from “fight or flight” to “rest and digest”. I immediately felt the calming effects of the breath.
Step 3: Harnessing the mind
Once I’d calmed things down a bit, I was able to start using my mind better. I was no longer in panic mode but more able to use rational thought; to remind myself that I’ve done this before and I know what I’m talking about; that I’ve prepared; that it’s really no different to the studio. It will be fine, just rise up and do it!
This rising up and getting on with the uncomfortable things in life is a key component of the yoga philosophy training I’m doing with Alex Crowe.
We’re studying the Bhagavad Gita and Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras, both of which are ancient texts that act as a guide for living life well in the midst of challenges.
Step 4: Learning about fear from yoga philosophy
In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna faces an overwhelming battle and wants to run away from it all. Krishna reminds him that discomfort, doubt and fear are part of being human, and that sometimes we still need to rise up and take action despite them.
Although the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield, its teachings go far beyond war. At its heart, it explores very human questions about who we are, how we navigate challenges, and how we choose to live our lives when things feel difficult.
“Arise, O Arjuna, with determination and fight!” isn’t really about war for me. It’s a call to take action despite personal emotional conflict; it’s about learning how to meet the difficult moments in our own lives.
Step 5: Receiving a comforting hug
And finally, I was offered a hug from hubby as I departed, as well as a funny piece of advice he’d once heard: “Imagine they’re all naked, it helps to combat nerves”. Luckily, I didn’t need to do this but it brought some humour to the situation.
I walked down the hill relatively calm, still feeling a little nervous but they now felt like ‘normal’ nerves rather than blind panic! I’ve heard that most people get nervous before public speaking so this felt okay. I’ve also read somewhere that a little bit of adrenaline helps to deliver a better performance.
So, how did it go?
It was great! The presentation went really well. The group was warm and welcoming, and genuinely interested in what I had to share. They also asked loads of questions at the end, which showed how engaged and interested they were.
Once I was in the flow of the presentation, I was totally fine – phew!
The stories we carry from childhood
I’m not a psychologist but I have read many psychology books, and this episode of fear got me thinking… I hate public speaking!
But, why? What’s at the root of this? What’s the deeper issue?
I realised I can link it back to one seemingly insignificant event in my childhood, and had actually identified it some years earlier on my first yoga teacher training.
A teacher threw a board rubber at me (yep, I’m that old!) for chatting to someone behind me in class. I was mortified when I turned around to have a sea of faces staring at me! I turned bright red and was shaken by the shock of it.
As a result, I’ve managed to avoid public speaking all my life. That was, until I got to the yoga training.
Being asked to introduce myself to a bunch of strangers was so ridiculously hard that I started to ask myself why I felt so uncomfortable. That night I had a vivid dream and memory of the board rubber incident.
When I finally started teaching, I had to use a tactic to avoid all the faces staring at me. So I started off by asking them to lie on their backs. To this day, this is still how I start a class, although I’m not a nervous wreck anymore!
This just goes to show how deeply ingrained in our subconscious minds events from the past can be.
In a previous post, How to regulate trauma response with Yin yoga, I share Bessel Van Der Kolk’s thoughts on how more serious trauma gets stored in the body. But, even an incident as seemingly minor as my board rubber story can have a pretty serious knock-on effect and, for me, I’d say it’s limited me professionally.
Changing the story
Now that I recognise this, I can work on overcoming the fear of public speaking and try to embrace it as part of my life if I want to share all the great things I’ve learnt.
I particularly want to share with more people how to experience better sleep through my Sleep is Magic course, whether that be in a corporate setting or on social media. Of course, social media is similar to public speaking and also makes me feel uncomfortable, but interestingly less so than having all the faces in front of me!
Someone once said it’s selfish not to share what you know, and that I need to get over the fear of being on social media. I’m pleased that this is slowly becoming easier and I’ve come a long way from the graphics that hid my face!
I was saying recently to a woman who doesn’t sleep well, “Ditch the ‘I’m the world’s worst sleeper’ story as it reinforces the message in your mind”. I need to take a dose of my own medicine and ditch the story that I hate public speaking.
In fact, simply writing this blog post has helped me recognise so many patterns and thoughts that I can start to change for the better.
If life has felt overwhelming for you lately, yoga offers simple tools to help calm the nervous system and create a little more space.
