AnxietyAnxiety is one of your body’s natural responses to stress. It is a part of your internal alarm system that protects you from potential harm. This alarm system is made up of your brain and nervous system. It has existed from the earliest days of humanity. Through neuroception our body assesses the threat and sets off alarms allowing for quick action. This reaction is the process called ‘fight-flight-or-freeze’. Anxiety is the ‘flight’ response.

Once upon a time the threat was obvious in the form of larger animals or imminent danger. As humans have evolved, the anxieties now revolve around life, work, health, and fear of the unknown. Your past and current life experiences impact the relationship your nervous system has with a sense of safety and threat. Our experiences can lead to a dysregulated nervous system causing an overactive internal alarm system, commonly known as ‘anxiety’.

Our nervous system is unable to differentiate between imminent and perceived threat, therefore you can have similar reactions to a large animal chasing behind you and a thought of an upcoming job interview.

Yoga can help here.

DepressionDepression (numbing out) is one of your body’s natural responses to stress. It is a part of your internal alarm system that protects you from potential harm. This alarm system is made up of your brain and nervous system. It has existed from the earliest days of humanity. Through neuroception our body assesses the threat and sets off alarms allowing for survival. This reaction is the process called ‘fight-flight-or-freeze’. Depression is the ‘freeze’ response.

You might be thinking how the ‘freeze’ response would help you survive? It is a primal survival response. Fold into immobility. Play dead. A great last ditch effort when ‘fight-or-flight’ won’t work. Imagine a cat playing with a mouse it has caught. If the mouse plays dead, the cat quickly loses interest and stops paying attention. The ‘numbed out’ mouse comes back online and makes a run for it. Life saved, thanks to the nervous system’s assessment of threat and responding by becoming immobile, playing dead.

Humans are animals too. Our threat response is the same. When the nervous system assesses that running or fighting will not result in survival, it uses the ‘freeze’ response, numbing us. It doesn’t ask our permission before doing so, it simply does so to support our survival in that moment. The problem is, unlike the mouse the comes back online and runs, as humans our thoughts and feelings continue to be perceived as a threat by the nervous system and we get stuck in a loop.

Yoga can help here.