The Harvard Medical School acknowledged the usefulness of yoga and meditation in fighting anxiety and depression long ago. The premier medical school in its latest recommendations reaffirms how these practices hold significance during the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. No wonder there has been a sudden surge recently in the number of people searching online yoga and meditation courses globally.
What is a global pandemic anxiety? Well! lets see some points below:
- The fear of fighting an invisible and potentially more powerful enemy
- Uncertainty surrounding when the pandemic would end, reinstating the life back to normal
- Social isolation – people are confined to their homes unable to have interactions with others
- Financial worries as ambiguity surrounding the jobs and businesses continue to linger on
Thinking and re-thinking about these things generate stress response, that too at a highly frequent rate. This in turn triggers stress hormones like cortisol and impairs an individual’s physical and mental stability.
So, What is a conscious reaction to these situations?
In order to counteract the stress response, the best way is to stimulate the relaxation response in the body as well as in the mind. That is where yoga and meditation helps balance and ground. Yoga teachers globally teaching meditation and yoga classes online agree that these are the relevant stress-reduction techniques that work in more than one way:
- Soothing the nervous system to promote physical and mental relaxation
- Release of feel-good hormones that balances the stress hormones
- Encouraging adequate and quality sleep
- Inspiring to do away with smoking and alcohol and switching to healthy eating
- Overpowering the troublesome negative thoughts
Getting Started the Right Way
If you have never been a yoga or meditation person, please remember there’s always a first time. You can opt for a style and practise that best suits your temperament and needs.
Find the right online meditation course or online yoga teacher training course , that would help you find that balance within and slowly go further. There are tonnes of such online Yoga courses being delivered currently, choose the one that your intuition tells you to choose. If you cannot go OUT, go IN.
