Understand WHY yoga works:
Yoga's role in stress reduction
According to Mental Health Foundation, in 2023:
60%of UK adults experienced anxiety that interfered with their daily lives
Just take a moment to reflect on those findings. The chances are, if you're teaching yoga to people, you'll be teaching yoga to people who are experiencing anxiety.
So, what - as yoga teachers - can we or do to help these yogis? We can understand these three important things:
🧠 What stress is
🧠 What anxiety is
🧠 Evidence as to how yoga mitigates the impact of both
As yoga teachers, we live in a really, really exciting time where the studies and research are backing up what yogis have known for millennia - and this is exactly what we'll be breaking down in our free workshop:
Understand WHY yoga works:
Yoga's role in stress reduction
You can expect:
to explore the two human responses to stress
to understand the many mechanisms by which yoga reduces, and reverses, the impact of stress and anxiety
to (re)ignite your passion for helping others
to have a reliable and impactful toolkit, to reduce the impact of stress in your life, and in others’ lives too
Hi!
Hi there! I'm Holly, and I'll be guiding you through our workshop.
For years and years now, I've been fascinated by understanding why yoga works. This need, this driving force, has taken me deep into some amazing research, through some trainings and into a very, very deep rabbit hole of my own practice! - And I'm super excited to share my findings with you.
As yoga teachers, we live in a truly exciting time, where science is starting to prove what has been written in the scriptures for centuries. This knowledge, research and evidence-base is there to be understood and used for good, and I'm on a bit of a mission to do exactly that!
I can't wait to see you!
Holly
x
A bit more about stress…
When humans are exposed to a stressor, there are two responses:
the sympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight response)
It's so important to remember that these are both mechanisms for survival; this is the brain's primary purpose. But this has a consequence: It means that that instinctual thinking and reactions are also survival-related, in that they tend to be instinctual and habitual. This is great and so useful if your stressor is a sabre-toothed tiger. But if your stressor is a credit card bill - not so much.
In fact, reverting to habitual patterns of behaviour might actually propagate the stress. Like this example, of someone who uses shopping as a coping mechanism, for avoiding feelings of stress:
Has rough day at work > Goes home, feels sad / overwhelmed / stressed / frustrated > Numbs out on online shopping (there's absolutely no judgement here!) > Credit card bill arrives > Feelings of stress appear, or increase, when reading the bill > Feelings of stress / overwhelm / frustration become uncomfortable > Numbs out on online shopping > New credit card bill arrives > And so it goes on (and on and on).
Amazingly - our wonderful yoga has tools, techniques and mechanisms that can interfere at any and all stages of the vicious cycle: to interrupt and reverse the cycle.
We can’t wait to explore these mechanisms with you!