3 of the best kept secrets (or things you may not have heard of before…) for managing anxiety
How do you manage your anxiety when you feel it coming on? How do you try to keep yourself from moving towards an anxious state altogether?
When you are in a period of prolonged stress, due to work demands, deadlines for projects, family responsibilites, how do you manage yourself through it? How do you try to minimise the stress?
When you’re chronically stressed out, your tolerance for stress diminishes, and that can turn into feeling anxious, fatigued and depleted.
When I was finishing up my last year of school, plus managing myself as a self employed yoga teachers with never-ending admin, I was STRESSED OUT. The constant stress and demands of both of my worlds were affecting my anxiety BIG TIME.
I felt like them smallest thing was setting me off when normally I wouldn’t have been bothered. For example, receiving another email made me feel overwhelmed and like I was going to shut down completely, or someone texting me asking to do something for them (it didn’t matter what, it could have been a teacher asking me for class cover, someone asking for a meeting, or even my friends asking me to do something!). It all felt like too much for my brain to compartmentalise and and be able to work through, as my schedule was already unmanageable and there was no way I could even begin to think of fitting anything else in. It felt horrible to say “I’m available in about 6 months time, so please come back to me then”, but regardless I did have to set those boundaries for my own sanity and wellbeing.
My sleep was also negatively affected during this period. I was laying in bed for ages with a buzzing feeling in my mind that kept me in a half sleep state. I would often wake up in the middle of the night wide awake and needing the loo (sometimes waking up to pee in the night is due to stress, it affects your bladder).
Can you relate to any of this? Have you experienced stress and anxiety like this? What were you trying to manage all at the same time? How long did it last for? Or are you living like this right now and looking for a solution?
Let’s start out by identifying some common symptoms of anxiety:
✦ Palpitations (higher heart rate)
✦ Feeling like you are struggling to breathe
✦ Experiencing chest pain/tightness
✦ Feeling nauseous
✦ Your stomach/abdomen bloated and/or in pain
✦ Trembling/shaking
✦ Sweating/chills
✦ Feeling lightheaded/dizzy
✦ Feeling like you’re losing control/crazy
✦ Muscle pain
✦ Exhaustion
This is quite the list, but all commonly experienced while anxious and I have definitely felt all of these. I’ve even experienced a few panic attacks and they were terrifying!
I know that I am prone to anxiety and that I have to manage myself well in order to prevent it spiralling and experiencing all the symptoms mentioned above. I have promised myself now that I am done school, I will never let anxiety take me over again. I would love to see this promise through but the future is unpredictable and I’m sure there will be more tough challenges ahead at some point.
This is the reason why I am so passionate about yoga & nutrition, because all is fine when there are no problems in your life, but ensuring you are practicing taking care of yourself now will help you make it through the hard times with more resiliency.
How did I get through this period or high stress and anxiety, and the feeling like it would never end? I turned to everything that I learned in nutrition & to my yoga practice.
I ensured that I was practicing yoga, breathing and meditation in a way that felt grounding and nurturing, for me this looks like an Ashtanga Yoga practice. I can practice by myself and listen to my own breath and move at my own pace to find my way to my calm centre that does exist somewhere underneath all of the stressors.
I also turned to some helpful nutritional supports that were recommended especially for stress, fatigue and anxiety, everything that I was learning about in school. This was the perfect time to test them out so I can make recommendations to my future clients for techniques that I have studied and tested on myself.
Here are my top 3 recommendations for quick nutrients you can add to your diet and feel the results:
1. Reishi mushrooms: polypeptides in reishi act as neurotransmitters & endorphin building blocks + they have some inhibitory actions on neuronal activity (anxiety is an overactive neuronal state). I add a tsp of mushroom powder to my morning coffee or tea. Reishi aren’t considered edible so you won’t cook with them like you would shiitake, you most likely will buy them as a powdered supplement.
2. Green oat: is rich in B vitamins which are involved in improving mood, physiological response to stressors & reducing anxiety. Also inhibits MAO-B, which is an enzyme that breaks down dopamine, leaving more available to your brain. This is most likely taken as a tincture.
3. Magnesium: is involved directly with GABA (calming neurotransmitter) synthesis. It is often deficient in increased anxiety. There’s lots of Magnesium in green leafy vegetables, or you can take epsom salt baths (1 or 2 big mug fulls of salts, in a warm bath. 3 baths per week, staying in for 20 minutes).
It is absolutely fascinating what you can do with food!
I love that compounds in whole foods have such an active biochemical healing role within us. Studying the science underlying nutrition has been life changing for me, and hence why I want to share this with you.
We are all apart of nature so it is no surprise, but I am still in awe of what nature can do. The more we align with nature, the more we tap into the healing properties that it gives to us, mentally and physically.
This is why both yoga and nutrition are so powerful - they are aligning you with nature and taking you back to where you come from: you, your true nature, your centre, your ability to heal yourself by listening and tuning inwards.
The more we move away from nature, in terms of eating processed foods, not interacting with plants, not moving our bodies and breathing fresh air, the more we move towards physical and mental health issues. Through my journey to becoming a naturopathic nutritionist I have found that whole food truly is medicine. Movement is also vital so don’t forget to do your yoga or go out for a walk.