Yoga and Stress: Optimize Your Yoga Practice to Elicit the Relaxation Response

We’ve all heard that yoga is good for stress, but how you approach your practice may be the key to whether or not that seductive promise holds true. Understanding how stress operates on your body can help inform how you approach your yoga practice to maximise its stress-busting effects.

According to the 2021 Stress In America survey by the American Psychological Association, 84% of adults reported feeling at least some stress in the prior two weeks. Stress activates the “fight or flight” response, a holdover from your ancestors whose nervous systems developed an emergency response system for when they encountered a predator. The Stress Response elevates cortisol and adrenaline production, shuts down all “unnecessary” systems (like rational thinking and digestion) and floods your body with glucose, narrowing the arteries and elevating your heart rate to prepare for combat. Today, you probably unintentionally activate that response all the time: when you’re running late for work, hear the constant alerts of incoming messages, or get into an argument. When stress becomes chronic, this chain of physiological events can put your health at risk.

Though stress impairs physiological functioning, your body comes with a built-in antidote known as the Relaxation Response. The Relaxation Response repairs your physiology by slowing your breathing back down, restoring your blood pressure to normal and relaxing your muscles. If you are experiencing symptoms of stress such as tension, high blood pressure and anxiety or trouble focusing, you can help facilitate the Relaxation Response with your yoga practice, but it works best if you approach it in the right way:

Move Mindfully

After a grueling day, a hard and fast yoga practice can seem like a good way to blow off some steam, but it may actually reinforce existing patterns of tension in your body. Instead, choose slow moving Vinyasa, or even stillness-based practices like Yin and Restorative Yoga which give your tissues a chance to unwind.

Breathe Softly

Deep breathing seems synonymous with yoga, but if you’re moving too fast or over-focused on complex poses, you might end up holding your breath or doing the shallow breathing that landed you feeling stressed out in the first place. Deep breath tones your Vagus Nerve which activates the Relaxation Response. Start your yoga practice in a relaxed position where you can return your breath to its natural, easy state, then begin to deepen it by linking it to simple movements (think: inhale Cow Pose/exhale Cat Pose). Save any pranayama techniques for the end of your practice.

Focus Gently

We often think that if we can just get our stress levels down, we’ll be able to focus, but the same is true in the reverse order. Studies abound to suggest that focusing on a single task helps to induce relaxation. Aim to make your yoga practice as distraction-free as possible (turn your phone off), use guided visualisations to hold your mind in stillness-based practices and find teachers who don’t rely on set sequences where you can shift into autopilot for movement-based practices so you stay present.

Rest Deeply

Your nervous system comes pre-equipped with a “recovery” function that activates when you rest after a stressful experience and during which you metabolise stress hormones. Classically, a yoga practice mirrors this journey by challenging you physically before a period of intentional rest known as Yoga Nidra, which activates Alpha Brain waves for coherent brain functioning. Unfortunately, this vital aspect of practice is the one we often skip, especially now that so many of us practice at home. Reprioritize your practice so that Yoga Nidra is the star attraction and ensure at least five minutes of rest at the end.

Meditate Daily

Though more long term research is needed to understand how exactly meditation reduces stress, many studies point to its efficacy. After yoga when your body is relaxed and your mind is calm is often the best time for meditation. Take advantage and make sure you sit quietly for at least five minutes before heading back out into the world.