When You Have No Choice but to Take Your Yoga Off the Mat…

Sometimes even when you know the changes coming in your life, you can still be surprised by the magnitude of their effect on you. One such change happened to me during our first few weeks here in Costa Rica. I’ve always known I was afraid of heights, especially when in a car, but I did not realize just how afraid I was until I moved to a country with 67 volcanoes and very little flat land. The drive to our Airbnb was terrifying, and the “driveway”  looked like it was going to just drop you off the side of a mountain. Which we confirmed it would not by getting out of the car first before driving down it. However, I have brought down the terror and feel much more comfortable in the car by using yoga to conquer my fear.

How have I done this? Well, in part, it is just normalization, but it’s mostly from regularly practicing asana (yoga postures), visualization, and breathing techniques that directly help me better manage this fear of heights. I know it sounds too simple when you put it like that, but trust me, it makes a huge difference.

Firstly to put this into practice, I had to stretch (do yoga postures). These postures help release the tension that I was creating during the drives through clenching muscles, holding my breath, and just the physical tension in general that the fear/stress situation was causing in my body. If I did not release the tension with my physical yoga practice, then it would accumulate and make it more difficult to mentally remind myself to breathe while in the car and remember that the car is not just going to jump off the road down the mountain to sudden death. I know it sounds funny to say that the physical tension causes a decrease in my mental ability, but it does. When there’s too much physical tension in the body, there is a constant signal to the brain, letting it know that there is tension to be addressed, occupying valuable energy from the mind. I like to liken this to that annoying little brother or sister in the back seat with you, pretending to poke you and repeating, “I’m not touching you” over and over again. It is agitating and very similar to what happens when the tension within our bodies goes unaddressed for too long.

Secondly, I did visualization (typically after stretching so that I was relaxed). I seriously sat there, envisioned first looking over the edge while driving. As I find it extremely disorienting being on roads that are either on an upward or downward slope, with sharp turns and steep drops, not that dissimilar to a rollercoaster. Then once I was comfortable with being able to look over the edge in my visualizations (which did translate into being able to actually look over the side while driving), I did a few rounds of the car going over the edge! And truthfully, it was not as scary as I thought, and in my mind, the car was often stopped by trees, ledges and other things. Thank God lol.

Thirdly, breathing. Being able to remind myself to breathe when I am afraid is key! But the only way to remember to breathe during stressful/fearful situations is to practice breathing while not in those situations. Although you do create a small amount of physical stress during challenging asana’s for example a deep warrior 2, it gives you an ideal opportunity to practice using a slow calm breath. This helps translate into better breathing and an improved stress response in the body when in stressful as well as non-stressful life situations.

Oh, and don’t forget the blessing of having supportive people in your life. I’ve talked to Brad and Nate about this fear openly a fair bit. Mostly so that they understood when they said certain things or pointed in the direction of “the view” which was often toward the death drop, as I called it, that it caused me a lot of stress. Especially if Brad took his hands off the wheel while we were going around a large bend higher up. And just for clarification, I am talking about thousands of meters above sea level. okay like 1000 meters up lol. Oddly it took a lot more courage and trust than I expected to talk about it with Brad and Nate afraid that they would tease me or joke about it when driving, which would have made it way worse for me. I am very grateful to them for respecting my feelings!

Thankfully today, almost 7 weeks later, I am still doing all of these practices, and it is much better, I think in another few weeks, I will attempt driving through the mountain’s small amounts at a time.  However, the thought that I will be okay is mind-blowing to me, considering how I felt just weeks ago when we arrived, but I’m optimistic. It also still amazes me that after 20 years of practicing yoga and mindfulness, it can help or even fix almost anything.

To better deal with your stress check out this post.

To just relax and unwind try our most popular yin video here.

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