Vicki Smart is a Yoga Teacher passionate about intelligent movement, drawing influence from many different teachers and modalities. In 2018 Vicki began her journey training with Tiffany Cruikshank and Yoga Medicine, where the eastern and western tradition of yoga and wellness continues to inform her teaching today. Here she shares four ways yoga can help to support your mental health.

#1 Relieving Anxiety 

Movement can boost our brain’s serotonin production and release. Serotonin can contribute to our feeling of happiness and wellbeing so by moving through yoga asana, we can help balance our mood, and also potentially help relieve anxiety.  

#2 Reducing Stress

Yoga is proven to help with our stress response. This can help with our breathing, and add positive benefits to our heart rate and blood pressure. 

#3 Mental Endurance

A regular yoga practice can give us a better capacity for mental endurance and stamina. when we hold poses and work with our breath. This can build our resiliency.

#4 Self Care

Yoga can become a self care ritual. When we give ourselves good habits to follow we can begin to build positive pathways. It’s important that we recognise all feelings are valid, but yoga can help us clarify our minds, and practicing with others can affect our reward pathway positively too!  

(although these are helpful tools, yoga cannot replace professional help and support, so please make sure you are working within the care plan from your doctor or other health care professional) 

Practice Vicki’s Mental Health Toolkit focused classes here and find her on Instagram at @peacockdreaming.