Asanaverse

Anxiety and Worry

12 Week Yoga Program for Anxiety and Worry

The worrying does not need a reason any more. It finds one. And the exhausting part is not any single worry but the fact that it runs in the background all day, so that even a good afternoon has something running underneath it.

Our yoga teachers built this twelve week program to leave you with something you can use while the worrying is happening, not only afterwards. Two breathing techniques, a five minute sequence for the moment itself, and twelve weeks to make both automatic.

Three sessions a week, four sequences, twelve weeks. One of the four takes five minutes and exists for the moments when a thirty minute session is exactly what you cannot do.

Length

12 weeks

Practices

36 in total

Rhythm

Three sessions a week, plus five minutes whenever it is needed

Made for

Adults whose worrying has become the background rather than an event

What the research says

A meta-analysis of eight randomised trials with 319 people found yoga reduced anxiety against no treatment, and against active comparison conditions the effect was larger still. Mood improved alongside it, and yoga was not associated with any increased risk of injury.

The largest and most rigorous trial in this field randomised 226 adults with generalised anxiety disorder to Kundalini yoga, cognitive behavioural therapy, or stress education, over twelve weeks. 54.2 percent of the yoga group were much or very much improved, against 33.0 percent on stress education. Cognitive behavioural therapy reached 70.8 percent, and its advantage held at six months while the yoga advantage faded. That last part is the reason this program is built the way it is, and the reason we say plainly that therapy comes first.

A trial of older adults with high levels of worry compared a gentle yoga programme against structured telephone cognitive behavioural therapy. Both produced clinically meaningful improvements in depression, generalised anxiety and fatigue, with no significant difference between them on those outcomes. For persistent worry rather than a formal disorder, that is a genuinely strong result.

See every study and guideline behind this program →

How the program works

3 phases, and you stay with the same practices for the whole of each one. That repetition is the plan rather than a shortage of ideas. A body changes when the same ask comes back often enough, and the trials this program follows repeated for weeks before they made anything harder.

Weeks 1 to 4MoveLearn two calming breathing techniques well enough to use them under pressure.Weeks 5 to 8BuildAdd poses that ask something of you, and discover that the breathing holds.Weeks 9 to 12IntegrateEnd with a short session and a five minute tool you will still be using in six months.

Three sessions a week, plus a five minute sequence available whenever a moment needs it. Open a session below to see every pose and its timing. Two things run through all twelve weeks: the breathing comes first in every session, and it is the part that travels off the mat.

Who this is for

  • ·The worrying has been going on for months rather than days.
  • ·It is more a background setting than a reaction to something specific.
  • ·You are not in a crisis, and you are not being treated for a severe or untreated panic disorder.
  • ·If you have a diagnosis, you have care in place and want something alongside it.
  • ·You can find thirty minutes three times a week.

Before you start

This program supports self regulation. It is not a treatment for an anxiety disorder and it does not replace therapy. Nothing here uses fast or forced breathing techniques, because those can make anxiety worse rather than better in some people. The practice guide has the rest.

Read the full safety notes in the practice guide →

The practice

Two practices per phase. Open one to see every pose, its timing and the reason it sits where it does.

Move · Weeks 1 to 4

Two Techniques Worth Owning

Learn two calming breathing techniques well enough to use them under pressure.

Four weeks of the same thing. Alternate nostril breathing and humming bee breath, practised at the start of every session, plus supported floor positions that never ask you to hold yourself up. The point of these four weeks is not the sessions. It is that by the end of them you have two things you can do without instructions.

  1. 1.Easy Pose6 min
  2. 2.Cat Pose1 min
  3. 3.Cow Pose1 min
  4. 4.Thunderbolt Pose1 min
  5. 5.Cow Face Pose1 min each side
  6. 6.Bharadvaja's Twist1 min each side
  7. 7.Head-to-Knee Forward Bend1 min each side
  8. 8.Reclining Pigeon Pose1 min each side
  9. 9.Legs Up the Wall4 min
  10. 10.Corpse Pose5 min
Open the full sequence →

Week by week

Week 1Learn the humming one firstBreathe in through the nose, then hum all the way out. It produces a long exhale without you having to count, which matters when counting feels like too much.
Week 2Practise on a good dayA technique you only ever use in a crisis has not been learned. Two minutes on an ordinary Tuesday is what makes it available on a bad Thursday.
Week 3Use the five minute one onceDeliberately, while something is happening. It will feel awkward the first time and less so the second.
Week 4Notice the length, not the frequencyWhat usually shifts first is how long an episode lasts rather than whether it starts. That is a real change and it is easy to miss.
← Back to the anxiety and worry practice guide

Build · Weeks 5 to 8

Standing, and Finding You Are Fine

Add poses that ask something of you, and discover that the breathing holds.

The second phase brings in standing poses, and the reason is not fitness. Part of how yoga appears to work for anxiety is a change in the relationship between you, your body and your own thoughts. Holding a pose that costs something, noticing your breathing speed up, coming out, and finding that nothing bad happened is a fairly direct route into that.

Week by week

Week 5The breath is the gaugeIn any standing pose, if the breathing goes short and fast, come out. That is not failing the pose, that is the pose doing its job.
Week 6Stay a little longerAdd fifteen seconds to Warrior II and Chair Pose. Notice that you can, which is more of the point than the strength.
Week 7Do a session on a bad dayNot the five minute one. The full one. Finding out that the full session is available on a bad day changes what you think you are capable of.
Week 8Compare with week oneNot how anxious you feel today, but how a typical week goes now against how it went then.
← Back to the anxiety and worry practice guide

Integrate · Weeks 9 to 12

The Toolkit

End with a short session and a five minute tool you will still be using in six months.

There is one finding that decides how this program ends. In the largest trial, yoga clearly beat the control condition at twelve weeks, and by six months that advantage had faded while the therapy group kept theirs. The most likely explanation is that people stopped practising. So the final phase is about landing on something short enough to survive, with the breathing kept at full length.

Week by week

Week 9Shorten everything except the breathingTwenty-five minutes instead of thirty-five. The breathing keeps four of them, because it is the part that travels.
Week 10Pick your two daysSpecific days, specific time. Practices that float around the week are the ones that quietly stop.
Week 11Breathe without the setupHumming works sitting in a car. Alternate nostril breathing works without the hands if you just alternate your attention. Both need to exist away from a mat.
Week 12Decide what carries onThe trials show the gains fading when practice stops. What you keep is more important than what you did, and less is fine.
← Back to the anxiety and worry practice guide

The 19 poses in this program

Every pose has its own page with alignment, common mistakes and the energetic effect. Look one up when a shape does not make sense in your body.

Easy PoseCat PoseCow PoseThunderbolt PoseCow Face PoseBharadvaja's TwistHead-to-Knee Forward BendReclining Pigeon PoseLegs Up the WallCorpse PoseKnees to Chest PoseMountain PoseMountain Pose with Side BendStanding Forward BendTriangle PoseWarrior IIChair PoseBridge PoseReclining Belly Twist
Go to the Asana Lab →

The guide behind this program

Why these poses and not others

The Anxiety and Worry practice guide explains what each pose does and why it belongs to this goal. It also carries the safety notes and every study this program is built on. Read it if you want the reasoning rather than the plan.

Read the guide →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can this replace therapy?

No, and the strongest trial in this field is unusually clear about it. Over twelve weeks, 70.8 percent of the cognitive behavioural therapy group were much improved against 54.2 percent on yoga, and the therapy advantage was still there six months later while the yoga advantage was not. Yoga did work. Therapy worked better.

So is it worth doing at all?

Yes, and for two reasons. In that same trial yoga clearly beat the control condition, and in a trial of older adults with persistent worry, gentle yoga matched structured telephone therapy on depression, anxiety and fatigue. It is also something you can do at nine on a Sunday evening, which therapy is not.

Which breathing techniques are in this?

Alternate nostril breathing and humming bee breath, both calming. Fast forced techniques such as Bhastrika are deliberately left out: they appear in some protocols but can make anxiety feel worse in the short term for some people, and nothing is lost by not using them.

Why is there a five minute sequence?

Because the aim is something you can use while the worrying is running. A thirty minute session is exactly what you cannot reach for at that point. The five minute one uses the same breathing, which is why the longer sessions matter even when nothing is wrong.

How often do I need to practise?

Three times a week, which is less than the clinical protocols used. Those ran up to five supervised sessions a week, and even then only about two thirds of people finished. Three unsupervised sessions is what a person actually keeps.

When is this not the right thing?

If you are in a crisis, if you have thoughts of harming yourself, if you have a severe or untreated panic disorder, or if you are dealing with untreated trauma where the body work itself can be triggering. All of those need a person rather than a program, and getting one is the right first move.

Creator of this program

Manish Rana

Manish Rana

Founder of Asanaverse.de. Manish writes about yoga, Ayurveda and meditation, and owes his deep connection to yoga to his Indian roots. With over 1,000 hours of Yoga Alliance Teacher Training, he shares his knowledge with the community.

More about Manish →
Registered Experienced Yoga Teacher, E-RYT 500

Where to next

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Every program here was built around one complaint and around the trials that studied it. Back, neck, knees, hips, sleep and stress, each one running for as long as the research says it takes.

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