What is anxiety?

All of us feels anxious sometime or the other without adequate rhyme or reason.



At such times we wonder what is happening. We fell we must remain alert. Victims of panic attacks undergo more such feelings.



However, for them the stakes are far higher. Their pain and suffering is so overpowering, sometimes so devastating that the frightening possibilities assume colossal proportions. They think having heart attacks or losing their minds.



All of us go through periods of indefinable anxiety, from time to time. Most often they fade away without us ever being aware or having to acknowledge the causes. Anxiety for panic attack sufferers, though, is the sign of a stronger (and often frantic) search for a help.

According to research done by Yoga therapy, panic attacks can be distinguished by fast rising and irresistibly overpowering bouts of anxiety. At the start, people who panic, are can seldom identify the cause of their anxiety. Hence, they describe the incident as something that happens unexpectedly and without warning. Panic attacks are set off by alarming body sensations which happen abruptly and unexpectedly very much like unconscious reflexes. The commonest are shortness of breath, an increase in heart rate, palpitations, perspiration, tremors, a feeling of suffocation, chest pain, queasiness, and faintness and giddiness. Alarmed anxiety victims usually have painfully sharp sensitivity to such sensations. Oftentimes, they have to make quite a few trips to the emergency room before they are able to comprehend that their symptoms are just related to panic.

Yoga therapy postulates that just physical sensations are not the nucleus of anxiety attacks. Frightful thoughts, distasteful emotions, avoidable behavior, distressing and upsetting sensations, and failing relationships all get together to maintain panic attacks. Thoughts like fear of death or of having a nervous breakdown are frequent. Even mild anxiety is able to set off an attack, and any feelings of distress can be viewed as a wrning sign of a full-fledged panic.