by Christine Saari, MA, C-IAYT
You might not call it “stress.”
Maybe you call it tight shoulders. Or brain fog. Or that weird stomach thing that flares up every time your schedule gets tight. You power through with coffee and after-hours emails. You try to sleep, but end up doomscrolling or replaying that one conversation in your head at 2 a.m.
Stress? That feels too vague. Too obvious.
But what if I told you that stress is clever? That it doesn’t just show up in your mood or your calendar, but in your breath, your digestion, your joints, and yup, even your sense of purpose?
This article is a bit of a spotlight on yoga for stress management. It’s a tour through seven subtle, sneaky, sometimes-invisible ways stress weaves itself into your body and mind. And how yoga, used therapeutically, can help you see it, shift it, and soften its grip.
Let’s get into it.
What Does Stress Really Look Like?
Stress isn’t just about being busy. It’s about how your system adapts to pressure physiologically, neurologically, and even metabolically. When you spend too long in go-go-go mode, your body stops waiting for the weekend to recover. It builds workarounds. Compensations. Backup systems.
Those workarounds feel like symptoms: pain, distraction, short temper, shallow breath.
They’re not failures. They’re signals. Let’s decode them.
1. Chronic Pain That’s Loud, But Not Always Clear
Pain is protective. But sometimes it forgets how to turn off.
When pain sticks around past the point of healing, usually longer than three months, it becomes less about injury and more about sensitivity. The nervous system starts to amplify the signal, even when there’s no ongoing damage. What you feel is real. But what’s causing it isn’t always structural.
Here’s the tricky part: the more we brace against pain, the more the brain registers threat. This can lead to guarding, tension, poor sleep, and a pain loop that feeds itself.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Instead of stretching or pushing through, begin by noticing. Where is the pain? What does it actually feel like? Dull, sharp, buzzing, stuck? Then gently anchor your awareness in your breath or the sensation of your feet on the ground. Movement in a small range of motion can come later. First, shift the tone of the conversation.
Yoga does not override pain. It helps the brain recalibrate its alarm system by working directly with the nervous system. With enough safe, supported experiences, that system can start to quiet down.
2. Sleep Trouble And Insomnia (But Only Every Night)
You’re exhausted. You crave bed all day. You finally lie down, and suddenly your brain wants to reorganize your entire life. Or rehearse tomorrow’s conversation. Or invent new worries at 3 a.m., just for fun.
This is not a character flaw. This is physiology.
Chronic stress disrupts your body’s natural sleep-wake rhythm. Cortisol, the hormone that’s supposed to help you rise with the sun and wind down with the moon, starts misfiring. Your nervous system doesn’t trust that it’s safe to rest, so it stays alert. Hypervigilance is a survival mechanism, not a personal failing.
And here’s the kicker: the less you sleep, the harder it is to regulate your stress. Poor sleep increases pain sensitivity, muddles your thinking, and drops your resilience. It’s a loop. But not an irreversible one.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Breathwork with a longer exhale. Inhale 4, exhale 6. Or block your right nostril and breathe only through the left, which activates your parasympathetic system. Add weight to your body. Try a folded blanket across your belly, a bolster behind your knees, even a stuffy on your chest if you’re feeling whimsical. Let your body feel held and give your system permission to sink.
That’s just the beginning. Real change comes from how you relate to rest all day long. Don’t save calm for bedtime. Sprinkle micro resets throughout your day. Try slow forward folds, long exhales, even a few moments of closing your eyes and exhaling with sound.
Then, when evening arrives, cue your system like you’d cue a small child with predictable routines. Dim the lights. Try a few slow stretches like child’s pose, knees side to side, and maybe a short meditation practice like yoga nidra or a body scan to settle the mind and prepare the body to shift gears.
Sleep is not a reward for finishing everything. It’s a form of recovery your body depends on.
Treat it like medicine. Practice it like a skill.
3. Racing Thoughts And The Runaway Thought Train
Can’t stop thinking? You’re five steps ahead of a disaster that hasn’t happened. You replay conversations with clients, friends, your boss’ tone of voice.
That’s not overthinking. That’s a nervous system trying to predict danger and keep you safe. Sympathetic activation boosts mental speed, but not clarity, and certainly not expanded perspective.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Mantra-based breathing. The So Hum mantra (“so” on inhale, “hum” on exhale) gently anchors the mind without fighting it. Or chant out loud—yes, out loud!—to engage vagal tone and regulate the prefrontal cortex. Still skeptical? Chanting for just 11 minutes a day can even lengthen your telomeres, which is like sipping from the fountain of youth for your brain1. It’s also been shown to support better emotional regulation2.
4. Irritability That’s Not “Just Hormones”
You’re snippy. Small things feel big. You’re aware you’re overreacting, but can’t quite stop yourself. That’s not a personal failing. That’s a system on overload.
Irritability often flies under the radar as a mood problem, but it’s actually a nervous system signal. Chronic stress lowers your emotional threshold, making quick reactions more likely than calm responses. What looks like anger is sometimes just the heat rising from exhaustion, anxiety, or inner overdrive.
In Ayurvedic terms, this is your inner fire (your pitta) burning too hot. Pitta energy is the energy of action with direction. When balanced, it fuels motivation, achievement, intellect, leadership, and confidence. But when it’s out of whack, it shows up as over-control, mental rigidity, narrow-mindedness, and a quick temper. Physically, this heat can translate into a clenched jaw, shallow chest breathing, or stomach or chest discomfort you can’t medically explain.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Instead of avoiding intensity, meet it with curiosity. Step into a heat-building pose like Warrior II or Chair and hold it with steady breath. Stay attuned to what shifts as the heat starts to rise. Maybe you feel a flush in your neck, muscle fatigue setting in, breath quickening, or your heart picking up pace.
This is your moment to listen.
Come out of the effort before it turns into strain. Not because you’re giving up, but because you’re practicing moderation on purpose. This is the skill: noticing when the energy shifts and choosing to respond rather than override.
By feeling the heat rise and stepping back with awareness, you begin to train your system to notice the early cues, not just the outbursts. This kind of listening is a skill. It builds over time. The more attuned you become to your energy in motion, the less likely you are to get swept up in reactivity. What once felt like sudden irritation begins to soften. You’re not just practicing yoga. You’re practicing how to live inside your own fire without getting burned.
5. Breath Holding (aka the Invisible Clench)
Take a moment. Are you breathing?
Not in theory. In your body. Right now.
Stress-related breath dysfunction doesn’t always look dramatic. Often, it shows up as something harder to name. That could be tightness in the chest, a sense that you can’t quite get a full breath, or a low-grade panic that doesn’t match your environment. You might feel like you’re suffocating, even though your lungs are technically working just fine.
This is not all in your head. It is in your nervous system.
When stress becomes chronic, the breath often shifts without you noticing. Your diaphragm gets bypassed. The chest and neck take over. You might unconsciously hold your breath or sigh often. And if someone tells you to take a deep breath, you might suck in your stomach and lift your chest. That is called reverse breathing. It goes against your body’s natural design and makes things worse, not better. Over time, this pattern drains your energy, disrupts oxygen and carbon dioxide balance, compromises your health, and makes it harder to feel calm.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Begin by doing less. Find a supported position, like lying on your back with knees bent. Rest your hands on your belly if that feels okay. Watch the breath as it is. Do nothing to change it.
Then gently invite movement into the lower belly. As you exhale, let the breath extend a little longer than usual, just until you feel a subtle engagement in your abdominal muscles. When the inhale returns, allow that effort to relax completely. There’s no need to pull in air. Instead, breathe in halfway with ease, sensing the movement low in the belly rather than high in the chest.
Keep your focus on the exhale. Let it guide the rhythm. You are not trying to take a deep breath. You are learning to breathe in a way your body can trust.
This is how you begin to unwind the habit of gripping and retrain your breath to respond to life with more ease. Over time, natural diaphragmatic breathing restores nervous system regulation and reduces that hard-to-name feeling that something is wrong.
Let the breath find you again. It knows how.
6. The Gut That Never Feels Quite Right
Stress and digestion are best frenemies. The vagus nerve connects them, and chronic stress scrambles that connection. Cue the bloating, urgency, constipation, or a vague sense of gut weirdness that comes and goes without explanation.
You might call it a nervous stomach. You might feel cramping, gurgling, or just not hungry. Maybe it swings between too fast and too slow. And the kicker? Medical tests often come back normal.
Here’s what’s likely happening: stress pulls the body out of rest-and-digest mode and into survival mode. When this becomes chronic, the digestive rhythm gets disrupted. Motility slows down or speeds up. The microbiome changes. The brain starts misreading gut signals, and over time, you stop trusting what your belly is telling you.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Begin in Supine Knees to Chest Pose (Apanasana). As you inhale, press your knees gently away from you, letting the breath move low into the belly. As you exhale, draw the knees in toward your armpits. Let the exhale lengthen. Try breathing in for a count of 4 and out for a count of 6. No need to force it. Just follow the rhythm and let your belly stay soft.
Next, place your feet on the floor and let your knees fall gently side to side in Supine Windshield Wiper Twists. Keep the breath the same. Inhale for 4, exhale for 6. If it feels natural, add a 2-count pause after the exhale. Let the movement feel rhythmic and wave-like.
This sequence supports motility, calms gut reactivity, and helps reset the stress-digestion connection. Over time, this kind of slow, deliberate practice strengthens vagal tone and teaches your nervous system that it is safe to digest again.
7. Fatigue That Feels Existential
This isn’t just tired. It’s tired in your bones. You sleep, but it doesn’t help. You rest, but it doesn’t restore. You’re not just low-energy. You feel hollow. Disconnected. Like the spark that used to get you moving has quietly fizzled out.
This is not a personal failing. It is a pattern of depletion.
From a yoga therapy perspective, this kind of exhaustion is not just about needing more sleep. It reflects an energetic imbalance. Chronic stress drains ojas and kicks prana into overdrive. Ojas is your body’s deep reserve of vitality, and prana is your body’s energy use. Your system is running fast and shallow while your tank is running dry.
You might look functional on the outside. But inside, you’re in power-save mode.
Try this Yoga Technique For Stress Management:
Skip the power yoga. Skip the mindset that says rest has to be earned. Yoga for stress management takes a different approach.
Begin lying down with support under your knees or lower legs. Let your spine feel held. Start with Seated 4:4:4:0 Ratio Breath. Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, then pause with no breath for 0. Let your arms move gently with the breath if that feels good. Think of this as rhythm, not effort.
Then shift into a restorative posture like Supine Restorative Rest. Keep the breath smooth and even. No strain.
If your vitality is extremely low, for example with chronic illness, follow with Lower Body Prana Nidra. This practice is a supine guided meditation that involves guiding imagined energy through the limbs at the rate of the breath. It can help to draw your attention inward and reconnect with sensation. This guided rest helps rebuild ojas, regulate the nervous system, and restore depleted energy stores.
This is how you begin to shift from depletion to restoration. Not by doing more, but by learning how to let go.
Why Yoga for Stress Management?
Because it’s not about fixing, it’s about attuning.
Yoga helps you feel again: your breath, your bones, your capacity. It’s not about touching your toes. It’s about noticing when your body is whispering before it has to scream.
Stress management isn’t just what you do when things get bad. It’s how you stay connected to what you actually need even when life is full.
If You’re Ready to Shift Out of Survival Mode
If one of these symptoms feels familiar, that’s a sign you’re listening. And that’s where change begins.
Start small. One breath practice at home. One movement. One moment of rest that doesn’t require achievement. Your body knows how to recover, but sometimes it just needs a little guidance.
Get Support: Yoga Therapy for Stress Management
If you’re ready for support, we’re here for you. We offer yoga therapy nationwide via telehealth, or in person at our Connecticut locations.
Let yoga be your toolkit, not your performance.
Let it help you come back to yourself.
⚠ Disclaimer: This information is not intended as medical advice, but rather as insights into strategies that have helped others. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before beginning any new movement practice.
References
- Khalsa, D. S. (2015). Stress, meditation, and Alzheimer’s disease prevention: Where the evidence stands. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 48(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3233/JAD-142766
- Chokkan, D., Bhel, A., & Ramesh, P. (2024). Effectiveness of Om chanting on perceived stress, negative affectivity, and social inhibition in individuals with pre-hypertension. Asian Journal of Medical Sciences, 15(3), 129–134. https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v15i3.61006
