Expert: Ramesh Kamath - 3/1/2007

Question
Hi
Can you please prescribe the best yoga asanas for a person suffering from reactive hypoglycemia and severe OCD and panic and anxiety attacks
AG

Answer
Here is the summary of the Yoga model for managing OCD:  

   * Mentally and physiologically meet the feeling of anxiety or urge with softness and kindness – it will dissipate.
   * Keep mentally relaxing the body by telling different body parts to relax.
   * Let obsessions be as they are – do not try to change them.
   * Remind yourself that you are not your thoughts and, if necessary, focus your attention on the peaceful sensations in the heart center, creating a calming awareness. Imagine the sensation, even if you can not feel it.
   * Logic will not reduce your obsessions, but not engaging in them will.

This you can do with brething exercise as follows :

IMAGINE you have nothing to think about … but taking in one long, smooth, deep breath (through your nostrils) and following it all the way down … until your stomach feels like a balloon. And … nothing else to do … but to breathe out (through your nostrils) until the “balloon” slowly, smoothly deflates.
Do it again. Do this any time, anywhere. Again and again.

It will take some effort, but channel your mental energies into this deep abdominal breathing. This is where any amount of OCD can be a blessing: Be persistent HERE and let it occur repeatedly!! How we breathe changes how we feel and think. Your nervous system wants a vacation.
Encouraging gentle, smooth, deep breath to flow in and out of the body is like taking our nerves to a health spa!

Practice it for six months and see how it is going. If nothing changes, there is always Exposure and Response Prevention treatment that helps about 50% of people with OCD

Ramesh Kamath