5 yoga & mindfulness practices

Our generation of ‘Zoomers’, or Generation Z, has had a very fast, progressive society to get their heads around. Mobile phones, social media, fake news, demands of online communities, increased exam pressure, an emphasis on our civilisation’s demands for productiveness…and now the pandemic and all the issues that brings. And that’s just aside from the normal ‘being human-ness’, of puberty hormones raging, sibling, peer and parent pressure and finding a place in the world. So, what can we do to help?

How the human condition deals with thoughts
First, let’s understand the teenage brain. It’s only been the last 200,000 years we have been modern humans: homo sapiens. The ‘Sapiens’ translates roughly into ‘wise’. The more developed neocortex of the sapiens means we are aware of ourselves. The upside of this: planning, connecting, building relationships, solving problems, speech. The downsides: worrying, deliberating, fearing for ourselves, for others, wondering why we are all here, and how we are going to die.

We analyse everything, based on how much threat it is to us. As adults we can start to negotiate our way through this (a bit); as teens, it is at times totally confusing. What is a real threat to us and what is not? So much to worry about! Friendship groups, gossip, the opposite sex, parental expectation, school expectations, exams, career choices, sibling comparisons, how we look, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat… the list is endless! It’s no wonder teens experience huge anxiety, which only seems to be getting bigger all the time as we ‘advance’ in this modern world.

In neurology, the regions of the pre-frontal cortex activate error signals, which are there to help you generally – to help you NOT do things like walk into the sea out of your depth without learning to swim. Error signals work like ‘stop-signs’. The problem is we also have error signals which are known as concepts like judgements and self-criticism – we believe these are ‘life savers’ too! They are there to keep us in good survival. But they are less tangible, they take different forms, have different interpretations, and can mean different things to different people. So much harder to analyse…so let’s spend all our time just worrying about it instead!

To the mind and the body all these threats are as real as each other, and this leads to the stress response system being switched on. The stress response system is when we are in what is called the sympathetic nervous system. If we spend too much time living in the sympathetic nervous system, we get ill, physically, mentally, holistically; it’s as simple as that. Anxiety and depression become the norm, and we struggle.

When we are in the opposing nervous system, called the parasympathetic nervous system, we are flooded with endorphins. Endorphins are the ‘feel-good’ hormones in the body; they give us our sense of wellbeing and calm, they also encourage all the body systems to work effectively – this is good health and wellbeing.

Often, through lack of sleep, worries, school concerns, relationship problems, social media bullying, or social media perfectness, and many other seemingly uncontrollable happenings, teens can experience levels of stress, anxiety, loneliness or depression. The stress response system is over-active, which may result in ill health.

How yoga can help
Yoga understands the human condition has real emotions and threats that pull us around from minute to minute, day to day, by all kinds of people and situations, by all kinds of interpretations and thoughts – by our life roles and stories.

We can take ourselves out of the stress response system, the sympathetic nervous system, and encourage endorphins and other chemical goodies back into our body, guiding us back into the parasympathetic nervous system by using different techniques. All these techniques mean the mind becomes more meditative and focused on positive thoughts, thus less likely to use the damaging self-talk which throws the adrenalin in.