Ayurveda for Stress and Anxiety: Natural Ways to Achieve a Calm and Balanced Life

Constant worry, nervousness, racing heartbeats, and that feeling of unease—stress is more than just a response to situations; it’s an overload of emotions that may snowball into an anxiety disorder or other mental health conditions if not tackled well.

Stress and anxiety can make it difficult to focus, sleep, or enjoy activities you usually love. You probably already know that there are medications available to reduce stress levels, but that isn’t the only option!

Ayurveda for stress and anxiety offers natural remedies to manage the symptoms in a holistic way that helps you find your inner peace. Ayurvedic medicines like Krishna’s Ashwagandha Juice are among the best remedies to reduce stress hormones and boost your energy levels. Continue reading to learn about other ways Ayurveda can help manage stress and anxiety.

How Stress Affects Your Health?

The primary hormone responsible for stress is called cortisol. This important hormone plays a lot of roles in your body, like reducing inflammation, increasing blood sugar, regulating the sleep cycle, and controlling blood pressure.

And when you are in a stressful condition, be it mental or physical, the hormone helps your body with the fight-or-flight instinct—which is a good thing.

For a short period, cortisol is healthy, as by activating your body’s fight-and-flight mode, it acts as a protective barrier that makes you aware of danger, makes you productive, helps you calculate risks and motivates you to stay organized and prepared. It also gives your body the energy to respond to short-term stressful situations.

Overstressing, though, can actually do the opposite of all the good things. There will be increased inflammation in your body, blood sugar levels might rise, blood pressure may increase, etc. Thus, to manage stress, the number one priority is to get cortisol levels lower.

According to Ayurveda, the level of cortisol increases due to an imbalance in your body’s doshas—the natural energy systems of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Dosha imbalances can occur due to lifestyle, poor diet, genetic propensities or external factors.

Vata imbalance: Can lead to excessive worry, fear, and restlessness.

Pitta imbalance: May result in irritability, anger, and frustration.

Kapha imbalance: Can cause lethargy, heaviness, and a lack of motivation.

Ayurvedic Management Of Stress And Anxiety

Ayurveda offers a practical and holistic way to take charge of your well-being by embracing a healthy lifestyle and cleansing your body and mind of harmful toxins. The treatments and practices help balance your doshas, which eventually restores harmony with your body and mind and helps you achieve a better state of mental health, reducing stress and anxiety.

Here are some strategies of Ayurveda to manage stress and anxiety.

Practice Meditation and Mindfulness

Meditation is a great way to start your day. Early morning meditation is the best, though you can do it anytime of the day when you find a relaxing environment. Meditation can help activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and calming the body. This reduces the stress response, which activates the sympathetic nervous system and increases cortisol production.

The central goal of meditation is to gain full awareness and focus on the present moment, reducing rumination about past events or worries about the future. This can help break the cycle of stress and anxiety and lower your cortisol levels.

It can be daunting to begin a meditation practice initially. But as much as you practice you will be able to get a hold of it.  Start with a simple 5-10 minutes of meditation, pay attention to each breath as it comes and goes and try to keep your mind focused without any negative thinking.

Practising such mindfulness not only enhances a sense of calm and contentment but also increases your ability to build emotional resilience, improve focus and concentration, reduce high blood pressure and help balance your immune system.

De-Stress With Quality Self-care

Self-care is the basics of managing stress and anxiety with Ayurveda. A lot of stress can build up if you keep your feelings bottled up and don’t communicate—even with yourself. When you suppress stress, it accumulates like a toxin in your mind and gradually affects your well-being.

So purposeful and devoted self-care can help you a lot to deal with this. Choose to give importance to things you like, be it massage therapy, listening to music, or even writing a journal. Do what can make you detached from the running thoughts and the turbulence of the world around you. You may also try to talk your heart out with someone you are comfortable with and trust. Opening up and talking to express your feelings tackle stress management in your everyday life.

Other self-care practices include taking a warm bath, oil pulling, reading motivating books, and sitting in nature.

Use Ayurvedic Herbs For Occasional Stress & Anxiety

Stress and tension can sometimes affect Sadhaka Pitta, the sub dosha of Pitta responsible for emotional balance. Krishna’s Ashwagandha Juice, which is made of pure ashwagandha herb, supports Sadhaka Pitta and enhances your natural resistance to emotional stress. This herb can provide a calming influence on your mind, boost your energy, improve memory, promote peaceful sleep, and treat a number of ailments.

Krishna’s Sleep Health Juice is another effective Ayurvedic remedy for stress and anxiety—a potent combination of Ayurvedic botanicals like jatamansi, shankhpushpi, ashwagandha, and amla. The juice helps in improving your sleep cycle, and achieving deep sleep, which reduces your emotional stress.

Avoid Smoking or Using Tobacco And Nicotine Products

Many people who use nicotine believe it relieves stress, but that is just a temporary sense of relaxation. Nicotine actually does the opposite, it increases stress on your body by raising blood pressure, heart rate, and anxiety. Plus, because it increases inflammation in your body it can worsen chronic pain, so if you’re dealing with prolonged tension and body aches, smoking will only make things worse.

Take Care Of Your Diet And Nutrition

Sometimes stress and anxiety cause you to indulge in unhealthy eating. You may crave certain foods like chocolates or salty fried foods, believing that food will make you feel better. Again, this stress or emotional eating happens because of the same reason—your cortisol levels. The increased cortisol levels can increase your appetite, particularly for high-calorie, sugary, and fatty foods. This is because these foods are often associated with comfort and quick energy, which your body craves during stressful times.

But unfortunately, that doesn’t really work! Studies show that stress eating only provides relief for about three minutes—not nearly long enough or worth the aftermath.

According to Ayurveda for stress and anxiety, food is like a medicine that should be nourishing and grounding to optimize your health. A healthy diet low on processed foods and more whole foods, organic products, grains, and vegetarian protein is the best way to lower cortisol in your body. Fruits and vegetables are packed with antioxidants that help combat stress by lowering the free radical damage in your body.

For added antioxidant support, consider Krishna’s Raw Noni Juice. This is made from fresh noni fruit, which is a natural antioxidant. When taken daily it helps protect against the free radical damage caused by stress, while also boosting immunity and restoring balance between your mind, body, and spirit. A combination of Raw Noni Juice and  Ashwagandha Juice is also a great option for enhancing your overall health.

Final Thoughts

A little stress now and then is common, and Ayurveda offers many helpful ways to manage stress and anxiety. But if you have been struggling with frequent stress and anxiety, and the symptoms are starting to affect your day-to-day life, get in touch with a doctor. They can help you manage your symptoms according to your body dosha as well as assist you with a treatment plan to prevent other health issues that might occur due to stress.