Anxiety has a psychological and biological basis, but more than that, anxiety has got much to do with the relationship between parents and their children. Imbalance in the hormones can cause anxiety. There are levels of anxiety. Simple anxiety everybody feels, ‘I have to do this and run to do that and at 8.30 I have to go there’ and there is anxiety. This is normal anxiety. It is necessary to have this kind of anxiety in order to have proper control of the mind.
Then there is hyper anxiety and those people who are hyper anxious have funny manifestations. When they go up the building and then they look down, they feel dizzy. That is the cause of the presence of hyper anxiety in the brain. The brain and the eyes have to adjust the object and the distance both. In this realm of anxiety, the endocrine glands like the adrenal gland play a very important part. This endocrine gland sometimes gets improper relationships with the gonads, the sex glands. Then either the anxiety is suppressed or over expressed. The sex gland plays a very important part in controlling anxiety. It has been found that people who suppress their sexual feelings have more anxiety. Those people who do not suppress and who expose themselves sexually, freely, do not suffer from anxiety neurosis.
Therefore, you have to tackle this problem first through hatha yoga and then it has to be tackled by working out your feelings. If you express those sentiments outside it will not be good, because our society is a mixture of many types of people. If you start dancing here nobody will like you. You have to find out some respectable, civilized way of expressing your anxiety. One should not try to express anxiety and neurosis in a wild way.
So, you must practise antar mouna. In antar mouna, whatever comes to your mind let it come. Then you must have kirtan. Like minded people must join and go slowly. They must become one with the rhythm and when you identify totally with the rhythm, you overcome your inhibitions and things begin to happen. After that you can have temporary relief from anxiety.
In certain types of anxiety, I have found kumbhaka, retention of breath, is very good, but you must know that everybody cannot practise retention. Kumbhaka can only be practised after you have practised yoga for some time.
1983, Spain