Yoga for People Who Think Yoga Won’t Help: How to Actually Feel Your Feelings (Without Falling Apart)

Feeling overwhelmed? Sad, stuck, like your world’s quietly falling apart while you’re pretending you’re fine? Then someone says:

“Maybe try some yoga.”

And it takes everything in you not to punch them in the face.

You could be burning alive emotionally and some barefoot yogi would still be like, “You should come to class!”

Like that is going to fix the anxiety, the heartbreak, the existential dread, the generational trauma.

You roll your eyes. You get on with your day.

They seem insensitive, deluded—even smug.

And honestly? I don’t blame you. That reaction makes total sense.

Because when you’re drowning, you don’t want someone handing you a yoga mat—you want someone to pull you out of the damn water.

But here’s the thing no one tells you:

That yoga mat can become the raft—if you use it right.

Not Here for the Woo? Good.

Maybe you’ve dipped your toes into the Law of Attraction, quantum jumping, or some TikTok version of healing.

It sounded like spiritual gibberish.

You thought, “Yup, these people are insane.”

And you might be right.

But also… what if that “insanity” isn’t wrong?

Who made the rules?

Who says healing has to look like lying on a therapist’s couch or journaling your trauma to death?

What if your body already knows how to process what your mind keeps suppressing?

How Yoga Actually Helped Me Feel Again (Even When I Didn’t Mean To)
I Didn’t Find Yoga—My Breakdown Did

Let me be clear:

I didn’t find yoga because I wanted to heal.

I found it because I was stretching after the gym and wanted to learn the splits… for male validation. 💀 (Note: I do not recommend this as a strategy.)

But hey—sometimes your desperation becomes your initiation.

During the Covid 2020 lockdown, I started taking it more seriously. At first, I didn’t notice much.

But one day… I realized:

• My inflammation was gone

• I felt way calmer

• I wasn’t chasing chaos or overthinking every second of my day
  
  

Of course I fell off, I started lifting heavy weights again, grinding harder, ignoring my body… Then everything came back. The stress. The dysregulation. The autoimmune flares. The noise.

Fast forward to heartbreak #568, I ended up on a yoga teacher training retreat in June 2025.

And that’s when it hit me:

Yoga didn’t just help me heal—it gave me back to myself.

I wasn’t anxious.

I wasn’t scattered.

I wasn’t numb.

I cried almost every day for three weeks. Not because I was broken. But because my body finally felt safe enough to feel.

As a psychology student, I’d spent years intellectualizing emotions.

Yoga made me stop analysing and start embodying.

It brought me out of my head and into my healing.

💥 So Let Me Really Back Up…

I didn’t come to yoga because I was peaceful.

I came because I was pissed off, overstimulated, and quietly falling apart.

• I’ve got ADHD.

• I’ve got an anxious attachment style that used to run my love life like a toddler with a tinder account.

• I’ve got trauma buried so deep I didn’t even know I was dissociating half the time.

• I’ve got an autoimmune disease that flares up when I ignore my body.

• And I used to ignore it a lot.

“I journaled like a therapist, cried like a ghost, and healed like it was my part-time job.”

— Me, mid-burnout, still romanticizing my own dysfunction

I was the “fix-it” friend. The overthinker. The one who could help everyone else but had no clue how to sit with her own grief. And like most women I know, I got used to pretending I was okay.

I didn’t start yoga to heal. I wanted to do the splits for the aesthetic. For the praise. For the illusion of control.

But somewhere in that… I met my breath.

I met stillness. I met the version of me who wasn’t performing anymore

That’s when the real shift started

So… What Even Is Yoga?

Firstly, Forget what Instagram showed you.

Yoga isn’t about being flexible, vegan, or doing handstands in Bali. Yoga is body-based emotional regulation.

It’s breath. It’s stillness. It’s curiosity.

It’s saying: “What if I just listened to my body today?” It’s not about performing, It’s about returning. To yourself. To safety. To your actual feelings.

What Psychology says:

Psychologically, yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system—the “rest and digest” part of your body that helps you calm the f*ck down.

It also:

• Reduces cortisol (the stress hormone)

• Improves interception (your ability to feel what’s happening inside your body)

• Creates new neural pathways that link movement with safety

This helps people who:

• Feel numb

• Over-intellectualize

• Carry childhood trauma

• Have anxiety or ADHD

• Emotionally shut down under pressure

For those who love a fact check:

• A 2020 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry found yoga significantly reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

• Another study found yoga improved GABA levels (a calming neurotransmitter), helping with mood disorders and emotional regulation.

• Regular practice was shown to decrease amygdala reactivity—your brain’s fear centre—and increase prefrontal cortex function (your rational, “adult” brain).

Yoga literally rewires your nervous system. Safely.

5 Poses to Process Your Emotions (No Flexibility Required)

You don’t need to be a gymnast. You don’t need to believe in chakras.

You just need 10 quiet minutes and a willingness to not rush out of yourself.

Here are five beginner-friendly poses that help you feel:

1. Child’s Pose (Balasana)

Emotion: Grief, surrender, safety

Why it works: Mimics fetal position. Your body recognizes it as a rest state.

Try it when: You feel overwhelmed or overstimulated.

2.Legs Up the Wall (Viparita Karani)

Emotion: Anxiety, emotional fatigue

Why it works: Drains tension from legs, calms the heart rate, signals “I’m safe.”

Try it when: You can’t sleep or feel burnout creeping in.

3. Seated Twist

Emotion: Frustration, stagnation

Why it works: Twists help detox physically and emotionally—literally wringing out stuck energy.

Try it when: You feel creatively or emotionally blocked.

4. Cat & Cow pose

Emotion: Emotional disconnection, numbness

Why it works: Gentle spine movement awakens sensation and connects breath to feeling.

Try it when: You’re dissociating or emotionally flatlined.

5. Reclined Bound angle pose

Emotion: Vulnerability, heartache

Why it works: Opens hips and chest—two areas where we store fear and sadness.

Try it when: You want to cry but feel stuck.

Final Thoughts:

You’re Not Broken. You’re Just Unthawing.

If you try yoga and nothing happens—good.

If you try it and you cry—also good.

If you try it and you just breathe slower—that’s healing, too.

You don’t need to “be into yoga.” You just need to be into you.

Into feeling again. Into softness. Into safety.

Yoga isn’t the cure.

But it might be the beginning of you feeling… like you again.