Why do you feel anxious?
By Abhishek Maheshwari | Mystic Yoga, Kolkata
Anxiety is the most prevalent emotion the modern human being goes through. It was something that working adults dealt with. But nowadays, young adults experience it too. Anxiety is like a chronic, low-grade unease that hums through all our experiences as we go about life.
To deal with anxiety is essential for our mental wellbeing. If I want to feel happy, stable, and in control of what I am doing and what I am experiencing, it is necessary for me to understand and deal with anxiety — not leave it as an unresolved problem within me.
That is what this discussion is about.
How Do We Even Define Anxiety?
Before we look for answers, let us first understand what anxiety actually feels like.
One way to describe it: when you have people or external situations that are demanding, your own ability gets compromised. You know you were capable, but because of external pressure, you could not execute. You realise you performed below your capability — and that realisation itself produces anxiety.
Another way: anxiety is a state of mind where we think of something which has not happened, or may happen, and we get involved in it. We anticipate something bad without being able to name what it is. This is where anxiety differs from fear. If I am scared of heights, that is a defined fear — I know what I am scared of. Anxiety is a dread of the future where I am unable to define why I am dreading it. It has no object.
There is also the anxiety that comes from wanting to control a conversation, from overthinking, from looping thoughts one into another until we are in a diffused stress where we cannot name the source. And then there is perhaps the most telling kind — when life outwardly looks stable and everything is in place, but inwardly there is some instability. That gap between what is projected outside and what is going on inside becomes its own expression of anxiousness.
These are ways we know we are anxious. But we do not know what to do with it.
What Patanjali Says About the Anxious Mind
Anxiety is a construct of the mind. We experience it in our heads. And if that is the case, then the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is the textbook to refer to — because yoga is, at its core, the science of mind control.
Patanjali does not use the word anxiety anywhere. But he describes the nature of a disturbed and scattered mind with extraordinary precision. He describes what causes it, how it feels in the body and mind, what its root causes are, and what the solution is.
Let us go through each of these.
The Nature of the Mind
Yoga Sutra 1.2 — Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ — describes yoga as the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind. We often focus on the first part: what is yoga? But the second part tells us something equally important: the nature of the mind is to fluctuate.
The chitta — the mind — is a combination of my thoughts, my emotions, my perceptions, and my saṃskāras. Not just my thinking mind. Not just my emotions. But my deep-seated preconceived notions — from this lifetime, and according to Patanjali, from multiple lifetimes. All of this together makes up the chitta.
Fluctuations are the inherent nature of the mind. The mind moves from one thought to another, and this uncontrolled movement of thoughts causes anxiety. Yoga is the effort to still those fluctuations — not to eliminate thought entirely, but to bring it to a point where I can at least see how I am moving from one thought to another. Some clarity. Some control.
Anxiety comes from an untrained mind. Training the mind is the task.
Nine Reasons Why the Mind Gets Disturbed
In Sutra 1.30, Patanjali lists nine obstacles — nine reasons why the mind becomes distracted and disturbed. Each one is worth sitting with.
1. Illness If I am physically unwell, that has a direct bearing on my mind. A toothache, a backache, a hormonal irregularity — any of these will cause mental restlessness. But it is not only actual illness. The desire to overprotect the body, the fear of illness — these too disturb the mind. One is a real condition. The other is one we create.
2. Dullness of Mind Inertia. The inability to process things fast enough, to take decisions, to think clearly. When the mind is heavy and dull, we lean towards procrastination. Tasks pile up. Clarity disappears. We do not know what is important or what needs to be executed. Dullness leads to lack of clarity, and lack of clarity creates anxiety.
3. Doubt Doubt is closely related to inertia. When we are in low mental energy for a long time, indecision grows. This is not only the doubt of doubting someone else. It is the doubt of: am I on the right path? Every time we make progress — say ten or twenty percent into a project or idea — doubt comes in. We switch. We start again. This pattern of constant switching, born from doubt, creates a very particular kind of anxiety: the anxiety of never completing, never arriving.
4. Carelessness and Unmindfulness A small example: when you filled out your Class 10 form as a child, you may have written your father's name incorrectly — missing the middle name. Every document after that carries that same name. And now, when you want to renew your passport, the names do not match. That one moment of carelessness can create enormous anxiety years later.
But there is something subtler here. Carelessness causing a problem has a one-to-one mapping — I was careless, it caused a problem, I can trace it. But if I am simply unmindful — not fully present while doing things — then I do not even know whether I executed correctly or not. I cannot remember whether I switched off the light, locked the door, used the right words. This unmindfulness creates a deep uncertainty that lives inside us even when we have done everything right.
5. Laziness Resistance to effort. This is where all well-meaning plans do not get executed. I have the knowledge. I know what is good for my health, my career, my relationships. But I do not take the final step of doing it.
Having the knowledge and not doing the right thing is far worse, from the perspective of anxiety, than not knowing and not executing. If you do not know and do not act, you cannot be blamed. But knowing and still not acting is a burden that does not leave. The anxiety of laziness is also the anxiety of missed opportunity.
6. Overindulgence Constant stimulation — constant access to food, constant access to mobile phones — does not allow the mind to rest. And an overstimulated mind is unable to feel reality.
When you are supposed to be in extreme grief, or genuinely happy for someone — but your mind is flooded with inputs from scrolling — you cannot fully emote. Your emotions get stunted. And once your emotions get stunted, doubt creeps in: am I even a genuine person? Can I feel at all?
Overstimulation stops me from emoting properly. Stunted emotions create doubt about my basic humanity. And once I have that doubt, anxiety is a natural result. Because these layers are so deep, you cannot easily pinpoint the mobile phone as the cause. But it is in there.
7. False Perception Imagining things. Misinterpreting situations. In a social environment, false perception is a very big source of anxiety. If someone I dislike makes a joke at my expense, I may receive it as an insult — even if it was genuinely a joke. My perception, shaped by my feelings about that person, distorts the reality of what happened. And I carry that distortion.
8. Inability to Progress Taking effort without visible progress. This is not the same as the Karma Yoga idea of letting go of results — that is a conscious surrender. This is something different: when I define progress poorly, or when I chase the wrong markers, I will keep working and never feel I am arriving. If I value material wealth above all else, there is no end to progress there. There is always a better car, a bigger number. That chase brings its own dissatisfaction. My inability to manage my own definition of what progress means can be a very large cause of anxiety.
9. Instability Insecurity about the future, about one's own emotions, about one's practice or understanding. When we do not make the effort to move from instability toward stability — in any area of life — that lack of effort itself becomes a source of anxiety.
These nine can be grouped. Through the body — illness. Through low energy — dullness and inertia. Through confusion — doubt. Through behaviour — carelessness and laziness. Through the senses — overindulgence and false perception. Through growth — inability to progress. Through consistency — instability.
The key insight here is this: anxiety by definition is objectless. You do not know what is causing the unease. But the moment you can name a reason — the moment anxiety becomes a defined problem — it becomes manageable. You are no longer fighting a shadow. You are dealing with something real.
These nine give us a lens. If I am anxious, I can ask myself: which of these nine is active in my life right now?
How Anxiety Feels in the Body and Mind
Patanjali does not stop at causes. He also describes how a disturbed mind feels — and this is useful for those of us who practice yoga, because it tells us exactly where our practice is the antidote.
Anxiety shows up as:
Physical restlessness — fidgetiness, inability to be still. Watch people sitting outside a job interview. Their bodies give them away.
Mental unease — not feeling confident, not feeling comfortable in your own mind. The external environment may be perfectly fine, but inside, something is unaddressed.
Disturbed breathing — shallow, short breaths. Not filling the lungs fully. This is both a sign of anxiety and a cause of it.
If these continue and deepen, they become sadness, discomfort, and dissatisfaction. At the extreme end, they become genuine suffering.
Yoga addresses each level. Disturbed breathing — we train through prāṇāyāma. Physical restlessness — we slow the body through āsana, teaching it to move deliberately and with awareness. Mental unease — we address through meditation. The antidote exists at every level. The practice is not abstract. It is precise.
The Root Causes — Going Deeper
Beneath the nine surface-level obstacles, Patanjali goes deeper. He identifies four root causes — the kleśas — that drive all the disturbance.
Avidyā — Misunderstanding of Reality Avidyā is mistaking the impermanent, impure, and painful as permanent, pure, and pleasurable. It is confusing what is not the self for the self.
The most accessible entry point here is impermanence. Things are going to change. The desire to control that change — or even the desire to desire its continuity — is the source of suffering. Buddhism arrives at exactly the same place. Impermanence, when truly acknowledged, when truly accepted, strikes at the deepest root of anxiety. Because most of our anxiety is the anxiety of what if things change?
Rāga — Attachment When I am attached to someone, to a situation, to an outcome — I want it to remain. I want continuity. But the world is impermanent, and things will change regardless. My strength will change as I age. My near and dear ones may not remain. My health may not remain. Anything I am attached to carries within it the seed of anxiety — because I know, somewhere, that it will not last forever.
Dveṣa — Aversion The mirror image of attachment. Things I do not want, people I do not like, situations I dread — if there is even the anticipation that these may arrive, I become anxious. Attachment and aversion are essentially the same problem: the desire for permanence in an impermanent world.
Abhiniveśa — Fear of Loss of Continuity The deepest fear. Translated as the fear of death, or the fear of loss of continuity. Fear of death is one of the most basic drives of human beings — from the earliest humans to now, we are wired to preserve our life and our body.
But loss of continuity is broader than physical death. I do not want to lose my public image — I want continuity there. I want to continue parenting my children the way I have been. I want my job to remain stable, my relationship to remain intact. I want things to continue. And any threat to that continuity — real or imagined — produces anxiety.
If I could become more adaptable — if my basic premise were things will change, and I will mold myself accordingly — I would be far less anxious. A mind that expects change is a cushioned mind. A mind that insists things should not change is a brittle one.
What Can We Do
Understanding anxiety is half the battle. But here are five things, if actively included in life, that will bring real change.
1. Stabilize the Body Slow, deliberate movements. When you slow down the body, you slow down the mind. Train your body through yoga — not to perform, but to bring it into a state of steadiness.
2. Regulate the Breath Prāṇāyāma before meditation — always. The breath tells the nervous system how you are feeling. If you are anxious, your breath is short and shallow. When you deliberately lengthen and deepen the breath, you are sending a signal to the nervous system that you are safe. This is not metaphorical. It is physiological. Polyvagal theory confirms what Patanjali knew: breath regulation is the most direct lever we have over the nervous system.
3. Train the Attention Meditation. But do not attempt it before the breath is regulated. Meditation requires you to hold attention. And you cannot hold attention with an unregulated mind. The sequence matters: body first, breath second, attention third.
4. Introspect At the end of the day, or over the weekend — sit and observe. How were you thinking? How were you reacting? What triggered you? Introspection, done regularly, makes you less and less reactive. When you observe yourself from a distance, you begin to see patterns in your own behavior that otherwise go completely unrecognised.
5. Examine Your Attachments, Aversions, and Desire for Continuity This is the philosophical work. Sit with the question: what am I attached to? Not to let it go forcibly — but to see it clearly. Clarity itself begins to loosen the grip.
A Final Thought
All of us are experiencing a world that is more similar than we think. We believe our challenges are unique. But actually, we all struggle with something or the other. And our challenges are neither as unique nor as excruciating as we imagine them to be.
Observation brings about that change.
Stabilize the body. Regulate the breath. Train the attention. Introspect. And build your foundation on a clear understanding of attachment, aversion, the desire for continuity, and the fact of impermanence.
That is the work.
This is Session 1 of the Spiritual Studies series at Mystic Yoga , Kolkata — an 8-week exploration of one emotion each week through the lens of yoga philosophy and lived experience.