Chitta, Sanskrit for busy mind chatter, is one of the main causes of anxiety, especially the kind we tend to fuel for ourselves. You know that feeling when you take an idea, or something someone said to you, and you build a story around it in your head in a matter of minutes? And then your heart is beating a little faster and you're sweating a bit?
Slowing down the activity in our minds, and softening the sharp edges of those thoughts, has a tendency to also slow down our nervous system's all-too-common heightened state.
Imagine these scenarios:
A calm wind rustling through the leaves and grass in your yard sounding sweet and peaceful, versus the chaos of gusty wind leaving a trail of leaves or branches in its wake and an angry whistle at your window.
Calming waves gently rolling on shore with a rhythmic amount of time between each, creating an almost musical and healing sound, versus the kind of waves that run into each other going both directions with a danger warning attached to them.
Big puffy white clouds occasionally providing protection and relief on a hot summer day, versus a sky full of grey and gloom with no room for the sun to show us it's beauty.
The difference in the situations above are time and amplified energy in the elements, versus elimination of the elements all together. When we spend time on our mat, we generate all kind of thoughts, and instead of putting in work to eliminate them, we can just soften the edges and take time to process their origination or their truth, as we let the judgmental and negatively conditioned ones pass and bring the creative and truthful ones to the surface to grow and thrive.