Anxiety is the mind's anticipatory movement — citta projecting itself into imagined futures and contracting around what it finds there. The Yoga Sutras name this pattern precisely: pariṇāma-duḥkha, the suffering that arises from ceaseless change and the mind's resistance to it. Understanding anxiety begins not with elimination but with careful observation of its signatures in breath, body, and thought.
Each step builds on the last.