For many of us, anxiety is an all-too-familiar companion in our daily lives. It’s that knot in your stomach before a big presentation, the racing thoughts that keep you up at night, or the general unease that always seems to be present.
Truthfully, anxiety is different for everyone. But there’s no denying that it impacts the mental and physical well-being of millions.
Meditation for anxiety is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal to help combat these feelings. Join us as we explore the intricacies of how to meditate for anxiety and share some of the tried-and-true – and attainable – techniques that really work.
Some of you who are reading this will have the type of anxiety that you can quickly associate with a reason (kiddo struggling with school or friends, money is tight, marriage is strained, higher than usual demands have been put upon you at work, etc.).
Others of you, of course, have things like this come and go in your life, except that for you – even when the stressor is resolved – feelings associated with anxiety remain. If you’re not sure whether you have this more “formless” form of anxiety, here are a few ways it can feel both emotionally and somatically (in your body):
Now, either way, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably tried a lot of things to soothe these chronic, and/or chronically uncomfortable feelings, such as anxiety. But chances are those methods were not very effective ~ or maybe they were effective, but their side-effects were undesirable (ie-drinking alcohol excessively, smoking weed excessively, or taking a medication that overcorrected and resulted in emotional numbness).
How about considering a remedy that is free, available to you whenever you could possibly want it, has no negative side effects, and can both stay home with you as well as head out and about with you wherever you may roam?
Well, one solution which meets the above criteria, is Meditation. There are all kinds of mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits to the practitioner of meditation:
You want to have less stress? Meditate.
You want to have less symptoms of anxiety? Meditate.
You want to alleviate your depression? Meditate.
You want a more even-keeled mood? Meditate.
You want better focus? Meditate.
You want to sleep better? Meditate.
You want to engage more calmly in your relationships? Meditate.
You want better physical health (slower heart rate & respiration, better digestion, etc.)? Meditate.
You want to engage your spiritual life more fully? Meditate.
Here’s a link to some pretty convincing stats if you’d like to check those out: https://www.everydayhealth.com/meditation/manage-illness/
But perhaps the most convincing reason to adopt a meditation practice that has ever been shared with me is this:
Meditation offers the opportunity to take that much needed break you need… to momentarily hop off the ever-spinning wheel of life.
Life is a wild ride – one that most certainly does not always feel fun and enjoyable to us human animals. We really can get going quite fast and then caught up in the spin of the all-too-real dramas of our personal stories of stress. We know that we need a break from this anxiety, we know that we need space from our stress, but the tragic comedy of it all is that we forget – or deny – that we know just exactly how to get it!
Meditation helps to cultivate space between you and each of those stressful things going in in your life; helps to shift you into that slower perception of time needed in order for you to gain perspective and find freedom from what was constraining you about that situation, even if for just a few moments.
Sound appealing? Yes!
Sound simple? Incredibly!
Then why is it that everyone in the whole world isn’t racing to relieve their anxiety with meditation? Because simple things aren’t always easy.
And, because we westerners usually have very little training into, or experience with, being still and quiet. We seem to find that “still and quiet” state of being very uncomfortable and, very ironically, stress-inducing. In all fairness, of course we find this practice which is meant to relieve stress, stressful. After all, when we get still and quiet, our hard-to-feel feelings and all our life stressors that we have been running from just about all the time, seem to be right there waiting for us.
I think it’s also fair to say that most mindfulness or meditation trainings or articles or blogs fail to give new practitioners a proper heads up about how funky this practice might feel before it is engaged with regularly and becomes a more familiar and blissful experience or state of being.
That’s why one of our sayings here at The Center for Healing Arts & Sciences is, “you’ve got to experience to evolve.” This means a) that no amount of scientific evidence or anecdotal reports of the benefits of any practice can outdo your actual application of the practice to your own life. And, b) that despite having all the support in the world, no one can walk through the dark forest for you to find that there’s actually light all around…only you can do the walking (or in this case…sitting).
But here’s the good news: In the phrase Meditation Practice, “Practice” is the operative word. Another saying we have here at The Center for HAS is, “practice makes practice.” You see, when we go into any activity with the attitude of “practice makes perfect,” we are well-meaning, but actually setting ourselves up for disappointment. That saying teaches us that each time we do something, we should get better and better at it – or more and more flawless at it each time. But that’s not how living works. Even the best athlete, for example, has days where things go incredibly smoothly and their game feels “on” or “successful” and, yet, other days afterward (when according to the “practice makes perfect” phrase they should be making less mistakes) where they just can’t score and everything feels “off” or “like a hot mess.”
So, if incorporating meditation into your life seems like something you’d like to try in order to alleviate your anxiety, or feelings of stress, especially holiday stress, or any other sense of dis-ease for that matter, here are 5 brief lessons on how to get started with a meditation practice.
Tip/Lesson #1 is about tenderness: This one is short and sweet. Approach yourself and this practice – the first time and every time – with the compassion, tenderness, and kindness you would offer a small child learning to do something for the first time. (In fact, if you do nothing else as a result of reading this article except for make self-compassion a lifetime mindfulness practice, that would be well worthwhile unto itself.) We capable human beings can get really frustrated when we encounter something that humbles us or requires an aspect of ourselves that goes beyond our intelligent thinking brain (like meditation), so please remember this lesson of self-compassion above all the others.
Tip/Lesson #2 is about relief: You do NOT have to stop thinking. Hooray!! That old instruction of quieting the mind is not your concern for now. One day? Maybe….maybe one day. But between now and then, all you really need to do is create distance between yourself and your thinking mind. One way to do this is to practice discerning the difference between “thought” and “thinking.”
For example, “I hear the sound of someone laughing” is a thought. But, “Someone is laughing, I wonder what they are laughing at. I wore something a bit far out today. Maybe they’re laughing at me. I should have worn something else. How rude of them to laugh at me. But then again maybe they weren’t laughing at me. Maybe someone told them a joke. I love jokes. I can never remember jokes after I’ve heard them.”
Hear the difference? See the trip we went on with “thinking” vs. “thought?” See how “thinking” was capable of being a source of anxiety, where a simple “thought” really felt neutral?
Lesson #2 tells us to just start noticing the difference between the two, and bring ourselves back home from those trips as soon as we notice we’ve gone on one. But, also important to note with this lesson: berating our brains for doing their job of having thoughts (tens of thousands of them a day actually) or trying to override those thoughts all of a sudden when they’ve been in full throttle thinking mode for decades, is a bit like telling someone not to look behind them, only for them to turn right around and look behind them. It doesn’t work.
That’s what the relief is about: you don’t have to fight yourself or your brain’s thoughts. Instead, you can just start with the practice of noticing – thought by thought – time after time – that the “thought” has become “thinking” and then bring your mind back home from wherever it has run off to.
Tip/Lesson # 3 is all about going back to the basics: Counting. Easy right? One of the most lovely and basic ways to try to avoid grabbing onto the tail of a thought and being dragged off into thinking about the past, future, or anything else for that matter, is to count your breaths. Counting breath is also what you return to when mind has already wandered off before you could notice. It’s how you get back “home” as referenced in the lesson above.
To do this, just place a soft awareness on your belly as it rises and falls and feel the breath come in (1) and out (1) then in (2) and out (2) and so on. Nice long, slow breaths will help. But, let’s say you’re doing this and you’re doing great, but then when you get to your 8th breath, you realize you’ve been off somewhere else in your thinking. Whoops! No problem; it’s to be expected. Just bring your awareness back to your belly and start counting in and out breaths again. In (1) out (1) in (2) out (2) in (3) out (3). Again. And again. And again.
Tip/Lesson #4 is your reminder to stay alert: One of the trickiest things about meditating is this part because it’s confusing. “Wait…aren’t I supposed to relax while I meditate?” Well, yes. But, most of us take our seat, feel our bodies get rooted to the earth, we lift up through our spine, close our eyes or choose what we will softly gaze at, start to breathe………and then almost immediately find ourselves either drifting off to sleep, or find ourselves careless and off in thinking land far before we noticed our minds had left us. And it happens over and over again. So, paradoxically, I’ll admit, we are combining a sense of calm (long, slow breathing, soft gaze or closed eyes) with a sense of observation (hmm, where is my focus now? And now? Aaaand now?). In other words, it is important we don’t confuse the words “alert observation” with the words “rigid control” when it comes to our state of being while meditating. Hear the difference? We are looking for the felt sense of calm, alert observation.
Tip/Lesson #5 tells us to repeat lessons 1-4, again and again: This lesson is about kindly bringing your mind back and back again to observing your belly and counting your breath, each and every time you find your mind has wandered off. This lesson may be more challenging than it sounds because we tend to think we should have far more control over our minds than we actually do. Some of us have advanced degrees for goodness sake. But, alas, our intelligence and advanced degrees are no good to us when it comes to mindfulness, meditation, or relieving anxiety. Not in practice anyway. This is because our minds are want to act like curious, active three year olds who will run off unsupervised any chance they get until they have received a good deal of compassionate training. So, until then, they lovingly need to be brought back to center, over and over again.
Outside of these main lessons or tips, keep in mind that the more regularly you practice (ideally 5-20 minutes, 1-2 times per day), the quicker you will find that your anxiety abates. With the ideal amount of time spent in meditation, it’s all about going with what you will actually do. If that is 5 minutes per day, that’s what you should do.
Start with an amount of time that is doable for you, and then try increasing your time by a minute a day every few days. But there are no real rules here. Just do what you will do and remember lesson #5….come back again and again.
So that’s it! Just 5 easy steps to start a doable meditation practice. We sincerely hope that these tips can help you begin to alleviate your anxiety.
Be sure to let us know if you need more help – or when you’re ready for next steps.
If you’d like to explore all the ways The Center for HAS can support you in your wellness and mindfulness journey, be sure to check out our website here and our pages on Facebook or insta here: @centerforhas
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Learn how we can help you manage your anxiety through meditation. Visit for more: https://www.thecenterforhas.com/services/mindfulness-meditation-spirituality-guidance/
