Meditation helps anxiety by returning control to you and by reducing the overwhelm. The habit of the mind to go into memory, fantasy, planning, wanting & aversion causes overwhelm, taking control away from you. Meditation breaks this habit slowly but surely. I will make it very objective and put a handle on it so anyone can use meditation to reduce stress and anxiety along with overall improvement in life.
To understand how does meditation help anxiety, we need to realize that anxiety is a red flag, indicating that there are things that need to be taken care of. I like to bring our awareness to the process of whatever we are discussing. The answer is always hidden in the process. I think that the “why” creates a never ending loop without any answers but the “how” always gives us what we want to know and there is another huge benefit which we will discuss later.
So let’s see how anxiety occurs according to meditation perspective first.
What causes anxiety:
Control of our lives is slipping away or things not going our way or our. These two statements define anxiety on a very conclusive level.
Photo by Anete Lusina
Now I want you to understand a very important thing, you were not born with anxiety. It’s what happened to you that made you anxious. This all goes back to early childhood where some children have to go through extremely unstable home environments where they are criticized, abused or neglected. This makes their mind and body system anxious and with time, it turns into a deep habit which later shows up in most aspects of lives whenever there is a similar trigger present.
How anxiety manifests:
Our mind and body system works on feedback loops. Whenever there is a trigger present in our environment, our mind starts producing anxious thoughts. These thoughts immediately stimulate the body to produce stressful emotions. Body starts producing high levels of stress hormones. Your breathing becomes fast in an attempt to take in more oxygen, making you ready to fight the situation. Your heart rate elevates.
This reaction of the body gives feedback to your mind and it produces more fearful, negative thoughts according to the current state of the body.
This creates a feedback loop between body and mind, a vicious circle that keeps spiraling until it overwhelms us. At this point, the perception that we have totally lost control takes over which adds further to the situation.
Now let’s see how meditation can help.
Meditative process: Cure anxiety with meditation
I want you to bring your awareness to the fact that our senses inform us where we are right now on a moment to moment basis. We see our environment, we feel everything our body is touching and we hear whatever sounds are present.
There is one more important aspect, awareness. You are seeing this screen but are you aware that you are seeing?
As soon as you try to find the answer, you are connected to the awareness. In this awareness, there is a you watching a screen. You are suddenly the observer of the process of watching the screen rather than being part of the process.
Go ahead and try it with something else because I want you to really get it. Do you see that you are watching a few lines and you are hearing internally whatever these lines mean? The process of reading.
Now I want you to notice again how this observing puts a space between you and the process. It’s just there, happening. So meditation is as simple as that. Connecting with awareness.
Meditation to ease anxiety:
Meditation actually reverses the process of anxiety. There are two ways that you need to understand and practice. These could also be called your tool kit. Both are equally powerful and effective.
Turn towards:
First method is to observe the how of anxiety. As soon as you detect a negative thought, connect to your awareness. You don’t need to leave the room or work place, you only need to leave the engagement in the process. Become an observer and start acknowledging the thoughts without any judgment.
Then move your awareness into the body from mind space. Just see if you can detect any sensations in your cheeks, jaws, chest, abdomen and so on. If you feel any sensation or emotion, just acknowledge. If there is any resistance to these feelings, let it go. Let them smoothly run their course. In fact, if something like a distraction is blocking their movement, remove the blockage. Help them flow.
Then move again into the mind space and see if there are any thoughts. Keep repeating the process. Make sure that you see the moment the anxiety episode starts reducing. This creates a balanced view of reality and is of extreme importance.
The impact of “Turn Towards”:
Here are the things that are changing the mind & body system.
- You are connecting to your awareness
- You are outside the process and watching it as an observer
- Perception of losing control is a habit and you have started to break it
- Internal fight to suppress the thoughts and emotions is gone, saving a lot of energy
- Mind & body system is becoming relaxed improving overall all wellbeing
- The habit of being an observer is strengthening and will become automatic after a while
Turn Away:
The second method is simple and can be used alternately when it’s hard to focus on the process. Sometimes we don’t have enough energy for it.
So the moment you detect a trigger, like a thought or feeling or external stimulus, bring your attention to your lower abdomen. Just get a sense of how it rises with in breath and falls with out breath. Keep your awareness at this point until the anxiety episode is over.
You will notice that your awareness will be pulled by your mind or body. Gently bring it back to the lower abdomen. Keep repeating.
This seems to be too easy but let me tell you, it’s extremely powerful. It has everything in it that needs to deal with anxiety and more. Let me explain.
The impact of “Turn Away”:
Here is how the process is changing you
- The moment you start noticing lower abdomen, you are connected to awareness
- You have moved away from mind space where all thinking happens and triggers the cycle
- The habit of anxiety is eroding slowly over the time as it is not being given any weight (our mind creates habits around phenomena which are given more weight by perceiving them as important)
- The focus of you awareness on breath is relaxing the body and it’s informing the mind to relax (the tail is wagging the dog)
- Process of noticing breath on a trigger is becoming automatic, a deep habit
- Connecting with awareness helps you see the point anxiety disappears. (informs you that difficult things happen but nothing lasts)
- You are becoming emotionally resilient (focusing on breath in the face of anxiety)
There is a trap however, your mind tries to convince you that thinking is important right now to resolve the situation. Trust me, if it were so, no anxiety would exist in the world.
Conclusions:
Meditation has huge benefits for helping with anxiety, depression and has the potential to improve overwell physical and emotional wellbeing. It’s a far better solution so far than any other method. It not only brings you out of anxiety episodes but it changes your mind and body system forever. Trust me, it has the potential to completely free you from the grip of anxiety with long term practice. Familiarizing yourself with how does meditation help anxiety will help you understand more and deepen your understanding of the anxiety aspect. There is a lot more to it which can not be explained in this article for the sake of scope.
I wish you happiness, success and complete freedom from suffering. Leave any comments or questions. I will do my best to answer them.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-red-t-shirt-looking-at-her-laptop-3755761/
