How To Use Meditation For Your Anxiety
There are benefits to the daily practice of meditation for your anxiety.
weheartit Being bombarded daily by news filled with reports of natural disasters, deep political division, and terrorist attacks create anxiety in many of us.
The world feels unsafe and a creeping uneasiness slowly expands in our lives.
The simplest technique I have found to counteract this is to use meditation for anxiety.
What are the physical effects of anxiety?
After a weekend filled with reports on Hurricane Irma, I felt my anxiety being unusually high. I don’t often watch the news, but this time I was sucked into it. Throughout the weekend I turned on the TV several times for updates.
As I went for my daily morning walk at the start of the week, I could feel that my breath was shallow, my muscles were tense, and my sense of safety was shaken. So I did what I always do in such a situation.
I focused on my breath. At first, I noticed how hard it was to inhale for more than two beats. So I started to count and while I counted my breath, it started to become more extended and calm. It took several minutes of doing this until I started to feel some relaxation return to my body.
How do you use meditation for your anxiety?
After breakfast, I sat down in my office and meditated. While I had been able to breathe better on my walk, I needed to come to a place where I could simply sit, let the outside world vanish and turn inward.
Here, I knew I would find the place of tranquility and peace that I so badly needed. I often meditate on a clarity of what it is I want to create in my day, but today I needed meditation for anxiety.
There are numerous studies that show that meditation affects our nervous system, helps relax muscle tension, lowers anxiety, and creates an overall sense of well-being.
However, the effect of meditation goes beyond the physical. It also deepens a very important relationship — our relationship with the Divine.
Meditation for anxiety strengthens your relationship with the divine.
I frequently talk about the Law of Attraction and how it makes up the foundation of creating deeply connected relationships.
In his article, "Developing a Personal Relationship with the Divine", takes this a step further: Dr. Joe Dispenza: "So if you put your attention and energy on a relationship with the Divine, then as your attention on it expands, there should be more of its intelligence available to you in your life."
In these times of uncertainty, we do need more intelligence, because much of what we were taught does not seem applicable anymore. We need new skills to navigate these unknown waters. And that is what meditation allows us to access.
We become more alert to our intuition and see signs in our daily lives that give us clues as to what to do next. The stronger our focus on the Divine gets, the stronger it shows us its support.
There are benefits to the daily practice of meditation for anxiety.
But as with any key relationship in our lives, we cannot only engage with the Divine when we need its support. This is a relationship we need to build and strengthen. To this effect, we need to be willing to carve out some time to quietly interact with the Divine on a daily basis.
So ask yourself: what are my ways to connect to the Divine? Maybe you pray. Maybe you journal, do yoga, draw, go out into nature, or attend church.
Connecting to the Divine is deeply personal and there are no correct answers. The only important thing is that you do it on a regular basis so that you can communicate and receive the answers you need to keep moving through your life in a centered way.
Many people have an idea of meditation as "thinking of nothing". In reality that is impossible, as we are human. Instead, think of it as a way of giving our mind free range to wander a landscape — a landscape that is created by an intention.
This allows us access to thoughts and ideas that we might never have when trying to consciously solve a particular problem. A meditation for anxiety is then simply a guide for creating the intention of feeling safe in uncertain times.
If you are interested in jumpstarting your meditation practice or are one of the many people who feel that meditation does not work for them, download my Meditation Jumpstart Technique and see if this can’t get you off the ground.
You can also take a look at my resource board on Pinterest with plenty of information on Meditation and how to get started.
Selina Schuh is an educator, author, speaker, and owner of Empowered Living Strategies. She teaches women who are feeling frustrated and underappreciated in their relationships step-by-step skills to create deeply connected relationships. Click here to download her Meditation Jumpstart Technique.
Watch therapist Dr. Kasim Al-Mashat's TED Talk on mindfulness meditation and how it re-defines pain, happiness, and satisfaction.