Get out of your head: meditation for the anxious
It promises to reduce stress, improve sleep, increase concentration, positively impact mood and enhance relationships. With a promise like that, why wouldn't you give meditation a go.
I've meditated on and off for years. And I've given lots of different styles of meditation a try - guided visualisation, zazen, mindfulness, self-enquiry (through 'flow of consciousness' writing) and various types of yogi meditation (trakata, kundalini, mantra). When I've got into a regular practice I can personally vouch that it works. Yes, I've felt more positive, more present, less flappable.
At times when anxiety attacks have been at their worst, though, it's a different story. If anything, it seemed only to make matters worse.
Jeez, being alone and quiet at those times was effectively rolling out the welcome mat for anxiety to visit. Meditation became a vacuum that anxiety would readily fill. Focusing on my breath would end in hyper-ventilating. Focusing on my body would bring my awareness to a symptom or health concern. Observing my passing thoughts was, frankly, terrifying.
The obvious problem was that I was spending way too much time in my head. Meditating was exacerbating it.
By accident I realised the better alternative - for me.
I needed to face the thing that I avoided the most. Health Anxiety says my body is fragile and vulnerable so I had to do the opposite. I had to get into my body and move.
My movement is through yoga. I realised that whenever I threw myself into a challenging practice, my mind had no choice but to ignore the chatter and focus instead on enabling my muscles to get from point A to a challenging point B.
I've since learned that being in mind, particularly worrying, is an attempt at control. To release the grip of anxiety, it was necessary to try to let go of control little by little. Ironically, meditation seemed to do the opposite.
Some people run, lift weights, walk as a mood-booster. I get it now. There is nowhere else to focus but on the physical.
I was out of my head and into my body.
Yoga practice was a moving meditation and wonderful 'medicine' for my anxious moments. During my yoga teacher training we took that a step further - we tried dance meditation, laughter therapy, 'shaking'. In a nutshell, shake up the energy in your body by getting your moves on in one way or another.
Like anything, I think the magic is in experimenting with different things to find what works for you. Meditation is definitely part of my 'toolkit' - it's just now I know when a cross-legged silence is right, and when to get moving.
