MEDITATION
Help Relieve Anxiety & Calm the Mind
By Michelle Bouchard
MEDITATION
Help Relieve Anxiety & Calm the Mind
by Michelle Bouchard
COPYRIGHT 2018

Does Meditation really helping anxiety? Yes. Yes it does. The only reason why I see it that way is because I was somebody who pushed meditation to the side and says, no way. I don't eat this because I have other ways to release my stress, my anxiety, whatever it is. I used to be, you know, one of those that like to get into that physical activity, you know, punching something or doing some Tibo if you even know what that is. But I used to try, you know, to release that energy, that pent up energy by strenuous exercise or something like that.
The problem was that once I became more and more anxious, it was harder for me to do some type of exercise because that would actually make my anxiety worse. We put me into panic attacks and that was just bad news. So what I come today is to explain the benefits of a meditation for anxiety and a little bit of motivation to help you to give it a try five minutes a day, two minutes a day, something just to get you started because I know you can do this too. So what are the benefits of using meditation as a way to help relieve anxiety? Well, first I'm going to give you the basic one. Everybody should know it quiets the mind. There's so much mind chatter going on throughout the day. You have so many things going on. It's good to take a step back and quiet that chatter just for a little bit, whether it's guided meditation or meditation on your own.
There are studies out there that show the neural changes that goes on in the brain during meditation that helps you in so many areas aside from just anxiety. The second is pretty obvious as well. It calms the body. Your mind gets calm. Then your mindset's back. Those signals to your body saying, okay, I'm calm now. Then your body starts to become calm again and then you can carry on with other things that you might not have even tried in forever. Another benefit of meditation is that the meditation extends past that point of meditation, meaning that it goes into the day, it goes into the night. It goes well past that point where you first quite that chatter and it helps you throughout the day. So what I'm trying to say is that it extends past your anxiety and it helps you focus more. It helps your body heal itself because when we are in that stressful situation, feeling that stress constantly, it
really does tear down the body and we don't want that happening because you tear down the body, you get sicker, faster. It actually, meditation has been shown and proven that once you start using it on a regular basis, it extends into other areas of your life as well. There are lots of excuses to not practice meditation. I cannot meditate. I don't have the patience, I don't have the drive. I get too bored too quickly. Does that sound familiar? It does to me because I'm exactly the same way. Look, it's not the easiest thing to do at the beginning, but with just a little bit of practice, you can get to where you're feeling better through meditation because there's
no right or wrong way to meditate. There's also not a right or wrong type of meditation to use to help relieve your anxiety. The type of meditation that I use to help relieve my anxiety is mindfulness meditation and what that is. It's focusing on one thing and not letting that other mind chatter continue to take over your thoughts. There are different ways to do this and I'll go over one in just a bit, but what it does is that as you're focusing on one thing, you're clearing out all of those negative thoughts. All of those perceptions of the fears and the worries and everything else like that, and over time it helps you to recognize when you have a fear or worry pop up and then you get to decide,
okay, am I going to focus on this or am I going to move on? The reason why I like to do mindful meditation is not only because that's what got me through my anxiety, but also because it's simple. You can do it anywhere and you can do it anytime. It really is a convenient way to meditate, so how do you do this? You asked me how do you do this in mindful meditation that you're talking about?
Well, let me explain first, start noticing your breath. Pay attention to the way that the air goes in through your nose and down your throat, into your chest and into your lungs. Feel the way that your body moves. With that inhale, as your lungs get filled in, your tummy expands. Then as you exhale, you feel your tummy contract and the air is coming out of your lungs, up your chest,
up your throat, in through your nose, out what you want to do. Would that mind chatter? Because you will have mind chatter is helped quieted down by telling it. Thank you. You may leave and just go back to focusing on your breath. Anytime something comes up in your mind, thank it and go back to focusing on the breath. It really is that simple. Give it a try. Do it for about a minute or two. Increase your time as you keep on moving forward, and there you go. You're going to notice that your anxiety is calming down and you're able to deal with stress in a better way. Now, this is not the only way that you can practice mindful meditation this way was just to get you started and once you understand how to do it, you can apply to absolutely anything that you do. For example, if you're washing the dishes, watch how the water comes down the faucet and focus on that. Focus on how the, how the soap is, you know, the little bubbles around the soap is around your dishes,
however it is that you're focusing on that one specific task. If you have trouble keeping your mind focused on the breath you can hold and use some meditation prayer beads or japa mala beads to help you stay rooted in the experience of the breath and to help you count sets of conscious breaths.
Don't let the mind chatter take over. Every time you have that mind chatter, dismiss it and start your focus again, walking. There's such thing as walking meditation. You're focusing on the movements of your legs. You're the movement of your breath as you're walking. There's other types of walking meditations, but as far as the mindfulness, you're keeping the focus on a particular thing that you're doing. So give it a try with absolutely anything that you're doing.