SOS Meditation for Anxiety

Do your thoughts start to run wild after a stressful situation has triggered fear and anxiety? Do you feel like you're on a runaway train, thoughts running in all directions making you more and more anxious? What can you do to apply the brakes to this "anxiety-worry spiral"? 

The key ingredients to dealing with anxiety are allowing it to be present, letting go of the worry thoughts that fuel it, and re-directing your attention. All of these elements play a part in this latest podcast meditation, SOS Meditation for Anxiety. It gently encourages you to let go of the thoughts that are fanning the flames of anxiety, and use the breath to guide the mind and body to a relaxed, calm place.

Allowing -- What we resist persists, when it comes to anxiety or any other emotion. You can think of emotions as a movement of energy, or even a chain of chemical reactions, in the body. Trying to push anxiety out or run away from it is like putting a dam in a river. It stops the flow. The water can't go anywhere. By allowing the anxiety to be there, it is allowed to run its course. 

Letting go of worry thoughts -- Fear is a signal that there is danger. When we feel anxious, even when there isn't a true threat present, the mind gets busy trying to understand what is happening and what to do. Without any obvious basis for the fear, the mind can go wild with worry thoughts and these thoughts make the fear even stronger. Letting go of these thoughts is essential to allowing the anxiety to pass.

Re-directing attention -- At the same time that anxiety is allowed to be present, we can direct our attention elsewhere. This is a subtle point: we are not resisting anxiety but rather "favoring" something else. In the case of this meditation, that something else is the breath. The meditation encourages you to pay attention to the breath. The pleasant, soothing rhythm of the breath and awareness of how the body feels as you breathe provides a calming focus for the mind.

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Although this meditation can be used anytime you are anxious, it was especially designed for our new Meditation Rx Relief for Patients & Families app. Although the app has guided meditations specifically for use with medical situations and settings, most of the meditations can be used in other situations as well. 

Guided Meditation for Renewal

Every moment is fresh and new, unlike any that has gone before or will come again. So often expectations based on what has happened in the past cloud our ability to let in what is actually happening now. This latest Guided Meditation for Renewal podcast is an opportunity to let go of expectations, ideas about how things are or will be, and be open to change. Life is constantly creating and renewing. We breathe in oxygen to enliven and nourish all our cells. The out breath carries away what isn't needed. Every cell in our body is being replaced with new cells. This meditation invites you to open to the flow of life energy, allowing it to renew you and your life on all levels.

This meditation was recorded live with my guided meditation group. I am thankful that they came up with this theme. It was interesting to hear everyone in the group describe their unique journey with this meditation. I would love to hear about yours!

Non-resistance in Meditation

Comment from Kathy -- "I have trouble meditating in general. I can relax completely but then the slightest things disturb me. Things like my eyelids fluttering or an itch. My limbs become restless. Can you advise any strategy to help deal with that so I can stay in that relaxed state?" ----------

11-19-2011 -- Meant to add my comments before publishing this post yesterday. So here they are now -- better late than never!

The obstacle to staying in a relaxed state is TRYING to stay in a relaxed state. You can feel restless and have fluttering eyelids and still be relaxed. The key to remaining relaxed is non-resistance. Let it be OK if you feel restless or your eyelids flutter. Go ahead and scratch an itch. Although some meditation styles may require that you stay perfectly still, we don't subscribe to that approach. Naturalness is the key. Learning to let go of resistance to what is happening is the essence of the practice. Take it as it comes, and when you find your are resisting that, let it go. Even the resistance when it comes up, is part of the process. In our approach to meditation, you can't make a mistake. Everything is part of the process of meditation!

Guided Meditation for Anger

Is anger a difficult emotion for you? If yes, why? In my family, anger simply wasn't expressed. Being angry wasn't allowed, the obvious conclusion being that it was a bad thing to feel. I wasn't a child who could say "I hate you mommy!", a perfectly normal thing for a young child to say. It's taken a long, long time for me to find a healthy relationship with anger.

For others, the challenge with anger may be a different one, but I've had so many requests for a meditation for anger, that I know it's a challenge for many people. I do hope this latest podcast meditation will help with some of the issues with anger, and would love to hear about your experience with it. I've thought about some reasons why anger can be so challenging and am sharing some of my thoughts as a background for the meditation.

Anger can be a very useful emotion. It can show us where we need to take action and gives us energy to do so. If the barking of a neighborhood dog or someone's loud music is disturbing your sleep night after night, anger is a natural response. As part of the fight of flight response, it gets you to take action. Hopefully you can find a constructive way to confront the situation and resolve it.

Like every emotion anger is a natural flow of life energy. When allowed to flow freely, it passes through us. All too often, however, anger gets suppressed and doesn't get released. That energy will then express itself in other ways, or lead to chronically tight muscles and other problems. What you resist persists, and suppressing anger actually keeps it around.

Another way of keeping anger going is to hold onto it by running stories in our minds about whatever it is that makes us angry. We may play something that happened over and over in our minds, thus extending the anger and not allowing it to resolve. Both strategies, suppressing anger and getting mentally involved with it, can cause it to continue longer than it needs to. It's the ability to allow the anger to be felt fully that allows it to release.

Why would we hang onto anger? Sometimes anger is a reaction to another emotion, and covers up the original emotion. For example, if you feel hurt by someone, it may seem easier to feel the anger than the hurt. But unless you feel the underlying hurt, the anger will never resolve.

Anger can be difficult when it is accompanied by destructive thoughts. The thoughts themselves may seem unacceptable, or there may be a fear that they will be translated into action. The more we can feel the anger fully and allow whatever thought comes to come, the more choice we actually have about when and how to act. The ability to stay centered in ourselves as the observer of our anger gives us greater mastery over our behavior.

When to get help: Sometimes, of course, it's important to get help with anger. If we are very angry a lot of the time or angry way out of proportion to the situation, counseling can help us work on unresolved issues causing the anger. And certainly if our expression of anger is interfering with our relationships, daily functioning or is destructive to others, professional help is needed.

I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with anger and what you've learned. I'd also love to hear about your experiences with this meditation.

Meditation in Motion - My Healing Hula Lesson

Sometimes I am mesmerized by my hula teacher's hands. They move with such grace and fluidity, offering no resistance to the aloha spirit that moves through them. Although I relaxed early on into the body movements of hula, I've had a challenge with my hands.  Despite repeated reminders that the hands should move from the wrist, my hands would seemingly stiffen up and refuse to follow. I felt so awkward, not to mention frustrated! At yesterday's lesson, my teacher danced very close to me, demonstrating with her hands as I watched in awe. I wondered how anyone's hands could move so beautifully and effortlessly. I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I would catch on through "osmosis" as she danced close to me. At one point, she held my wrist and moved my hand for me. I started to feel the right movement. My hands cooperated for a while, only to get quickly "blocked" again.

Once back home from the class, I started to practice in front of a mirror. I did an exercise of slowing waving my arms up and down at my sides, allowing my hands to follow the movement of my wrists. I then placed my arms in position for the basic kahalo step. Suddenly something clicked - a split second before I started to move, an "aha" happened in my brain. The right synapses must have started to fire, because I saw my hands in the mirror undulating like waves, effortlessly, as I started to dance! It was like a frozen river that unfroze and started to flow.

It felt so easy and natural for my hands to move that way. What on earth was stopping them before? As I tuned into the feeling of inhibition that had been in my hands, I remembered how my mother had always tried to get me to stop moving my hands. I am by nature a very expressive person. When I hear music, I can't sit still. My mom found that trait charming when I was a baby bouncing up and down in my crib singing "hubba hubba hubba" to the music, but later she felt she needed to teach me restraint. What particularly worried her was my tendency to gesture with my hands while talking. I would be enthusiastically describing something, hands moving all around, and she'd say "Mary, stop that, stop moving your hands!" She had explained that a refined, lady-like person doesn't do that. (Heaven forbid I should grow up to be unladylike!) This irked me no end, but I somehow took her words to heart. Although I was never able to stop moving my hands entirely, they had been quite well "tamed".

By now the origin of my hula hands block must be obvious. Allowing my hands to move so freely wasn't something I could easily do. It involves a kind of letting go. It's a lot like the letting go of meditation. In meditation, we let go of resistance to what comes naturally. We learn to let go of resistance to the natural movement of the mind. In hula, it's about the natural movement of the body. The traditional hula hand movements are natural and flowing, like the nature they depict.

My teacher has mastered hula with her whole being. Although she may give instructions, her most powerful teaching is from embodying hula. When my teacher danced right next to me, I absorbed something at a deep intuitive level about how she moved. It was as if the "aloha spirit" was being transferred from her to me.

I found a beautiful discussion of the "aloha spirit" at the Cyber Shaman's website:

"The Aloha Spirit is a well known reference to the attitude of friendly acceptance for which the Hawaiian Islands are so famous. However, it also refers to a powerful way to resolve any problem, accomplish any goal, and also to achieve any state of mind or body that you desire."

"In the Hawaiian language, aloha stands for much more than hello or goodbye or love. Its deeper meaning is the joyful (oha) sharing (alo) of life energy (ha) in the present (alo)"

I tell this story in honor of the aloha spirit, and my teacher, Betty Ann. For me, it is a story of healing, and it's healing for me to share it with you. May all of us experience "the joyful sharing of life energy in the present".

Aloha!