Meditation exercises for anxiety

How to Use Mindfulness Therapy for Anxiety: 15 Exercises

Anxiety can leave a person feeling totally alone.

Countless people worldwide understand what it’s like and share the same fears, struggles, and behavioral tendencies (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016).

While anxiety may feel unavoidable, mindfulness practices can significantly benefit psychological, cognitive, and physical health and manage experiences of anxiety (Shapiro, 2020).

Mindfulness helps clients cope with tough times and encourages and enhances their moments of joy. It can enable them to put anxiety in its place and make it a smaller part of life.

This article explores how mindfulness therapy can help those with anxiety and introduces techniques and exercises for use inside and outside treatment.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free. These science-based, comprehensive exercises will help you cultivate a sense of inner peace throughout your daily life and give you the tools to enhance the mindfulness of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

Mindfulness Therapy for Managing Anxiety
2 Mindfulness Techniques for Helping Clients
2 Exercises to Try in Your Sessions
Best Mindfulness Meditation Scripts
6 Mindfulness Workbooks & Worksheets
Fascinating Books on the Topic
Top 3 Apps to Recommend to Your Clients
Our Best Resources: Mindfulness X & Toolkit
A Take-Home Message
References

Mindfulness Therapy for Managing Anxiety

Many people with anxiety live happy and fulfilling lives. They find ways to free themselves from intense thoughts and feelings, and don’t let “anxiety, fear, worry, panic, painful memories, and the like stand in the way of doing what they care deeply about” (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016, p. 2).

But how? Why do some people get a handle on their anxiety while others live in its grasp?

Combining mindfulness and acceptance helps many change their relationship with and response to anxious thoughts and feelings.

Mindfulness therapy encourages clients to (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016):

Stop trying to cope with anxiety.
Leave anxiety alone instead of experiencing it as an emotion, feeling, thought, or sensation.
Not act on anxiety, preventing it from controlling what they do.
Nurture compassion toward themselves and their emotional life.
Move away from a constant state of anxious discomfort.

Mindfulness has the potential to switch off or manage emotional reactivity to anxiety-inducing situations; it helps people pause, rise above the turmoil, see with greater clarity, and respond with freedom (Shapiro, 2020).

Mindfulness-based therapy helps clients find a way to live with anxiety and follow a more meaningful path in life by developing psychological flexibility. Mindfulness allows individuals to shift their attention to what is happening in their current situation, rather than being drawn into physiological sensations (Twohig & Levin, 2017).

Mindfulness-based therapy has “showed large and clinically significant effects in treating anxiety and depression” (Khoury et al., 2013, p. 769). These positive mental health changes also appear to last.

2 Mindfulness Techniques for Helping Clients

Mindfulness techniques can help clients manage and move on from anxiety.

They will learn to benefit from the following (Shapiro, 2020):

Mindful pause: a moment of hesitation between stimulus and response, stopping automatic and often adverse, fast reactions.
Witness state: a chance to step back and view the situation more objectively.

Together, these techniques help free individuals from ingrained, automatic reactions, often present in emotionally charged situations (Shapiro, 2020).

The following two related techniques can also help clients manage their relationship with anxiety.

Accepting, choosing, and taking action

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers clients a mindful way out of their fears and anxiety and the opportunity to regain control over their lives in three steps (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016):

Accept
Using mindfulness to accept the anxiety being experienced. Mindfulness has the potential to disarm the struggle between unwanted thoughts and feelings (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016).
Choose
Choosing a direction in life by identifying values and life goals.
Take action
Taking the steps required to realize those goals and committing to action and change.

ACT does not perpetuate the struggle through managing emotional and mental pain; instead, mindful self-compassion changes the client’s relationship with anxious discomfort and how they act in its presence (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016).

Changing the relationship with anxiety

Anxiety is inevitable. It is the struggle with the emotional pain associated with it that can have negative effects, including the following (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016):

Increased activation of the sympathetic nervous system, causing a feeling of high alertness and physical stress.

Nonproductive, unhelpful, and unsuccessful hard work in managing anxiety.
Often only works in the short term, providing temporary relief.
Doesn’t change the nature of the negative thoughts and feelings.
Reduces the quality of life, leaving the individual feeling stuck and inauthentic.

Mindfulness therapy can change relationships with anxiety by replacing unhelpful thinking and behavior with positive alternatives (Khazan, 2019):

Unhelpful thinking and behavior:

Arguing with anxious thoughts
Reassuring ourselves that our fears will not come true
Answering all the questions and what ifs
Trying to control and fight anxiety
Practicing self-blame and avoidance

Helpful thinking and behavior:

Looking beneath the surface of the anxiety message and checking in with personal values
Practicing acceptance
Allowing anxiety to be and becoming willing to experience it
Allowing anxiety to be seen as an overprotective caregiver
Practicing self-compassion
Changing intention from one of distraction to one of self-care

Why not offer these thoughts up during therapy, encouraging the client to mindfully show compassion and kindness to the emotions and feelings they experience during anxiety?

Download 3 Free Mindfulness Tools Pack (PDF)

By filling out your name and email address below.

2 Exercises to Try in Your Sessions

Grounding exercises and breathing techniques are closely aligned with mindfulness and have incredible potential for helping clients handle their background level of anxiety and specific anxiety-causing situations.

Grounding

Grounding helps us stay present and centered when practicing mindfulness techniques or during situations that cause anxiousness (Decker, Brown, Ashley, & Lipscomb, 2019).

Grounding tools and practices help clients detach from the anxiety they are experiencing and focus on what is within their control. Here are some examples (Allen, 2020; Najavits, 2011):

Mental techniques involved in focusing the mind
Physical techniques that encourage a fuller experience of the senses
Soothing techniques that foster self-compassion and self-kindness

To try it out, download this grounding and centering exercise.

Grounding, rather than trying to resolve the cause of anxiety, can provide temporary and long-term peace from its effects. Here you will find more suggestions for anxiety tools to help clients cope.

Breathing techniques

Through mindful breathing techniques, it is possible to engage the parasympathetic nervous system and calm both body and mind while releasing feel-good endorphins (Cuddy, 2020).

Try out the following in your sessions with clients. Ask them to include the practices on a daily basis before or during events that are likely to cause anxiety:

Square Breathing
This breathing technique encourages mindfulness and feeling present and can be easily performed in any situation.
Triangle Breathing
Similar to square breathing, this useful technique brings awareness to your breath and helps regain control during anxiety.
Breath Awareness
Learn to observe movements and sensations in the body with each breath to regain calm and a sense of control.

Breathing techniques can be learned quickly and become more automatic with practice. They are powerful tools for accepting and moving on from feelings of anxiety and are equally helpful when associated with pain related to illness or injury (Lewis, 2004).

Best Mindfulness Meditation Scripts

The following free meditation scripts target multiple age groups, providing moments of calm and peace, a break from anxiety, and the opportunity to stay in the present.

Five Senses

This simple, practical, and versatile mindfulness script is valuable for evoking a mindful state in adults and is especially helpful with children.

Use it when preparing for events known to cause anxiety or for a much-needed break in times of stress.

Raisin Meditation

This is a classic meditation script for bringing anyone back to the present by focusing on food: its taste, smell, and texture.

Meditation Grounding Scripts for Children

There are two versions of this practical grounding script: one for younger children and one for older. Use it to teach young people to look inside themselves for inner peace, finding calm and self-compassion.

Mindfulness for anxiety – Therapy in a Nutshell

6 Mindfulness Workbooks & Worksheets

The following workbooks and worksheets can help clients develop awareness and compassion without judgment regarding their anxiety.

FLARE for Anxiety and Fear

Self-acceptance, self-compassion, and a willingness to experience anxiety take practice (Khazan, 2019).

The FLARE for Anxiety and Fear worksheet encourages clients not to fight anxiety but to accept it mindfully.

This exercise aims to allow anxiety to just be without engaging with or judging it (Khazan, 2019).

The Documentary of You

Mindfulness can be used to view life and who you are with compassion and forgiveness (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016).

The Documentary of You worksheet helps reduce the anxiety associated with how you feel.

You may begin to see that the sensations, thoughts, and feelings associated with anxiety are like words on a page. We can observe them without letting them control our thoughts, feelings, or behavior.

‘I Am’ Mantra for Anxiety

Becoming a good observer is vital because it offers a helpful perspective and practical experience for anyone struggling with their worries, anxieties, and fear (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016).

The ‘I Am’ Mantra for Anxiety worksheet helps clients observe how they react to difficult descriptions of themselves. “I am neither this nor that, but instead I Am” (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016, p. 192).

Who Am I Beyond My Anxiety?

When struggling with anxieties and fears, the focus is typically too much on what is wrong. As a result, other essential aspects, such as likes, values, and strengths, are often missed (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016).

The Who Am I Beyond My Anxiety? worksheet focuses on how to describe yourself.

Breath Awareness While Waiting

Anxiety can increase when we are waiting for something to happen, whether about to speak at a presentation or simply at a stoplight (Peterson, 2018).

The Breath Awareness While Waiting worksheet uses our breathing to manage those times when we have no focus and anxiety can get the better of us (Peterson, 2018).

Breathing techniques help in several ways: calming the sympathetic nervous system, increasing the perception of control, and providing a focus.

Creating a Mindfulness Anxiety Plan

“Part of managing our anxiety is anticipating when it might show up and coming up with a plan to deal with it when it does” (Peterson, 2018, p. 170). Making mindfulness a habit can help reduce the response to triggers that cause emotional upset, fear, and panic.

The Creating a Mindfulness Anxiety Plan worksheet explores anxiety triggers and mindfulness activities that may help.

Fascinating Books on the Topic

There are many wonderful books about mindfulness and managing anxiety. We have chosen three that combine both.

1.

Biofeedback and Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Practical Solutions for Improving Your Health and Performance – Inna Khazan

This fascinating book helps train your body to manage its involuntary actions, such as breathing and heart rate, to handle anxiety, fear, and insomnia.

Khazan’s book teaches the reader valuable techniques for applying the mind–body approach to take control of their overall health.

Find the book on Amazon.

2.

The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety: A Guide to Breaking Free from Anxiety, Phobias and Worry Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – John Forsyth and Georg Eifert

Learn how to calm your anxious body and mind using a combination of acceptance (mindfulness) and commitment techniques.

This book is hugely powerful for getting your mind unstuck and tackling anxiety and fear by nurturing your capacity for acceptance, kindness, and compassion.

Find the book on Amazon.

3.

The Mindfulness Workbook for Anxiety: The 8-Week Solution to Help You Manage Anxiety, Worry, and Stress – Tanya Peterson

Mindfulness is an effective technique for reducing and relieving anxiety (Shapiro, 2020).

The practical methods within Peterson’s book offer effective and lasting relief and a focus for peace and wellbeing.

Find the book on Amazon.

Top 3 Apps to Recommend to Your Clients

The following three apps are all designed for easing and handling anxiety through mindfulness and other relaxation techniques.

Breathe2Relax

This powerful app teaches users how to manage their stress through guided breathing.

It is valuable as a standalone stress reduction tool or in clinical care when directed by a healthcare worker.

Find the app in the Google Play Store.
Find the app in the Apple App Store.

Headspace

Headspace offers over 500 meditations to help people overcome stress and anxiety and build resilience.

This app can help mindfulness become part of a daily routine.

Find the app in the Google Play Store.
Find the app in the Apple App Store.

Anxiety Solution

This fantastic app offers the user a complete anxiety toolkit to help manage anxious thoughts and behaviors.

Its powerful anxiety toolkit includes interactive breathing tools and over 70 mindfulness, meditation, sleep stories, and fitness routines.

Find the app in the Apple App Store.

We recommend taking a look at this article: Best Apps for Psychologists that practitioners can use to improve the outcome of clients’ treatment.

Our Best Resources: Mindfulness X & Toolkit

Practicing mindfulness helps us regain control over our anxiety and improves our overall physical and mental wellbeing (Shapiro, 2020).

We offer an essential training bundle called Mindfulness X© that covers eight pillars of mindfulness in detail and provides professionals with the knowledge and tools needed to offer mindfulness training. Use it to introduce your clients to the here and now, awareness of automatic thinking, and cultivating a caring and compassionate relationship with the self.

Also, why not download our free mindfulness tool pack and try out the powerful tools contained within? Here are some examples:

Leaves on a Stream
Learn how to separate yourself from your thoughts and practice letting go instead of remaining caught up in them.
Eye of the Hurricane Metaphor
Focusing your attention inward can be a great way to learn how to disengage from a busy life, generating more inner peace.

Other free resources include:

Signs of Emotional Discomfort
Stress causes us to become agitated and anxious, reacting without care or consideration. This worksheet helps you spot the warning signs early and take action.
Responding With Fear and Worry
Sometimes how we respond seems automatic and outside our control. Reflecting on our experiences can help us revisit such times and explore whether our reactions were helpful or unhelpful.

More extensive versions of the following tools are available with a subscription to the Positive Psychology Toolkit©, but they are described briefly below:

Strengthening the Work–Private Life Barrier
Those who struggle to balance work and home life may experience stress and anxiety. This worksheet helps create a clear barrier between the two and protects against anxiety spill-over:
- Step one – What holes do you have in your work–life barrier?
- Step two – What can you do to fill those holes?
- Step three – How can you take action, starting with small steps?
- Step four – Reflect on how the barrier now feels, having answered the questions, and consider what further actions are needed.
Self-Compassion Miracle Question
Learning to be kinder to ourselves can reduce inner challenge and the sense that we are not performing or managing life well.

In this exercise, clients are asked to imagine that by some miracle, they no longer talk to themselves in a negative, self-critical way. Instead, they treat themselves with kindness and compassion.

17 Mindfulness & Meditation Exercises
If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others enjoy the benefits of mindfulness, check out this collection of 17 validated mindfulness tools for practitioners. Use them to help others reduce stress and create positive shifts in their mental, physical, and emotional health.

A Take-Home Message

The effects of anxiety can be crippling. However, by combining mindfulness and action, it is possible to accept it and move forward.

It is unnecessary to avoid or tightly control anxiety; instead, it’s important to recognize it as part of life without letting it change how clients see themselves. With an outlook of self-compassion, it is possible to not act on anxiety but to see it as a mental or physical response to situations that have happened or are yet to happen.

Mindfulness can reduce reactiveness, put life into perspective, and encourage the psychological flexibility essential to build resilience. By creating a mindful pause between stimulus and response and the opportunity to step back and view situations more objectively, we can become free of automatic, unwanted reactions.

This article provides mindfulness exercises and worksheets for your clients to help change their relationships with anxiety rather than attempt to fight or remove it. Explore the mindful techniques, tailoring them to the individual and the situation, and help your clients experience the many psychological and physiological benefits.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free.

Allen, D. (2020). 7 Simple grounding techniques for calming down quickly. Retrieved November 11, 2021, from https://drsarahallen.com/7-ways-to-calm/
Cuddy, A. J. (2018). Presence: Bringing your boldest self to your biggest challenges. Little, Brown Spark.
Decker, J. T., Brown, J. L., Ashley, W., & Lipscomb, A. E. (2019). Mindfulness, meditation, and breathing exercises: Reduced anxiety for clients and self-care for social work interns. Social Work with Groups, 42(4), 308–322.
Forsyth, J. P., & Eifert, G. H. (2016). The mindfulness & acceptance workbook for anxiety: A guide to breaking free from anxiety, phobias & worry using acceptance & commitment therapy. New Harbinger.
Khazan, I. Z. (2019). Biofeedback and mindfulness in everyday life: Practical solutions for improving your health and performance. W.W. Norton & Company.
Khoury, B., Lecomte, T., Fortin, G., Masse, M., Therien, P., Bouchard, V., … Hofmann, S. G. (2013). Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(6), 763–771.
Lewis, D. (2004). Free your breath, free your life: How conscious breathing can relieve stress, increase vitality, and help you live more fully. Shambhala.
Najavits, L. M. (2011). Seeking safety. Springer.
Peterson, T. J. (2018). The mindfulness workbook for anxiety: The 8-week solution to help you manage anxiety, worry & stress. Althea Press.
Shapiro, S. L. (2020). Rewire your mind: Discover the science + practice of mindfulness. Aster.
Twohig, M. P., & Levin, M. E. (2017). Acceptance and commitment therapy as a treatment for anxiety and depression. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 40(4), 751–770.

9 Mindfulness Exercises for Anxiety

The experience of anxiety is prevalent across the globe. According to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 264 million people around the world living with some type of anxiety disorder. Beyond this, there are likely countless others who struggle with symptoms of anxiety without meeting the criteria for this classification. Though it’s a problem that weighs heavily on us as individuals and as a culture in many ways, learning to understand and mindfully observe our anxious feelings can help to improve our quality of life. Heightening our sense of inner peace, calm, and contentment. We've come up with 9 Mindfulness Exercises for Anxiety. See below.

Whether we ourselves have experienced anxious feelings or whether someone we know and love struggles with these experiences, anxiety and its associated symptoms affect all of us. Because of its strong prevalence in these modern times, deepening our understanding of anxiety is incredibly important for our collective evolution. Mindfully exploring anxiety can help us to powerfully and positively shift the world we live in – both inside and out.

This comprehensive guide to anxiety covers:

What is Anxiety?

How Mindfulness Helps to Manage Anxiety

Developing a Mindful Mindset

9 Mindfulness Exercises for Anxiety

About Me

References

What is Anxiety?

Simply put, anxiety is the experience of fear, worry, and apprehension. From mild and infrequent bouts of anxious symptoms to strong and more persistent feelings of anxiety, our experience of this human phenomenon greatly varies from individual to individual. While some level of fear and apprehension are normal arisings in human experience, the continual, persistent play of fear in the mind causes us great suffering.

Some of the emotional and cognitive signs that we are experiencing anxiety include:

Feelings of nervousness, worry, fear, panic, or doom
Fixation on events from the past or ideas about the future
Expecting the ‘worst case’ scenario
Feelings of irritability and agitation
Difficulty concentrating
Challenges falling asleep
Difficulty regulating emotion
Withdrawal from those around us
Difficulty staying present
Panic attacks

The stress associated with anxiety can initiate our ‘fight or flight’ response, which triggers the body in a variety of ways.

Physically, anxiety can appear as:

Digestive issues
Racing heart
Sweating
Dizziness
Frequent urination
Muscle tightness
Insomnia
Trembling or shaking
Shortness of breath
General bodily discomfort

There are various types of anxiety disorders, including but not limited to Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, and Panic Disorder. Not designed to be a substitute for professional treatment where required, this guide is simply meant to fill the gaps where mindfulness has been omitted from our journey towards deeper understanding of our emotions and of our anxious experiences in particular.

How Mindfulness Helps to Manage Anxiety

Mindfulness practice provides us with the tools required to observe the true nature of our present moment reality, helping us to gain clarity that puts anxiety in a new light. Embracing mindfulness promotes healthy management of anxiety in the following ways.

Mindfulness reconnects us to the present moment.

While our thoughts about the past or future can seem all too real at times, the more we practice observing the present moment (which is what mindfulness is really all about), the easier it becomes to let go of the weight of past and future stories.

Mindfulness promotes our ‘rest and digest’ system, reducing our stress response.

Mindfulness practice moves out of the ‘fight or flight’ response and into the ‘rest and digest’ system. This system, a part of our parasympathetic nervous system, slows the heart and eases the mind, promoting our overall sense of wellbeing.

Mindfulness can help to retrain the brain.

Habitual thoughts, beliefs, and associated behaviors (many of which may be linked to anxious feelings) are incredibly strong because of neural pathways that fire nearly automatically based on the stories we’ve learned to accept as truth over the course of our lives. As we mindfully gain control over our thoughts, we rewire the brain by forming new neural pathways. In doing so, we harness thoughts and beliefs that inspire wellbeing.

Mindfulness helps us to regulate our emotional response to stressors.

Research has shown that mindfulness practice helps to regulate emotions. As we start to gain greater insight into and management of our emotions, we lessen our propensity to become lost in anxious thought and feeling.

Mindfulness heightens our awareness of the mind-body connection, promoting relaxation.

By deepening our awareness of the physical body, we can encourage physical relaxation (for instance, by releasing tightness in the forehead or contraction in the stomach), promoting peace of mind as well. In this way, we come to understand just how intertwined mind and body really are.

Mindfulness shifts our self-perception.

Through mindfulness practice, we begin to shift the ideas we hold about ourselves. Mindfulness has been shown to strengthen positive self-esteem, and it encourages self-compassion. By observing our inner experience with greater self-compassion, we lessen the tension experienced when challenging situations arise.

Developing a Mindful Mindset

In order to use mindfulness to help manage anxious feelings as they arise, we need to develop a mindful mindset. Practice is the best way to enhance a mindful mind, but there are a few tips we can keep in mind to begin with.

1. Release the pursuit of perfection.

Aiming for perfection is a lost cause when it comes to maintaining a mindful mindset because perfection doesn’t exist in this practice. Since mindfulness is not about viewing certain experiences as ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ it’s important that we let go of our desire to achieve perfection in our practice.

2. Practice non-judgment of your experience.

When developing a mindfulness practice to help manage feelings of anxiety, practicing non-judgment is paramount. It is a foundation of mindfulness and it helps us to open up to whatever our experience is. Rather than denying, invalidating, or pushing aside any feelings, we allow ourselves to come face to face with them. We give them space to breathe so that they can then be released.

3. Guide the mind into the heart space.

We can enhance our mindfulness practice by drawing our attention to the heart anytime our thoughts take off on a tangent or an old, familiar loop. By moving our attention towards the heart space, we open up our capacity for honest and compassionate observation of whatever passes through us.

“One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious.”

Alan Watts

9 Mindfulness Exercises for Anxiety

There are numerous different mindfulness practices that can help to enhance our understanding of the thoughts and feelings that move through us – anxious ones included. Here are 9 different mindfulness exercises for anxiety that can provide us with beneficial tools and insights to help us navigate our way through this challenging life experience.

1. Emotional Awareness Meditation

One of the key skills we can learn is that of enhancing our emotional awareness. This online worksheet includes a self-guided meditation to help us to get to know our emotions in a new way. When strong emotions arise, it is not often that we take a moment of pause to investigate what is happening. Through this meditation, you are guided to pay attention to the physiological sensations associated with the rising emotion (anxiety in this case) and to feel it more deeply in the body before letting it go.

When practicing this, it may at first seem as though emotions are becoming stronger, which can be challenging for many people. However, when we find the courage to truly witness the emotions passing through us, we process them and allow them to pass. When we process our emotions, they have less control over our lives, becoming something of the distant past.

2. Letting Go of Judgment: Guided Meditation

We may not be aware of it, but judgment is largely entwined with anxiety. When we feel anxious, chances are we are judging a situation to be threatening (whether the threat is real or perceived). This guided meditation by Tara Brach can help us to investigate the judgment we carry within us so that we can then release it. By naming (or labeling) the presence of aversive judgment within us, we have a greater say over the level of control it has.

This meditation also calls us to recognize our vulnerability, and to let it be. Brach guides us to keep our attention on the pain, or on our woundedness, so that we might bring it to light and pass through it.

3. Sensing and Rating Anxiety in the Body

This exercise calls us to really dive deeply into the sensory experience of anxiety. Through this self-guided meditation and accompanying worksheet, you are invited to note the presence of anxiety in the body, to rate how strong it is, and to explore it through visualizing its weight, its shape, its colour, and its size. This practice deepens our sense of self-awareness and brings about a new frame of reference to our experience of anxiety.

4. Letting Life Be, Just As It Is: Body Scan

This guided mindfulness meditation helps us to become more attuned to the present moment through guiding us to pay close attention to the body. Tara Brach leads this guided body scan to help us explore our present moment experience on a more intimate level. By tuning into the body, we quiet the mind’s tendency to change, to fix, or to seek anything other than what is here right now, softening the presence of any challenging emotions such as anxiety.

5. Teachings on Nature: E-Book

Ajahn Chah’s ‘Teachings on Nature’ guides us to embrace a different perspective on our emotions, our mood, and anything else that arises in our awareness. Much of what we can experience we can see reflected in nature. For instance, can we view our rising emotions like passing gusts of wind to understand their true transitory nature? Everything we experience is a part of nature and is entirely natural. How we relate to these natural forces is where our potential for growth really lies.

6. Detachment from Over-Thinking: Guided Meditation

This guided meditation invites us to detach ourselves from the racing mind, a strong sign that anxiety is present. As thoughts arise, this recording guides us to simply allow them – to refrain from judgment, suppression, and any urge to change them – and then to naturally let them go.

By understanding that we are far beyond what our thoughts dictate, we come into a deeper sense of peace. Witnessing thoughts as shooting stars coming for just a brief moment helps us to detach from the incessant stream these thoughts tend to pull us into.

7. Nature Walk

This mindfulness meditation worksheet guides us to take a walk through nature and to open ourselves attentively to our peaceful surroundings as we do. Walking in nature is a deeply healing practice that is of great benefit in this modern world.

When in nature, many people experience a sense of deep renewal – emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

The natural world sparks something innate and healing within us while settling the busy mind. As you walk, open your senses completely, walking slowly and mindfully, opening yourself up to the healing that is available here.

8. Working With Fear

Beneath our anxiety is a current of fear. Joseph Goldstein’s guided meditation on ‘Working with Fear’ guides us to open up to our true experience, whatever that may be in any moment. Our capacity to sit with our experience – regardless of how uncomfortable or painful it might be – strengthens as we start to push the boundaries of what we find ourselves capable of opening to.

As we open up to our fear – to our anxiety – we start to understand these feelings for what they are: empty images in the mind that have somehow become associated with feelings and emotion. It can be a challenging inquiry for many, so we are invited to take our exploration slowly and at our own pace. However, clear-sightedness of our emotions grows and as it does, we benefit from its great healing potential.

9. Creating More Quiet Time

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Whenever you are moving through anxious or other difficult emotions, ensure that you are harnessing a sense of self-compassion for what you are going through. Anxiety is an all-too-common experience that many of us struggle with – you are not alone.

To help solidify your mindfulness practice, you can join in on the free 100-day mindfulness challenge. By committing to a daily practice, we strengthen our ability to pass through challenging feelings and emotions with ease.

About Me

Sean Fargo

Mindfulness Exercises Founder

Sean Fargo, founder of Mindfulness Exercises and the Mindfulness Exercises Institute, is a highly sought-after mindfulness teacher, coach, and consultant. After spending two years as a Buddhist monk and assisting world-renowned mindfulness leaders like Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Sean went on to share his own gifts and wisdom with the world. Facilitating personal growth in everyone from individuals and aspiring mindfulness teachers to celebrities and executives at Fortune 500 companies, Sean is committed to supporting collective mindful evolution across the globe.

References

1 Depression and Other Common Mental Disorders: Global Health Estimates. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2017. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

2 Publishing, H. (2011). Understanding the stress response - Harvard Health. [online] Harvard Health. Available at: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response [Accessed 3 Jul. 2019].

3 Willard, C. (2016). A Basic Meditation to Strengthen Neural Connections - Mindful. [online] Mindful. Available at: https://www.mindful.org/a-basic-mindfulness-practice-to-strengthen-neural-connections/ [Accessed 3 Jul. 2019].

4 Guendelman, S., Medeiros, S. and Rampes, H. (2017). Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation: Insights from Neurobiological, Psychological, and Clinical Studies. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.

5 Xiao, Q. , Yue, C., He, W. and Yu, J. (2017). The Mindful Self: A Mindfulness-Enlightened Self-view. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.

About the author

Sean Fargo

Sean Fargo is the Founder of Mindfulness Exercises, a former Buddhist monk of 2 years, a trainer for the mindfulness program born at Google, an Integral Coach from New Ventures West, and an international mindfulness teacher trainer. He can be reached at [email protected]

how to enjoy life without anxiety

Anxiety is a common mental disorder characterized by excessive tension and fear. Anxiety can manifest as mental and physical symptoms such as stress, anxious thoughts, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath. Many types of meditation can help manage anxiety, including mindfulness meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy. These practices can help improve anxiety symptoms, stress levels, and other aspects of health such as cardiovascular health, sleep, and participation in a healthy lifestyle.

WHAT IS AN ALARM?

Anxiety is a feeling of worry, stress or fear. Anxiety disorders are manifested by excessive and repetitive anxious thoughts, usually accompanied by physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, sweaty palms, and shaking. People with anxiety disorders may avoid situations that increase their anxiety levels. This constant worry can significantly affect their daily lives.

There are different types of anxiety disorders. Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by excessive worry about daily life and life's challenges. Social anxiety disorder is anxiety and anxiety about being judged or interacting with others in social situations. Panic disorder refers to anxiety that causes recurring panic attacks. Panic attacks are characterized by the sudden onset of intense feelings of fear with physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate, shallow breathing, and trembling. These panic attacks can occur for seemingly no reason. Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder that develops as a result of traumatic or frightening events. These are one of the main categories of anxiety disorders, but there are other subtypes.

HOW CAN MEDITATION REDUCE ANXIETY?

Research into how meditation can help reduce anxiety dates back to the 1960s. Research has shown that meditation causes changes in areas of the brain that can help reduce anxiety and achieve a more relaxed state. The practice of meditation increases the size of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, which improves emotional regulation. Therefore, meditation can help achieve a more peaceful state of mind.

Meditation also shrinks the tonsils, which reduces the fight or flight response. In addition, regular practice reduces the levels of stress hormones in the body, including cortisol. Cortisol is one of the main stress hormones, and high levels of cortisol have adverse health effects such as increased blood pressure, blood sugar problems, and immune response.

Relaxation meditation techniques, such as breathing exercises, reduce some of the physical symptoms of anxiety, such as heart palpitations and shortness of breath. Relaxation meditation helps to achieve a state of relaxation of both mind and body and helps to focus on the present moment. At the same time, meditation allows for peaceful moments without distractions and influences, which can help a person connect with their thoughts and emotions. Meditation can also help with resistance and recovery from stress. Studies have shown that those who meditate regularly recover faster from stressful situations.

Mindfulness meditation can help you understand feelings and thoughts. Meditation can help people identify and become aware of their disturbing thoughts without judgment and deal with difficult emotions. By acknowledging the disturbing thoughts, the person may try to move away from them. In this way, mindfulness meditation helps develop a new perspective on anxiety. It allows you to separate anxiety from the person and allows you to control your disturbing thoughts. Mindfulness meditation helps people become more calm about uncertainty and develop an understanding of the feelings and emotions that come and go, overcoming feelings of constant anxiety.

TYPES OF MEDITATION FOR ANXIETY

Mindfulness meditation focuses on the principle of mindfulness, which involves being in the present moment and being aware of inner thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness can help reduce anxious and restless thoughts, as well as help achieve mental and physical relaxation.

Love-kindness meditation is one of the meditation techniques aimed at reducing anxiety. Love-kindness meditation reduces anxiety by helping to develop self-compassion and empathy. It can also help improve and strengthen interpersonal relationships by providing support to people with anxiety.

Progressive Relaxation and Body Scanning are meditation techniques that help you achieve a relaxed state. Progressive relaxation is practiced by tensing and then releasing the muscles, starting with the legs and ending with the head. Practicing progressive relaxation even for just a few minutes each evening can help reduce accumulated tension in the body and achieve a more relaxed state.

Body scan involves focusing on areas of tension in the body and releasing that tension with a deep breath. These techniques increase body awareness and reduce the physical symptoms of anxiety or a panic attack, such as a racing heart.

Transcendental meditation is a form of meditation that focuses on the repetition of mantras to achieve a relaxed and peaceful state. Transcendental Meditation reduces levels of stress hormones, including epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Thus, transcendental meditation can reduce stress and anxiety.

Mindfulness Cognitive Therapy combines mindfulness and cognitive therapy to reduce anxiety and negative emotions. Mindfulness involves being in the present moment and acknowledging inner thoughts, while cognitive therapy focuses on changing negative thought patterns to more positive ones.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF MEDITATION FOR ANXIETY

The practice of meditation for anxiety is beneficial for mental and physical health. One of the physical benefits of meditation is improved cardiovascular health. Meditation for anxiety reduces pain and helps manage chronic pain or other medical conditions. Meditation mainly helps reduce stress associated with chronic pain conditions.

Meditation alters areas of the brain, especially the dorsal anterior cingulate and somatosensory cortex, associated with pain sensitivity. Because meditation lowers levels of stress hormones like cortisol, it can also reduce the chance of developing stress-related illnesses like ulcers and migraines.

Meditation for anxiety can help improve sleep quality. Improved sleep quality has many other health benefits, including boosting the body's immune system and improving mood and productivity. Since meditation calms the mind, it improves concentration and increases mindfulness.

MEDITATION FOR ANXIETY FAQ:

WHICH QUICK MEDITATION TECHNIQUES CAN HELP REDUCE ANXIETY?

Find a quiet place and practice breathing exercises

Find a comfortable position
Take deep breaths, counting the inhalations and exhalations, and pay attention to the natural rhythm of the body.
At first, just observe the rhythm of your breathing.
Then try to increase the exhalation time
Try belly breathing

Practice short meditation

Find a quiet place
Focus your attention on your breath and physical sensations
Focus your attention within yourself and acknowledge passing thoughts
If you are distracted or your mind wanders, gently bring your attention back to your bodily sensations and breath.

WHEN TO MEDITATE WITH ANXIETY?

It is helpful to meditate regularly to reap the many benefits of meditation, including improved sleep, increased vitality, and general well-being.

It may be helpful to develop a daily routine for meditation practice

Relaxation meditation techniques help you recover from stressful situations or anxiety symptoms

HOW TO LEARN TO MEDITATE FROM ANXIETY?

Listening to guided meditations
Reading books on meditation
Online or face-to-face meditation programs

ANAHAN 9 MEDITATION RESOURCES0007

Meditation wiki

Meditation on chakras

Meditation techniques

Meditation of body scan

Management of anxiety

Meditation for children

Morning Meditations

Consciousness Meditation

Contact between the l.

Gratitude Meditation

Anxiety Meditation

Guided Meditation

Night Meditation

Self -knowledge

Transcendental meditation

Visualization meditation

Blogs on meditation

How Meditation helps to cope with stress

How Meditation changes the brain

How Meditation

Meditative Music

Gifts for meditation 9000

What is meditation?

What is awareness?

Meditation applications

Meditation for Beginners

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Meditation for Anxiety Symptoms: Does it Work?

Mindfulness Meditation for Anxiety

The Impact of Mindfulness-Based Therapy on Anxiety and Depression: A Meta-Analytical Review

Anxiety? Meditation can help you 'relax in the uncertainty' of the pandemic : Human Resources - Health News : NPR

Psychiatry. org - What are Anxiety Disorders?

Anxiety

Learn more about General Anxiety Disorder

Panic Disorder | CAMH

NIMH "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

What is Mindfulness Meditation?

Transcendental Meditation: Benefits, Techniques and More

Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Medical Students' Serum Cortisol

Ten Years of Relaxation Training for Treating Anxiety meta-analysis | BMC Psychiatry | Full Text

The benefits of a good night's sleep | SCL Health

Meditation for Pain Relief: What You Need to Know and How to Try

Panic Attacks and Panic Disorder - Symptoms and Causes - Mayo Clinic.

How to Calm the Mind: Simple Techniques for Meditation

Meditation does not necessarily put a person into a trance: many practices are aimed at finding a balance between the material and the spiritual, they help relieve tension, train attention and develop the ability to visualize. T&Rs talk about basic meditation techniques that anyone can do.

How to prepare for meditation

Meditation is work with our mind and body. Meditation techniques allow you to listen to yourself and calm your thoughts, help train attention and renew energy.

Maina Miletich

Has been managing industrial projects for more than 15 years, practicing meditation as a way to deal with stress at work. Maina took a full Vipassana course at a Buddhist monastery, and teaches mindfulness meditation classes at the HSE Center for Psychological Counseling

Meditation practices are needed not for the sake of the result and staying in some kind of astral state - the process itself and what changes are taking place in us are important. There is no need to force yourself, you must have an inner need. However, if you decide to exercise, it is important to do it regularly. There are many techniques, but their main difference is in the object on which you need to concentrate. It can be an external object, breath, body, phrase.

Before meditation, choose a quiet, ventilated place. The duration of the practice depends on you: you can start with 10 minutes, gradually increasing this time. The main thing in meditative practices is comfort, for full immersion, you need to create a safe space in which you can feel relaxed.

If you have just returned home after a day's work, you must first switch, as you will not be able to start meditation right away. Do physical exercises, take a contrast shower or do a little cleaning, and only after that you can proceed to the meditation itself.

Maina Miletich

You can practice both on your own and with an instructor. He will explain what to focus on and guide with his voice. You can meditate with music, but you need to understand that this is another external object to which attention will be directed. In the practice of mindfulness, it is better to focus it completely on yourself. At least part of the time, you need to be in silence.

Remember that extraneous thoughts are completely normal. They do not need to be driven away, watch them and be aware of them. During practice, anxiety may appear - this is also natural.

Basic meditation techniques

Breathing meditations

During this meditation one concentrates on the breath. First you need to observe the natural inhalation and exhalation until you feel that the mind begins to calm down. The next step is to control the breath with a simple technique:

Inhale through the nose for 4 counts
Breath hold for 16 seconds
Exhale through the mouth for 8 seconds

You may feel slightly dizzy - in this case it is better to return to natural breathing and then resume the practice. Subsequently, you can increase the duration by counting by 8-32-16, respectively. The back must be kept straight so as not to restrict the movement of the respiratory organs. After this technique, stay in silence for some more time, observing how your breathing and emotional state have changed.

Mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness meditation is aimed at returning to the present moment, a person feels his presence here and now. This technique helps to distract from thoughts about the future and the past.

During mindfulness meditation, we focus not on the object, but on the subject - ourselves

Sit on a chair with both feet on the floor, or cross your legs on the floor. The back should remain straight.
Listen to external sounds, fix them and return your attention to your body.
Focus on the process of breathing, feel the pace at which you inhale and exhale.
Watch the thoughts that arise without any evaluation: you must accept them and let them go.
Pay attention to smells: try to feel what objects surround you and how they might smell.
Return to the breath and take deep breaths in and out.
Put your hand on the energy center: it is located in the lower part of the abdomen, feel what changes occur in it during breathing. Imagine how this energy begins to circulate through your body.
Focus on the body and its sensations: what temperature it is in, whether it is cold or warm, whether it is tense or relaxed. If you feel tight, you need to pay attention to this part of the body.

Mindfulness meditation can also be practiced in everyday life. For example, you perform monotonous actions - washing dishes, arranging books on a shelf, being in the shower. The main thing is to direct all attention to a certain action.

Focus of meditation

During this meditation it is necessary to direct attention to an object. For example, in trataka practice, you focus on a flame or a dot on a plain wall. You can choose an object yourself - be it a flower, a painting or a figurine. This technique not only helps to relax, but also develops the skill of visualization.

At the very beginning, you need to consider the object - to see its shape, details, shades that you did not notice before.
Imagine touching this object first with one finger, then with the whole palm. Observe the sensations by changing the position of the imaginary hand. Experienced experts say that at this stage you feel the energy of the object.
Now you need to smell the object without approaching it. Describe this scent.
If you focus on the flame, focus on the sounds. For a more accurate perception, you can close your eyes. What do you think this sound is like? What is the rhythm, pace of the combustion process?
At the last stage, with your eyes closed, you need to imagine this object in empty space and mentally draw it, not forgetting about the details. Remember what this object feels like, smells, mentally touch it and observe how the attitude towards this object has changed.

Body Relaxation Meditation

One of the most popular techniques to relieve tension in the whole body. It is necessary to gradually relax parts of the body, transferring attention to them. It is better to start from the toes and gradually rise to the crown. It is best to do it before bed. If some areas remain tense, analyze why these sensations arise, what is the cause of discomfort. For example, a clenched jaw is most often associated with innuendo, and tense shoulders are most often associated with the responsibility that lies with you.

Mantra meditations

During these meditations, you need to repeat the text of the mantra 108 times, but it is not necessary to memorize the texts in an unfamiliar language, you can say any word that is meaningful to you, such as “love” or “peace”.

Express your intention - why are you saying these words?
Sing the phrase while feeling vibrations throughout your body.
Next, proceed to reciting the mantra.
Start whispering it.
The last step is to say the mantra to yourself. This step must be taken only in a state of complete calm.
Learn more