Could Meditating Be Making Your Anxiety WORSE?

Meditation is supposed to be about relaxing. Right? But what if that’s not happening for you?

As part of a corporate program for mid- to higher-level executives, I spoke about meditation. Afterward, a rather nervous-seeming, fast-talking woman came up to me and said, “I can’t meditate. My mind doesn’t work that way. I’ve tried and tried to sit in meditation and I think my mind just won’t get quiet.”

She looked like a high achiever. Acting on my intuition, I asked, “How long are you meditating?”

“One hour,” she said, proudly.

I suspected as much. And she was right. Her mind wasn’t going to get quiet attempting to sit in silent meditation for one hour. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything worse than, as a beginner, attempting to sit for an entire hour!

I told her what I tell anyone I get a chance to tell: having some kind of method for meditation, such as using a recording of a guided visualization, and then choosing an amount of time that will allow you to succeed, are keys to your success.

Let’s break these points down.

Guided visualization

Guided visualization is a method of meditation that is very suitable for beginners. Guided visualization is a technique where someone experienced with meditation uses their voice and a narrative to create a calming, relaxing “story” to tell a person who is sitting or lying down, in a state of quiet relaxation. The narrator speaks more slowly than they would when speaking conversationally. The narrator chooses words and uses a tone that is calming and relaxing. The narrator also invokes images from the natural world or leads the listener on a kind of journey, maybe along a path in a forest or up to the top of a mountain, or all the way out into space.

There are many different apps that provide these types of meditations. (If you DM me, I will send you one I recorded with my brother, Tim Gallaher.)

A simple four-step method

You can also learn a simple four-step method I call the Earth and Sky Meditation. (I’ve got a recording for that one, too. Again, if you DM me, I will send it to you.)

1. Call light to yourself. This is the light of enlightenment, the light that is often pictured around the heads of saints and angels. Light agreed to accompany us on this sometimes dark planet. If you just think of calling light, it comes. light takes everything it touches to a higher order.
2. Draw Earth energy up through the bottoms of your feet, into your legs, your hips, your pelvis. Earth energy likes to pool at about the level of a low belt.
3. Open the top of your head. Imagine you have an opening like the blowhole on a dolphin or a whale or like an infant’s fontenelle. Imagine opening that and allowing Heaven or sky energy in. Give your body permission to balance you between Earth and Sky.
4. Now expand your light and with it your own energy field. You can expand it to fill the room you are in, surround the building you are in, or expand it all the way out to the edge of the atmosphere. Or, if you like, expand your lighted field all the way out into space.

A mantra

A mantra can be any word or phrase that you find relaxing, soothing, or inspiring and doesn’t have to be given to you by some guru. It can be a key phrase from a Bible verse or any holy scripture. It’s just something to occupy your mind so that maybe, you will be able to experience a bit of quiet, even if only for a moment.

Your breath

The last simple focus that I’ll go over here is your breath. You can count breaths, you can breathe in to a certain count, out to another. You can label what you are doing, saying silently to yourself, “I am breathing.”

Anxiety

If you are experiencing anxiety, you may need to do a breathing exercise before you begin meditating. Or just do some vigorous exercise or go for a walk. Attempting to meditate, as a beginner, when you are in the throes of anxiety, is not going to be helpful. You may need to pick a quiet moment in which to begin.

Attempting to meditate, as a beginner, without a method or tools, such as breathing exercises, is not going to give you the relaxation your are looking for. And it may even make your anxiety worse.

Length of time

The length of time you choose—and, as I mentioned, the method you choose—needs to be commensurate with your experience. Meditating for one to three minutes is a great place to start! Taking weeks or even months to build up to ten minutes is wise.

Meditation is not the place to bring a kind of “weekend warrior” mentality. Meditation is not another kind of achievement, but more a place to simply be with yourself and your breath.?

If you experience anxiety, meditating without using some kind of method and without doing something to ease the anxiety first, will likely exacerbate the anxiety.

Are you curious about what meditation can be? Tomorrow I will be leading a FREE Masterclass on meditation using the technique of guided visualization. And, although the class itself lasts one hour, I will not be leading a one-hour meditation! Want to know more? Join me! https://www.dhirubhai.net/events/thegiftofguidedvisualization-oc7242301346345844736/comments/

?

?