Anxiety Meditation 03

Transcript

Hello again and thank you for joining me for the third session of this meditation for anxiety series.

While you lie there in your comfortable position  either lying down or sitting  just take a moment to become aware of your body.

Scan your body – is there any tension? If you notice you are holding any part of your body, face or head  let go  relax and enjoy the next ten minutes – as there is nothing else for you to do right now  but to simply listen to the sound of my voice.

Take a moment to observe your thoughts and your feelings  Let them enter your conscious awareness and don’t do anything to stop them  simply let them be.

Now take a deep inhalation and breathe out slowly.

As always you will be safe during this meditation  but if for any reason you feel uneasy or you wish to come out of this meditation, you can do so at any time by just counting backwards from three down to one and taking a deep breath.

But for now  just continue to breathe naturally.

As you breathe  you might become aware of things in your visual field  or thoughts that arise  Just allow that to happen  become aware of them  Then gently bring your awareness back to the sound of my voice.

Now we will begin to slow down the breathing  inhaling and expanding the stomach until you have filled it with beautiful fresh air  and then exhaling completely until every last drop of used air has been expelled.

Breathe in on a count of 4…1…2…3…4 then exhale on a count of 5…1…2…3…4…5

Breathe in 1…2…3….4 exhale 1…2…3…4…5 inhale 1…2…3…4 exhale 1…2…3…4…5 inhale 1…2…3…4 exhale 1…2…3…4…5

Just continue like that for a few moments…

Now we are feeling calm and at ease  let’s revisit how our negative thought patterns cause anxiety.

Every negative thought is converted into anxiety  We can negatively forecast the future ‘I will never be happy’ or ‘I’ll never find true love’  or maybe smaller things like worrying about an exam or a meeting or interview  let’s say you think about it 50 times and everything goes wrong  then it actually happens and it’s okay  but in your mind  you’ve attended it 51 times and 50 of those were a disaster  the same goes about replaying events from the past.

The mind doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination so all of those imagined scenarios are stored in your stress bucket as if they were real.

PAUSE

It’s all about how we interpret and attribute what is happening in our lives.

How personally we take events.

How pervasive we view events to be.

How permanent we think events to be.

If we take things personally  think the effects of an event are spread throughout our lives and across people  and think that problems and difficulties last forever  it’s no wonder we experience negative emotions and live in constant fight/ flight/ freeze mode.

Awareness is the first step in starting the process of change  become aware of negative thoughts.

‘I always fail’ is an overgeneralization.

‘I am a bad person’ is black and white thinking.

‘Everything always goes wrong’ is a mental filter for negative things – disqualifying all of the positives things.

When we breathe easy and become aware of our thoughts  we have the power to challenge them and change them.

You have the power  you are powerful.

Repeat in your mind ‘I am powerful’ ‘I have the power to change my thoughts’.

I am powerful  I have the power to change my thoughts.

I am powerful  I have the power to change my thoughts.

When you finish here with me today  I’d like you to write down three positive things that have happened today  it doesn’t matter how insignificant or small they seem  write them down  and if you can  make this a daily exercise.

Did you have a nice meal today? Did someone smile at you when you walked past? Maybe someone said something nice to you? Or you enjoyed this meditation? Perhaps you saw a pretty flower? Or the sun was shining?

It can be literally anything  and when you make it a daily exercise  a wonderful thing happens: you start to notice positive things and happy things all around you!

PAUSE

Now bring your awareness back to your breathing  breathe naturally and notice the air flowing in and out of your body.

In each of our sessions of this series we will practice to release tension in our body through bringing our awareness to each body part and using the breath to relax more and more.

The more you practice  the easier it will become to notice tension in the body and to let it go.

So take one more deep inhalation  and exhale completely.

Let’s begin by bringing our attention to the top of the head  think about all those little muscles of the scalp  and just allow them to let go and relax.

Now all the muscles of the face  just let them go slack  your forehead…your eyelids…the space between your eyebrows  the cheeks…mouth…and jaw muscles.

Unclenching your teeth and relaxing your tongue  the more you physically relax  the more you can mentally relax.

Moving your awareness to your neck and shoulder muscles now  letting all the tension drain away  as you think on down through your arms  and all the way down to the very tips of your fingers and tips of your thumbs.

Bring your awareness to your chest and feel any tension simply drain away.

Think on down to your stomach  and how it rises and falls with every deep slow breath you take  you notice how you’re breathing even more smoothly, more slowly  as you relax more and more.

Now your back  the upper, middle and lower back  and the muscles along your spine – allowing them to relax and let go.

Bring your awareness to your hips and pelvic area  take a deep inhalation and gently move the clean fresh breath to your hips  as you exhale deeply and completely.

Now moving your awareness all the down through your thighs, knees, lower legs and all the way down to your feet until your reach the tips of your toes.

All the muscles of your body are now so beautifully relaxed  so relaxed and easy.

When our body is relaxed  our mind is relaxed too.

PAUSE

Let’s take a last deep inhalation  and exhale completely.

Continue to enjoy each breath.

And remember  you are in control  you are starting to enjoy life more now  because you know  that you can take control of your thoughts.

And now I will count from 3 down to 0 and when I’ve counted from 3 down to 0 you will come back to the room feeling beautifully relaxed.

3…2…1…0

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