Meditation For Anxiety Relief

Living with anxiety is like being followed by a voice that knows all your insecurities and uses them against you. It gets to the point when it’s the loudest voice in the room. The only one you can hear.    – POPSUGAR

Meditation for anxiety relief is ancient and well-practiced exercise. It is guaranteed to bring positive results in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Anxiety is a mental health disorder that is characterized by uneasy feelings of worry, tension, and fear that dramatically impacts one’s thinking and functioning.

Anxiety is a silent killer that slowly and steadily rips a person apart. Even though a person may look normal and unaffected on the outside, anxiety tends to overwhelm the individual with unwanted thoughts and beliefs, thereby impairing their ability to perform day-day activities.

Anxiety affects all– the rich, the poor, the believer, and the unbeliever. It does not discriminate, and it is impossible to remain unaffected by anxiety.

Body Scan meditation is a type of mindfulness practice which promotes greater awareness of the physical body. It helps an individual connect with and become aware of the many sensations experienced in their physical body.

By being aware of these sensations, an individual is well-prepared to identify and deal with symptoms of stress and anxiety. This meditational practice should be done while lying down, sitting, or in other postures. In this practice, while taking deep breaths, attention is paid to each body part either starting from the top, i.e., the head or the lower body, i.e., the toes.

When each body part is scanned, the individual is required to pay attention to how they feel, when focusing on the toes, the individual needs to identify if their toes are hot or cold, itchy, tingly, heavy, tensed or firm, etc.

Doing a body scan helps the individual identify any source of physical pain and a link between these physical sensations and an individual’s emotions. This meditation, according to research, dramatically helps relieve symptoms of stress and anxiety.

As the name suggests, this practice is a guided form of meditation. The guide can either be a teacher or a therapist.

The voice can also be a voice recording of the teacher/therapist etc. In this form of meditation, the instructor guides you to visualize or imagine situations or places that you find relaxing and safe at, while taking deep breaths.

It can be your home, a vacation spot, a mountain, or any specific place personalized to you.

The guide asks you to engage your five senses while meditating, i.e., paying attention to what you feel, smell, touch, or taste when in your relaxed place. According to studies, this form of meditation helps calm and restore an individual’s sense of peacefulness.

Here you will repeat a calming word or mantra to quiet their minds and prevent distracting thoughts.

The essential requirements for this practice is a quiet place, a comfortable position and a relaxing word like “Om,” “Love” Peace” etc.

This meditation practice is a Hindu spiritual practice which was founded by the Indian guru- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The goal of this meditation is to rise above one’s current state of being.

In this practice, the individual meditates on a chant or a repeated word while taking deep breaths.

According to research, this form of meditation has many benefits:

Qi Gong, used by the Chinese, combines the methods of physical movement, meditation, relaxation, and breathing exercises to restore an individual’s peace of mind, health, and physical endurance.

According to this study mentioned in the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, Qi Gong has positive effects on the psychological well-being of chronically ill patients.

This practice is a gentle form of martial arts in which the individual performs a series of movements or postures slowly and gracefully. Often referred to as “Meditation in motion,” and a growing number of studies support the positive effect of “Tai-Chi” with improvements in symptoms of anxiety and depression.

In this meditation practice, the individual focuses on a series of body postures and breathing exercises which require concentration and balance. While doing yoga, an individual is encouraged to focus more on their body movements and pay less attention to the troubling thoughts that cause them to worry.

Yoga helps reduce the intensity of this pain and helped improve their overall mental health.

This practice is a simple and favored meditation practice. It requires the individual only to ignore the thoughts that enter their mind.

The individual does this by taking slow and deep breaths, with each breath cycle lasting about 6-9 seconds. Apart from anxiety relief, this meditational practice has many benefits, which include improvement in physical and cognitive performance.

As the name suggests, this is a movement-based meditation where the individual walks barefoot and focuses only on the walking movement while taking deep breaths.

The goal is to draw energy and become one with the Earth. This is useful for individuals who cannot sit still for long periods.

Walking meditation has been found to invigorate one both mentally and physically and help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

An individual focuses all their energy and attention on a particular object, e.g., the flame of a candle, a stone, a statue, etc.

By focusing on the object, the individual directs his energy and attention from nagging thoughts and worries. This aspect, according to studies, helps improve concentration and reduce symptoms of anxiety and stress.

The practices mentioned above are proven ways one can use meditation for anxiety relief. You can quickly learn and improve your mental health along with physical performance.