Anyone who has anxiety knows that your mind can get away from you. When this happens, all of the stress that you are experiencing, whether real or imagined, builds up in you to a point where…well, where you have a panic attack.
The trick is to release this building pressure before it gets out of control and has the potential to cause, you guessed it, a panic attack.
There are several great ways to do this, and I discuss them in my book, but one of the best is meditation.
As I discuss in my book, there are two flavors of meditation: Guided and Eastern. With guided meditation you are following someones direction and being led through imagined settings that are peaceful and serene.
Eastern meditation is a practice by which you try to maintain a quiet, peaceful mind with no thought of anything other than your point of focus or concentration. You simply stare into the darkness of your closed eyelids and think of one thing. Even if that one thing is no thing (nothing). Each time your mind strays (and it will), you gently bring your attention back to your point of focus.
I know that some of you will be eager to try meditation, you might even be experimenting with it now anyway. For those of you that are hesitant, or think it’s dumb, or too “new age” airy fairy for them, I’m going to convince you otherwise.
People have used meditation for thousands of years in the quest to find inner peace and harmony. All the major religions use it in their teachings. Meditation:
- Improves concentration
- Increases self-awareness
- Empowers us to combat stress by helping us relax and cope
In clinical studies, meditation has shown to:
- Reduce the frequency and strength of migraines
- Reduce insomnia
- Ease Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- Ease ANXIETY and PANIC ATTACKS
- Lower levels of stress hormones
- Lower blood pressure
- Improve circulation
- Helps control pulse
- Helps control respiratory rate
- Increases job satisfaction
- increases work performance
With all of these beneficial effects of meditation, why is everyone not doing it? Maybe others think they are too cool to meditate, but I’d rather be geeky and stress-free than cool and burdened with stress.
