Meditation is a way often found as a way to get relief from anxiety, but it might have not worked for some people, the problem with the advice is that they never tell you how to do even basic meditation. With the help of this article, I’ll explain how to do basic meditation and about the different types of meditations that can help with anxiety.
In order to do meditation, there are some things that you need to keep in mind if you’re a beginner and you need to take care of them in order to have a good session of meditation.
Find a calm and quiet place
Finding a calm and quiet place is really important while trying to meditate. A place where you can relax and you know that you won’t be disturbed by any person looking for you even. You just need 10-15 minutes a day out of your schedule to start meditating and I believe everyone should be able to have this much time for preparing their mind for the day ahead of them and calming it down of any tension and anxiety.
Silent your phone
I think this is a good step as mobile phones can disturb you at any time, these days there are 100s of notifications coming up in a day on a users phone, and due to this, the phone can actually disturb you a lot. If you don’t want to silent your phone and are using some application to measure the time of the meditation or if you’ve set alarms in your phone for the time that you want to stop meditation, you should put it on airplane mode or if you can make it silent for calls/notifications from other applications then that would be great for your meditation session as you’re not going to be disturbed by someone else unexpectedly.
Have a good posture
It will help if you have a good posture for doing meditation, you should keep your spine straight, you can sit on the floor or a chair. Your hands can be kept in a relaxed position, might be one above other or on your thighs facing upwards, choose the most relaxing position for hands in the beginning as you should be able to sit in this position for at least 10-15 minutes.
Do not try to think about nothing
Most people who don’t know about meditation have a tendency to think that meditation is thinking about nothing, but that’s not what it is, in fact, you don’t have a state where you think about nothing and the mind keeps the thoughts flowing in your mind. Even when you’re thinking about nothing you’re thinking about something. How you do meditation is you focus on one thing, it is maybe the breath, or maybe something that’s in front of you, some mantra or chant that you’re reciting or some visualization in mind, or even the surroundings that you’re in, the sound of the environment and the feeling of your body.
Do not judge yourself about how good you’re meditating
Meditation can bring calmness and tranquillity in your mind, but before putting some time in people start thinking that they might not be doing the meditations correctly and they become self-critical of themselves about the meditations, this is common in the people who suffer from anxiety and they’re more prone to such thinking. These thoughts can cause stress and be completely counterproductive to what we’re trying to achieve by practicing meditation. While doing the practice, we should not be criticizing us about the way we are doing practice and letting it flow. I mentioned this because these thoughts can make it hard for someone to continue the practice.
It’s a long term commitment
Meditation is not going to relieve your anxiety completely in a number of hours, it is useful but it needs time, you might be able to start seeing some change in your mood in from a few weeks to a few months. If you’ve decided on doing it then keep in mind to give it at least a few months before deciding for or against making it a long term habit.
Meditation might not be for you
People with trauma or relaxation-based anxiety might not be helped by meditation if you’ve some trauma and it surfaces when you’re actually beginning to meditate, please consult someone who’s professional, no one should be dealing with problems like trauma alone. Relaxation based anxiety is caused by a feeling that a person is not doing anything and not performing some task. If you have this type of anxiety, you might feel more anxious when meditating, in this case, it’s better if you can mix some Yoga or movements with your meditations, or do dynamic meditation which i’ll cover in a different article later.
Mindfulness meditation [Focus on Present moment]
Mindfulness meditation is helpful in anxiety and in mindfulness meditation we focus on the present moment, you can keep your eyes open in this meditation and just notice your surroundings, take deep breaths and have a focus on your breath. It’s normal to have thoughts come and go but you need to keep the focus on your breath inhalation and exhalation, Also in this meditation, we do not think about the past or the future. while practising it your mind might wander here or there for a while or you may get lost in your thoughts in the beginning but you need to take your focus back on your breath as soon as you realize it and continue deep long breaths for the whole session. You also don’t judge any thought and let them just come and go while practising the meditation. You can start small by doing 5-10 minutes sessions in morning and evening and then move towards longer sessions in case it’s helping you out.
Mindfulness meditation [Be kind to yourself]
In this meditation, you need to replace the thoughts you’re having with the present moment as you’ve done in the mindfulness meditation above but you need to also replace thoughts where you’re judging yourself and be loving to yourself. Anxiety can make you hate yourself because you often think that you haven’t done this thing correctly or you might have done better and anxiety in this way makes you feel bad about yourself. Loving yourself can cause a very positive change to remove anxiety and improve your self-confidence. You can think about things that you’ve done and how were those decisions good at that moment of time instead of thinking bad about yourself and slowly replace your anxious thoughts with good loving thoughts.
Mantra meditation
In mantra meditation you chant a mantra again and again with a certain love and affection for that mantra, a mantra can be any word that makes you feel relaxed and good. The catch here is that you need to be completely focused on the voice and the sound of the mantra that you’re chanting. Doing this can take your focus completely from anxious thoughts that go in your mind and it can make you feel better. A beads mala can be a good thing for counting the mantras and involving some movement in your meditation which can make it more focused.
Meditation can be done all the time
In case if meditation is helping you out with your anxiety and you need to do it more but are unable to find time in the day to practice your meditation sessions. Meditation is not something that you only do in a quiet room, but a calm environment is certainly helpful in the beginning. You can do meditation throughout the day, All you need to do is focus on your breath as and when you remember it, Focusing on your breath can keep your monkey brain busy which actually keeps all the flow of thoughts in your mind. You’ll still have thoughts and they won’t go away but you will train your mind to not focus on those thoughts all the time which will reduce your anxiety overtime.