Tag: meditation

By Sahar Islam, Content Team academic

Millions of individuals worldwide suffer from anxiety, which has emerged as one of the most prevalent mental health issues in the modern world. Unease, concern, and panic can be exacerbated by the fast-paced nature of life, social expectations, and ongoing stress. Meditation has showed promise in treating anxiety, even though there are many different treatments available.

For ages, people have utilised meditation, an age-old technique that entails concentrating the mind and removing distractions, to enhance mental clarity, relaxation, and spiritual well-being. But in recent years, meditation has become more well-known for its positive effects on mental health, particularly when it comes to lowering anxiety. However, how precisely does it assist? Let’s investigate.

How to Begin Using Meditation to Reduce Anxiety

Here are some easy steps to get you started if you’re new to meditation and want to use it to reduce anxiety:

• Locate a Quiet Area: Pick a peaceful area where you won’t be bothered.

• Become comfortable by placing your hands on your lap and sitting with your back straight.

• Concentrate on Your Breath: Shut your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Pay attention to how your breath enters and exits your body when you take a deep inhale and release it gradually.

• Start Small: As you get more accustomed to the practice, progressively extend the time from 5 to 10 minutes each day.

The Scientific Basis of Anxiety and Meditation

The relationship between meditation and anxiety reduction has been the subject of numerous research investigations. According to a noteworthy study that was published in JAMA Internal Medicine, mindfulness meditation programs can considerably lessen pain, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. According to research, mindfulness meditation helps people become more self-aware, better at controlling their emotions, and less dependent on automatic negative thought processes.

According to other research, meditation can boost feelings of contentment and wellbeing, encourage relaxation, and lessen the severity of the body’s stress reaction. The scientific community is still learning more about how meditation can help with anxiety and other mental health conditions.

Improving the Control of Emotions

Extreme emotional emotions like fear, irritation, or powerlessness can be brought on by anxiety. People can become more emotionally resilient by practicing meditation, particularly mindfulness and loving-kindness techniques. It gives one the chance to see feelings as they surface without becoming enmeshed in them. Regular meditators can learn to sit with their emotions and allow them to pass without allowing them to dictate their behaviour, as opposed to responding rashly to anxiety. More psychological stability results from this emotional regulation practice, which makes it easier and less distressing for people to deal with anxiety.

Encouraging Long-Term Advantages for Mental Health

Meditation can have long-term benefits in addition to providing instant anxiety alleviation. Regular meditation has been linked to structural alterations in the brain, especially in regions linked to stress and emotional control, according to research. For instance, studies have found that meditation can increase grey matter density in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with executive function, decision-making, and managing stress. As these changes take place, individuals may find themselves more resilient to stress, less prone to anxiety, and better equipped to handle challenges. Meditation helps build mental and emotional strength over time, creating a more stable foundation for mental health.

Shifting Ways of Thinking

Negative cognitive habits, such as overanalysing, exaggerating perceived dangers, or catastrophizing, are frequently associated with anxiety. Over time, these mental patterns might solidify, making it challenging for people to overcome their worry. People can recognize these harmful habits and gently refocus their attention with the aid of meditation techniques, particularly mindfulness and cognitive meditation.

By practicing meditation, people can learn to identify when they are thinking negatively and create strategies to stop it. This can eventually cause a big change in how someone thinks and views stressful circumstances. The practice promotes self-acceptance, lessens anxiety-inducing self-criticism, and makes people more compassionate toward themselves.

Developing Mindfulness and Awareness

Being caught up in thoughts about the past or the future—whether it’s dwelling on previous errors or worrying about future events—often leads to anxiety. People who practice mindfulness meditation are encouraged to become judgment-free conscious of the present moment. By cultivating awareness, this exercise assists people in recognizing and confronting anxious thoughts as they emerge. Mindfulness helps to establish a mental space where worries about the past or future can be noticed without giving them force, preventing one from becoming overwhelmed by them.

Regular mindfulness practice helps people learn not to respond rashly or disastrously to thoughts or feelings, which helps them better control their reactions to anxiety-inducing situations.

Controlling the Stress Response in the Body

In addition to being a mental state, anxiety can also manifest physically as tense muscles, shallow breathing, and a fast heartbeat. The body releases stress hormones like cortisol when we experience anxiety, triggering the fight-or-flight response. It has been demonstrated that meditation, especially techniques like progressive muscle relaxation and deep breathing, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps inhibit the stress response. Meditation creates a more balanced state of being by teaching the body to relax, which reduces the heart rate and soothes the body’s physical response to stress.

Mind-Calming

The power of meditation to relax the mind is among its most obvious advantages. Anxiety is frequently brought on by compulsive thinking about the future, excessive worrying, or racing thoughts. This cerebral jumble might provide a crippling sense of discomfort. By promoting mindfulness, or the ability to be totally present in the moment, meditation enables people to take a mental break and get some distance. Meditation promotes serenity and peace by focusing on breathing or a simple mantra, which helps interrupt the pattern of nervous thought.

A straightforward yet effective method for controlling anxiety is meditation. Meditation can be a useful tool for lowering anxiety and enhancing mental health since it helps to quiet the mind, control the body’s stress response, and foster mindfulness. Incorporating meditation into your daily routine can help you recover control over your thoughts and emotions, providing a sense of calm and balance to your life, regardless of whether you’re searching for short-term respite or long-term mental health benefits.

(Hofmann, S. G., Sawyer, A. T., Witt, A. A., & Oh, D. (2010). The Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 169–183.) 

(Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., et al. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain grey matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191(1), 36-43)

By Thomas Swarbrick, Content Team Academic

The problem

Experiences of anxiety have become an epidemic amongst adults and adolescents. Whether it takes the form periodic stress or severe phobic symptoms, prevalence rates have concerningly reached an all-time high. But what is it about our generation that leaves us so vulnerable?

With ever-expanding sources of media, the pool of strategies and guidance for anxiety management can appear endless. Every influencer has their own ideal ‘self-care’ roadmap, each contradictory to the last. It takes no qualification to announce to the world perfect unique de-stress routine. Yet unfortunately, many of these promoted lifestyles are often unattainable or impossible to be practiced in the long-term, only exacerbating the viewers’ stress. Each additional slice of ‘self-care’ advice acts as another task imposed on our already overwhelmed to-do-list, and often these widely endorsed strategies are far from pleasurable. It is ‘common knowledge’ that cold showers, vegetables and early-morning runs are good for us – but what about for the 14-year-old who chronically overthinks? Is training like an athlete going to help them make friends at school? Hence, after five minutes of scouring social media, we are left dizzy, directionless and blindly confused.

It’s easy to lay the blame on social media – easy enough that everybody is seemingly aware that time should be invested someplace else. But the vast majority, upon being questioned, have no concrete knowledge of what processes embedded in the media incur anxiety. And, like most problems, anxiety cannot be harnessed until its triggers are known.

Rather obviously, there no universally known determinants for anxiety, we can infer from particular events and subsequent stress/worry responses what circumstances can make anxiety more likely to occur, yet each individual always has their own precursors for anxiety. Nevertheless, social media seems to correlate positively and consistently with anxiety symptoms, indicating that there may be some shared factor.

Influencers are quick to denounce lazily spent days in place of productivity. Modern culture now teaches us that the resolution to our problems (including anxiety) is found in busy schedules, optimised routines and financial success. But doesn’t this seem… absurd? How are we to console racing thoughts if we manage our time in overdrive? When do we schedule an hour of boredom to simply sit and relax? Sure, the net outcome of productivity is desirable, but surely we can delay such achievements for a more peaceful state of mind?

Moving Forward

It may seem counterintuitive, but perhaps the resolution isn’t to indulge in the lifestyle that influencers prescribe, but to decrease the quantity of self-help advice we expose ourselves to. Kierkegaard once famously wrote ‘Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’ which, in the context of anxiety, can be interpreted as “unless we are free to be who we are, anxiety will undoubtedly follow”. And what’s more restraining on our freedom than having our lives dictated by others?

Perhaps the answer is commitment. The selection of a few progressive steps forward. A small, gradual implementation of practices tailored to improve our physical and mental wellbeing. Replacing the comparison to lifestyles beyond our reach with changes accustomed to our own preferences and abilities – with the key being that we stick to these adaptations.

So, what exactly can we do? Which guidance is worthy of our attention? To what strategies are our efforts best spent? Although I am no expert (yet) in the field of psychology, anecdotally I can offer a little wisdom to prompt a positive route. I have had my fair dosage experimenting with strategies to help manage anxiety, yet above all, the subtle art of meditation greatly triumphed any other form of coping.

Boredom, relaxation and stillness are all virtues that are scarcely seen in modern Western culture but are at the heart of many Eastern traditions. Practice of meditation is assumed within the Buddhist religion; entire lifestyles are centred around the cultivation of a calmed mind. Meditation is an ancient wisdom; it dates back as early as 1500BC and has survived due to its numerous benefits. Admittedly, particularly amongst young adults, upon hearing “meditation” many eye rolls tend to follow. The conventional mental image associated is a little farfetched and misconstrued. Meditation can be practiced in much simpler forms, as Rob Walker puts it “The art of noticing”. One main idea behind meditation is that you are separate from your thoughts. Life continues – no amount of thinking is enough to change the world beyond your head – and how easily anxious we can become. We are so frequently ‘absent’, falling prey to worrisome thought, entirely forgetting to merely exist in each moment.

Simply paying attention to the breath each morning is enough to disempower such racing thoughts. Anxious thoughts are the pages fluttering whilst flipping through a book, and meditation is the of reading each page, steadily and consciously. The ability to recognise the pervasiveness of one’s thoughts is enough to ease the mind. I am not suggesting we purify our brains from any form of thinking, thoughts are a marvellous tool but instead try to yield some control over the thoughts we prioritise and act upon. Recent forms of Cognitive Behavioural Psychology (CBT) suggest packaging all our worry and allocating specific times to give weight to such thought. More traditionally, we are encouraged to examine our incessant thought through a sceptical lens, evaluating the rationality of them. Both techniques are a form of meditation.

The Bottom Line

Modern culture has a good heart. Ultimately aiming to help us manage our anxiety and better ourselves but unfortunately has achieved the converse by overwhelming us. Many techniques are affective for reducing anxiety, and it is the recognition that we only need a select few to nudge us in the right direction. There is only so much knowledge we can acquire about managing-anxiety, and it is easy to assume that the more advice we consume, the better we will be. Stepping back is worth a try, focusing on a handful of personalised strategies, realistic ones we can be consistent with. Anxiety thrives in our own minds, and nobody is better aware of our thoughts than ourselves.

References

Kierkegaard, S., Thomte, R., & Anderson, A. (1980). The concept of anxiety : a simple psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin. Princeton University Press.

Selva, J. (2017, March 13). History of mindfulness: From east to west and religion to science. Positive Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/history-of-mindfulness/

Walker, R., Mendelsund, P., & Munday, O. (2019). The art of noticing : rediscover what really matters to you. Ebury Press.