How To Meditate To Relieve Stress And Anxiety ? In 3 easy steps!

Life has become stressful, isn’t it ? Don’t you feel at times that you are losing control over your life, every day seems to pass by just like any other day. If you notice, your mind is often bogged with thoughts like – Am I doing enough for my family ? Am I good at job or is my job at risk ? Is the money going to be enough ?

You will notice a lot of ‘What If’ questions lurking in your mind throughout the day. What if, this happens ? What if, this goes wrong ? What if, I fail ? What if, I lose my job ? The list is endless.

So let’s admit – Yes I am stressed and anxious and I am seeking answers to the above questions, so that my mind is at peace. Is meditation the answer to above questions ? If yes, then how to meditate to relieve stress and anxiety ? Let me share with you a 3 Step process (of which meditation is one of the steps) to combat with stress and anxiety.

Step 1: Know The Cause of Stress ?

Do you know what is causing you the stress and anxiety ? I will give you perfect example so that you understand my point.

Let’s say, you are having a tough time managing your finances. You are loaded with loans and you are finding it difficult to meet ends. Now check how your mind functions in such a situation ? These are possibly some repetitive thoughts going on in your mind:

• I have so little money left, this is barely sufficient.
• These debts are not going to get over.
• If it continues like this I may have to file for bankruptcy
• If I lose this job things will get even worse.

Here’s my point – It is the constant repetitive thoughts triggered by a situation or circumstances which is causing you stress.

It is not the situation or circumstances, which is causing the stress, instead it is these initial thoughts, which multiplies into similar negative thoughts and creates anxiety, stress and tension. It starts with one negative thought and quickly branches out to more such thoughts, which often leads to a ‘negative thinking pattern’ in our brains permanently.

So your job now is to look at your life and identify or acknowledge these ‘automatic negative thoughts’ running in your mind.

Step 2: Get a Writing Pad

You must be wondering how a writing pad will relieve my stress ? Let me show you, pause for a moment and quickly grab a writing pad and pen before you read ahead.

Start with a simple question: “What am I worrying or afraid about ?” Write your answers on a notepad. Mention everything that comes to your mind. For instance, you may write ” I am afraid of losing my job”. (Now follow up this with another question what will happen if I lose my job) then you may write “If I lose my job, there won’t be sufficient money left to pay my bills”. Your answers should look something like this:

I am afraid of loosing my job. If I lose my job, I won’t be able to pay my bills. I won’t be able to give the comfort to my family. If the situation worsens, I may have to file for bankruptcy.

Now comes the interesting part – Revisit each statement, and rephrase it with a positive outcome. It may look something like this.

I am afraid of loosing my job. If I lose my job, I will soon find a better one because I trust in my abilities. I will prepare a budget to find out what are the unnecessary expenses which I can cut down. Let me speak to my bank authorities to find out a way to restructure my loans.

The above exercise may look very trivial but trust me it is an extremely powerful way to put brakes on repetitive negative thoughts.

Go ahead and give this a try on any challenging situations you are currently undergoing in life.

Step 3: Practice Deep Breathing Meditation

Before I share with you this meditation technique, it is important for you to understand the scientific revelations on how meditation helps in relieving stress and anxiety.

It is proven that constant anxiety, fear and stress changes the structure and functions of your brain. It increases the size of the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for how you react on stressful or fearful situations. So as the size of the amygdala increases you become more fearful and stressful. Regular practice of meditation also leads to changes and functions of your brain (but in a more productive and healthy way). It reverses the damage caused by anxiety I.e. It decreases the size of amygdala, due to which you become less reactive to stressful situations.

With this scientific understanding, let’s understand how deep breathing technique works:

The key to deep breathing is to breathe deeply from abdomen, getting as much fresh air as possible in our lungs. The more oxygen you get, less tense and anxious you will feel.

Deep Breathing: Steps

• Sit comfortably on a chair or cross-legged on a cushion. Try not sitting on a hard surface (I.e. directly on the floor) as it might hurt your ankles. Make sure your back is straight.
• Put one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen.
• Breathe in through your nose, the hand on your stomach should rise and the hand on the chest should move little.
• Exhale through your mouth, pushing out as much air as possible and contracting the abdominal muscle. The hand on your stomach should move in as you exhale and the hand on the chest moves little.
• Do this exercise for a count of 10 I.e. on every exhale, count 1 till 10.

Things to keep in mind while Deep Breathing:

It is natural for the mind to wander during breathing exercise, whenever that happens bring back the attention to inhalation and exhalation. Put your attention on the air going in and out and also the count. You can even set a timer for 5 minutes and carry out this breathing exercise.

Feel free to share your comments on how you feel after going through above steps.

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