Easing Anxiety Through Mediation

Meditation has a reputation among some in the west as being akin to religious practice and for that reason, something mystical or reserved for highly skilled practitioners. However, simple meditation techniques have found use in allaying anxiety, if not preventing all anxiety attacks.

What is meditation?

If you’ve ever found yourself lost in a book or so involved in a movie that you forgot it was just actors on a screen, you are familiar with the basic mechanism of immersion. Focusing on these activities allowed you to escape the daily mental grind. Meditation can be thought of as exploiting our inability to simultaneously hold multiple things in our full attention.

Although once practiced for mystical reasons, the modern view of meditation is as a type of complementary medicine. It finds use as an adjunct therapy for anxiety because it can produce a state of deep relaxation and settle the mind. This is especially important if disconnected thoughts and general worry seem to cycle endlessly. Meditation can break this cycle.

Guided Meditation

Guided meditation is a type that uses scripts along with relaxing music to help those unfamiliar with meditation started. The guidance can be just to obtain a relaxed state, or it can be aimed at changing thoughts about some area of concern. Some therapists will offer particular recordings to help for specific problems while others rely on the tranquil mind that can come with any type of meditation.

Photo: Pixabay