We’ve all experienced worry, anxiety, and fear. It’s a part of life. Whether its butterflies in our stomach before an important event, worry about how we will pay our bills, nervousness about an upcoming medical procedure, or panic before we give a presentation, we’ve all felt it. We’ve all been there. But, when anxiety is a constant struggle, it can keep us from experiencing joy, happiness, and inner peace.
You may think your anxiety is so intense that nobody understands or feels the way you do. You are not alone. You may feel on edge and your sense of security faltering especially in these intense, uncertain, and turbulent times. All you have to do is turn on the news and you will notice how deeply affected you are by what’s happening in the world. Because of this energetic intensity, you may be feeling more anxious, overwhelmed, and unsettled than you normally do.
Here’s the good news! This is actually an intense period of self-healing, self-discovery, personal and global transformation. Maintaining balance and inner peace is challenging for all of us right now as we navigate the rough seas of this intense shift in human consciousness.
Before you can shift your anxiety to inner peace, you first have to become mindful of it. When you’re in fear or anxiety, you are in your head either worrying about the past or the future. By bringing your attention from your head to your heart, you come into the present moment where anxiety doesn’t exist. That’s why mindfulness practices work well with reducing anxiety because they create a calm and peaceful shift in your energies.
Mindfulness gives you the ability to reframe your anxiety and see the sacred information that is there to guide you. Once you become aware of your anxiety and call it out into the open, you have the choice to see what it’s telling you and release it. Bringing awareness to your anxiety can help diffuse it in the midst of a crisis or panic. Just the mere act of becoming aware of your anxiety can lessen its power over you. Most of all, you can get out from under anxiety, get your life back, and move from panic to peace by using these mindfulness and grounding practices on a daily basis.
One of the most courageous choices you can make when your anxiety shows up is to sit still, lean in, and be present with it. It’s courageous because your knee-jerk reaction is to cut and run from your anxiety. This reaction is so automatic that doing nothing to avoid your anxious thoughts and actually bringing them closer is quite the challenge.
Here are 5 mindfulness practices to support you in moving from panic to peace:
1) Mindfulness Meditation teaches you how to notice your thoughts and feelings without reacting from fear. It shows you how to become an observer of your own experience, your thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgment.
Find a comfortable place where you won’t be distracted. Take a series of slow deep breaths. Now imagine your mind as a vast blue sky and your thoughts as white billowy clouds. Notice your thoughts move across your mind as clouds move across the sky. Don’t try to analyze or hold on to them. Just pay attention to the thought until it leaves. The key here is to notice your thoughts without judgment and getting caught up in them. Start with five minutes and gradually build up to ten-fifteen minutes every day. You can also do this while walking and then extend it to other forms of exercise and movement.
2) Practice Mindfulness Moving.Another way to become mindful of your thoughts and feelings is to practice mindfulness moving. One way to do this is by taking your mind, body, and spirit for a walk. Start your practice by going outside for a fifteen-minute walk. Do so without your phone or iPod as a distraction. Before you start to walk, stand on the earth and draw your attention down to your feet. Tap or stamp them lightly in place and notice how your feet feel against the earth.
As you begin to walk, notice that you don’t need to think about moving your legs. They know what to do so you can simply notice the rhythm of your breath in and out. Now shift your focus to your steps and how your body feels as it moves one step in front of the other. Observe yourself taking a step forward toward the future and then releasing your back foot, letting go of the past. The space between your steps is the present. Pay attention to this space with present awareness as you walk.
You can also experience mindful moving by approaching daily activities like cooking, cleaning, washing dishes, eating, shopping, walking, and driving with awareness, participating in them with the intention of being fully present in the moment.
3) Grounding Your Energies. Another way to calm your anxiety is grounding your energies by directing your attention into your feet. Whenever you experience panic, your energy tends to collect around the top of your head which can make you feel detached from the rest of your body. This sudden rush of energy to your head space may lead to feeling unsteady, dizzy, or even faint. When you’re ungrounded, you can feel disoriented, discombobulated, or like your surroundings are unreal.
Begin at the top of your head and direct your energy down through your entire body to your feet. Focus on how your feet feel inside your socks or shoes and against the ground. Once you have focused your attention here, tap your feet on the ground until you feel the energy here. Doing this outside on grass or moss enhances the calming effect. This is a great way of rebalancing your energies and you can do it any time, with your eyes open or closed, and while sitting or moving.
4) Heart-Centered Attention. As a mindfulness practice heart-centered attention brings you home to your heart, the seat of your trust, inner wisdom, and spiritual truth. By dropping into your heart space, you move into present awareness. This is where compassion, acceptance, and trust in yourself and your divine source live. In fact, anxiety and fear cannot co-exist in the same space.
When you drop into your heart space, you remain grounded like the eye at the center of a tornado even as anxious thoughts spiral through your mind. Just by bringing your attention from your head to your heart, you create balance. Focusing your attention at your heart doesn’t just calm an anxiety-ridden brain and nervous system; it also brings your body, mind, and spirit into energetic coherence.
Let’s practice heart-centered attention: Close your eyes and place your hand on the center of your chest. Now put your attention at your heart center. You can tap your fingers on your heart space to stimulate the energy here. Take a few deep breaths while inhaling and exhaling through your heart. Now focus on your heart by visualizing a pearl of while light here. Feel the light filling your entire heart space and expanding outward in all directions.
You can practice heart-centered attention to calm your anxiety in any given moment. There are also several cell phone apps that have breath exercises and guided meditations such as “Calm,” “Head Space,” and “Insight Timer,” you can download as well.
5) Intentional Breathing. Another mindfulness practice that can be used in tandem with any of these mindfulness practices is slow, deep, intentional breathing. Slowing down and deepening your breath draws more oxygen into your body which reduces anxiety and restores balance to your nervous system. A regular deep breathing practice can help you remain calm when you find yourself in anxiety-producing situations.
Begin with putting your hand on your heart center and focusing on your breath, inhaling through your nose and exhaling out your mouth. On your inhale count up to five seconds as you breathe all the way in, and on your exhale, draw your breath out for ten seconds. Practice this until your breath is rhythmic, moves from your chest to your belly, and you feel calm and centered. Then stay here for at least a minute, open your heart and let your energies expand outward in gratitude and compassion for yourself.
I invite you to get in the daily habit of using the mindfulness practices that resonate with you. What matters most is that you take consistent action to shift your anxiety to spiritual opportunity. This will create healthy new habits that promote trust, calm, and inner peace.
Life doesn’t have to be overwhelming, anxiety producing, or difficult. Support is always within reach. Take the first step and download your FREE 3-part Anxiety SOS Support Kit today which includes 2 meditations and an Anxiety-Soothing Affirmations PDF.
