|
STEP 2: Practice
Formal Relaxation Skills
Meditation
You may, after considering all three methods, prefer meditation instead
of a relaxation technique as a way to release tensions.
Meditation is a family of mental exercises that generally involve sitting
quietly and comfortably while focusing on some simple internal or external
stimulus, such as a word, one's breathing pattern, or a visual object.
In relaxation, the individual engages in a number of mental, and sometimes
physical, activities. In meditation, the person is physically still and
has a much narrower focus of attention.
There are a number of potential benefits to learning meditation, and
I will explain them later in this section. These benefits fall within two
general categories. First, meditation helps you to gain control of your
physical tension by eliciting the Calming Response. Studies show that during
meditation, as well as during relaxation, the heart rate and respiration
rate slow down and blood pressure diminishes. Over time, mediators report
feeling less daily anxiety, and they tend to recover more quickly after
highly anxious times. Thus within this category, meditation and relaxation
provide similar gains.
The second category of benefits offers the greatest distinct contribution
to those who experience panic. Learning the skills of meditation can dramatically
increase your ability to control your fearful thinking by teaching you
new ways to respond to your automatic thoughts, emotions, and images. The
typical panic-prone person dwells on his worries, pays close attention
to fearful thoughts, and responds emotionally to his negative images. Instead
of being in control of these experiences, he is controlled by them.
To learn to meditate is to learn how to step away from these experiences
to become a detached, quiet observer of your thoughts, emotions, and images,
as though you were watching them from the outside. Anyone who has experienced
panic knows that the negative thinking during panic is so powerful that
you can't simply say to yourself, "These thoughts are ridiculous.
I am not about to die." That only invites a mental argument that increases
panic: "Yes, I am about to die! My heart's racing a mile a minute.
People die under this kind of stress."
Any type of self-change strategy requires as a first step the skill of
self-observation. To reduce your anxiety reaction and halt your negative
thinking, you must be capable of stepping back from them far enough to
put them in perspective. Chapters 13 through 16 of Don't Panic will teach you how to gain that
perspective and use it to control panic. This section gives you the foundation
skills needed to implement those techniques.
There are two types of meditation that you may choose from. Since they
each accomplish similar goals, you can practice either or both of them.
The first is "concentration" meditation.
Concentration meditation
The four essential features of this meditation are: (1) a quiet place,
(2) a comfortable position, (3) an object to dwell on, and (4) a passive
attitude.
How to do it.
Just as with the relaxation techniques, you should use a quiet place
in your home or elsewhere to practice. Then, assume a comfortable body
posture and begin to invite a passive attitude within your mind (meaning
that you don't need to worry about or become critical of distracting thoughts
-- you just note them, let them go, and return to the object you are dwelling
on). The difference is that during meditation you select one object to
focus on continually during the twenty minutes. You may choose a word (such
as "calm," "love," "peace"), a religious
phrase ("Let go and let God"), a short sound (such as "ahh"
or "omm"), a feeling or a thought. You gently repeat that word
or phrase silently at an easy pace. (For instance, if it is a one-syllable
sound, you might say it once on the inhale and once on the exhale.) Or
you may use your breathing pattern as the focus of your attention.
Both in meditation and in relaxation you are attempting to quiet your
mind and to pay attention to only one thing at a time. An especially important
skill to develop is that passive attitude. There should be no effort involved
in the meditation. You pay attention to instructions, but you don't struggle
to achieve any goal. You don't have to work to create any images; you don't
have to put any effort into feeling any sensations in your body. All you
have to do is remain aware, be in a comfortable position, dwell on the
phrase, and easily let go of any distracting thoughts until those twenty
minutes are over. That is the passive attitude.
A modification to this traditional "concentration" meditation,
called "Meditation of One Hundred Counts", is presented in Chapter
14 of Don't
Panic. It can help you remain mentally focused if you continue to
be bothered by irrelevant thoughts. A second modification of this technique
is a tape called "Acoustic Meditation", which provides pleasant
sounds, timbers, patterns and rhythms to enhance your ability to concentrate.
See Resources for information.
Awareness Meditation
The second meditative technique is an "awareness" meditation.
In concentration meditation, you dwell on one object and consider all other
awareness's as distractions. In awareness meditation, each new event that
arises (including thoughts, fantasies, and emotions), becomes the meditative
object. Nothing that rise up independent of your direction is distraction.
The only distractions are the comments that you begin to have about what
you see, hear or feel.
How to do it.
The process is as follows. Find a quiet place to sit comfortably for
twenty minutes. Begin by focusing on your natural breathing pattern. Mentally
follow each gentle inhalation and exhalation, without judgment and without
comment. (Those who become anxious when attending to their breath may focus
on a single word or sound instead.) After a few minutes, allow your attention
to shift easily among any perceptions that rise up. As each new thought
or sensation registers in your mind, observe it in a detached manner. As
you observe it, give that perception a name.
For instance, in the first few minutes of meditation you are focusing
your awareness on each breath. As you loosen your attention you soon notice
the tension you are holding in your forehead muscles. Without effort or
struggle, sub vocalize a name of the experience -- perhaps "tension"
or "forehead tension" -- and continue observing. Eventually,
your perception will shift. As your detached observing mind follows your
awareness, you take notice of a mental image of a man's face with the corners
of his mouth turned downward. Do not become involved with the image: don't
analyze its meaning or wonder why it appears. Simply notice it and name
it -- "frown" or "man, sad face" -- while you maintain
your uncritical perspective.
When you do become lost in your thoughts, involved in emotions or focused
on a decision, return your full concentration to your breathing pattern
until you regain your detached observer. Everyone gets caught up in their
experiences from time to time during meditation. Don't be self-critical
if you continually drift off and fail to expel those perceptions. In concentration
meditation you merely relax, let go, and focus back on your meditative
word. In awareness meditation you relax, let go, and follow the flow of
your perceptions from a distance. What you observe is not important. How
you observe is the key: without evaluation and without involved comments.
What You Can Learn from Meditation
You needn't become a skilled meditator to gain benefits from meditative
practice. In fact, highly anxious people will find that the two relaxation
techniques are easier to follow, and they may wish to choose one of those
as a long-term method to relax their muscles and quiet their mind.
However, it is the process of practicing meditation that provides the
valuable understanding that you can directly apply to controlling panic,
even if you only practice the technique for several weeks.
Consider that during panic we become consumed by our momentary experience.
We notice the unpleasant sensations in our body and become frightened by
our interpretation of their meaning ("I'm going to faint," or
"I won't be able to breathe.") We notice our surroundings and
become frightened by how we interpret what we see ("There's no support
here for me. This is a dangerous place right now.") We reinforce these
sensations and thoughts by conjuring up terrifying images of ourselves
not surviving the experience. Most of our thoughts, emotions, and images
are out of proportion to reality.
To gain control of these moments we must become skilled at disengaging
from our personal distortions.
We will not develop this skill by waiting until our next panic to practice.
By then it's too late, because panic has control. The best time to learn
a basic skill is during no anxious periods. Then, we introduce that new
skill gradually, over time, into the problem situation.
Here are the valuable learning's you can glean from meditative practice:
1. Meditation is a form of relaxation training. You learn to sit in a
comfortable position and breathe in a calm, effortless way.
2. You learn to quiet your mind, to slow down the racing thoughts, and
to tune in to more subtle internal cues. You acquire the ability to self-observe.
3. You practice the skill of focusing your attention on one thing at
a time and doing so in a relaxed, deliberate fashion. By reducing the numbers
of thoughts and images that enter your mind during a brief period, you
are able to think with greater clarity and simplicity about whatever task
you wish to accomplish.
4. You master the ability to notice when your mind wanders from a task,
to direct your mind back to the task, and to hold it there, at least for
brief periods. At first there may be a longer time span between when your
mind wanders and when you realize it. With continued practice, you learn
to catch yourself closer and closer to the moment in which you lose track
of your task.
5. Through meditation you desensitize yourself to whatever is on your
mind. You are able to notice your personal fears, concerns, or worries
and at the same time step back and become detached from them. In this manner
you can learn about your problems instead of being consumed by them.
6. If you regularly practice meditation and are able to feel more relaxed
during that time, you gain the experience of mastery: your voluntary actions
produce pleasurable changes in your body and mind.
7. As you acquire the knowledge of how you feel when you are calm, then
you can use that feeling as a reference point during your day. For instance,
if you feel calm after meditation in the morning, you will have a greater
chance of noticing the subtle cues of tension later in the day. In other
words, meditation (as well as relaxation) helps you become more alert to
what circumstances are stressful in your life. You then have time to intervene
in your circumstances before your tension builds to uncomfortable proportions.
8. In the upcoming steps you will learn the importance of noticing your
thought process leading up to and during panic. You must develop the sensitivity:
- to notice those thoughts,
- to then let go those thoughts, and finally,
- to turn your attention to some specific supportive tasks.
That is no simple feat! By practicing meditation you practice those three
steps without simultaneously struggling with the frightening experience
of panic.
9. Some people attempt to overcome the anxious thoughts leading up to
panic by replacing them with positive thoughts. For instance, if they are
thinking, "I'm about to lose control and go crazy," they will
begin to simultaneously tell themselves, "no, I won't. I've never
gone crazy before. I'll calm down soon." Sometimes this is quite a
successful strategy. At other times, though, it can backfire by producing
an internal quarrel. In arguments, of course, we tend to "dig in"
to defend our position, and that's what can happen here: the fearful thoughts
only get stronger. A central strategy you will learn in the coming steps
is first to stop those fearful comments completely by shifting your attention
to some neutral task. Then, after disrupting your fearful thoughts for
a few seconds or a few minutes, you will be better able to introduce positive,
supportive suggestions without risking the internal battle. The two meditative
techniques in this section ("concentration" and "awareness")
teach you this basic skill. In Step 3: Practicing
Your Breathing Skills, you learned two of these disruptive processes --
Calming Breath and Calming Counts -- which are similar to brief forms of
meditation.
top | onto step
2d
home
| about me | panic
attacks | fear of flying |
ocd | gad
resources | social anxieties-phobias | simple
phobias | ptsd | meds
self-help tips board | email
me | send
this page
|
