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 nonanxious periods. Then, we introduce that new skill gradually, over time, into the problem situation.

Here are the valuable lessons 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.