Meditation

The Don't Panic Self-Help Kit Tape 2B: Acoustic 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 Self-Help Store for information.