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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.
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