Regain Your Peace of Mind-Mindfulness Exercises for Anxiety
Today I am going to share with you a few mindfulness exercises for anxiety which will help you to calm down your mind chatter and thus will allow you to achieve more serenity.
Inner peace is the most important aspect of a happy life, in today’s busy world people totally forget to take care of their mental as well as physical health until they get sick.
Any mental or physical illness is the body’s way of reminding that you have forgotten fulfilling your basic requirement in life that is to take care of your health.
Especially, if you don’t do anything to refresh your mind like the way you push the reset button in your computer, you will have to pay a heavy price in the future.
Anxiety and depression are the two most common diseases that results from the carelessness of an individual towards his emotional states.
Luckily, we have a very good tool to fix them both which is mindfulness meditation and our focus in this post would be treating anxiety.
Before that, let us look into the root cause of anxiety and depression..(because that is essential before you get to know the solution)
The Prime Reason That Causes Emotional Troubles
Most of the mental problems like frustration, anger, depression, anxiety etc are the consequences of a person not being conscious of his own thoughts, feelings and actions.
By this I mean to say that such troubles are a cumulative result of many negative thoughts which resulted into negative feelings and then became a repeating emotional pattern.
So, to avoid such illness a person has to become more aware of what is going on in his mind and then only he can consciously choose to detach himself from the voices that he hears in his head, which keeps him in lower emotional states.
Although, all the emotional troubles have a common root, I would like to highlight the main cause of depression and anxiety now.
Both of these mental illness are caused by a person’s inability to focus on the present moment which means that he constantly dwells in the past or future. All his actions become unconscious while he is either imagining the future events or replaying past incidences in his mind.
Depression is born from a person’s mind being too obsessed by the thoughts of unfavorable past events whereas anxiety is caused by a person’s worry about the future events.
One Awesome Remedy
Mindfulness can treat both of these emotional troubles since it helps one to become conscious of the present moment.
Yes, if you will follow the simple steps to be mindful in various moments of your life then you can successfully pull yourself out of any such addictive habits of mind.
By having a better control over your thoughts and feelings you can completely transform your life and mindfulness teaches you that in the simplest way possible, and one of its major advantage is that you can perform it anywhere and anytime unlike the conventional meditation methods.
Few Simple Exercises to Bring Your Mind Back into the Present Moment:-
Use Triggers
This is my favorite one and I learned it from Eckhart Tolle’s teachings, I love this one because by doing this you are turning your weakness into strength.
Keep a watch on your thoughts and you will find that your mind has only a few very common issues using which it keeps you engaged..Identify those subjects and make it an alarm to become aware of the “now’ moment.
For example- I used to think a lot about a friend who betrayed me, my mind will come up with hundreds of thoughts around this subject like “I must have not trusted that friend”, “I will never allow anyone to come that close to me”, “How can someone be that shallow” etc etc.. then one day I chose that friend as my alarm!
So, whenever I am thinking about that friend, my mind(which earlier presented me a hundred reasons to feel bad) alerts me to practice the present moment awareness.
Once you have found a trigger and it starts to remind you to be mindful…Just take a few deep breaths and watch your thoughts as an observer, gently allow them to come and go.. become aware of every thought and try to find that state of “emptiness” when you have no thoughts. The longer you can do this the more peaceful you will feel.
Using the 5 Senses
In this method you focus on the information that any of the five senses is bringing to you.
It could be sounds, visuals, smells, touch or taste you actively observe them “as it is” without labeling them.
I have discussed this in more detail in the post-Learn to Expand Your Consciousness with Simple Mindfulness Exercises
Body Awareness
This is an exercise for which you will have to take a few minutes from your daily routine.
To do this, find a silent place and sit in any relaxed position:-
First, Take ten conscious deep breaths and clear your mind from the residual thoughts.
Now, start by feeling your scalp, forehead and gently move your attention to every part of your body from top to bottom..do this gradually and imagine that wherever you are focusing that body part is getting relaxed.
This is a very effective way to press the “reset” button of which I talked earlier.
So, these were few quick ways to escape from the thoughts which cause disturbances in your mind that can further grow and become a very big problem in your life if it is not fixed at the right time.
You can practice these exercises to treat your anxiety issues but do not stop following the advice of your doctor (if you are under medical treatment).
I hope you liked this post. I would love to hear your views about this so please do leave me a comment in the box below. (Your email id will be safe and hidden, you can even prefer your secondary email id for commenting)
You can also mail me at hari@zerotoinfinitude.com
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