Let's do a meditation together,
Bringing compassion to our experience of anxiety and depression.
Finding a comfortable position for your body,
Either seated or laying down.
Making sure that you're warm,
Relaxed,
Or beginning to relax.
Let the eyes close and take some deep breaths.
Nice full breath into the belly,
Exhaling through an open mouth,
Sighing,
Making a sound.
As you exhale,
The exhalation longer than the inhalation.
Again,
Nice deep breath in,
Maybe holding the breath briefly.
Long full exhalation.
Again,
Nice full breath in.
Allow yourself to let go of everything outside of your immediate experience.
The body in this moment,
Temperature,
Pressure,
Tingling,
All the simple sensations that let you know there is a body,
Including what is difficult or uncomfortable.
So tightness in the chest,
Sense of impending doom,
Fear,
Worry,
How these show up for you in the body.
The first step in working with our anxiety is turning towards it,
So stopping whatever we're doing,
Pausing,
Becoming comfortable or making ourselves comfortable,
Taking some deep breath,
And beginning to investigate the experience.
What is it like to feel anxious,
Feel despair,
Depression,
Fear?
We accompany ourselves with the fullness of the breath and a willingness to try something different,
To put the brakes on from runaway thoughts.
So our anxiety as an experience is mental and physical.
Let yourself for the first little bit here be interested in the physical sensations.
Is it in the belly?
Is it in the chest,
The upper chest,
The throat,
The head?
Where do you feel the anxiety,
The fear?
What does it manifest as?
Tightness or heat,
An impulse to move away from it or get up and distract ourselves from it.
It's not comfortable,
So we can embrace it instead of moving away from it.
And the way that is done is with compassion,
By letting yourself feel how uncomfortable it is,
Letting go of what might be driving it.
Thoughts would be one condition that is causing the experience of anxiety.
There might be other factors at play,
Like condition of the body,
Whether we've slept well or eaten well or exercised,
Some underlying health concerns.
All of these factors coming together like a weather system to create a storm of anxiety.
That first movement to feel some love and softness towards yourself.
It's difficult,
Acknowledging,
You know,
I know it's difficult.
We hold the experience,
The racing heart or the strong sensation with soft breath and some tenderness towards ourselves.
Making room around the anxiety,
Allowing it to be,
Comforting ourselves just by acknowledging it.
It's difficult.
You might find as you sit in acceptance in this way,
Allowing the anxiety to be felt and to be known,
You might begin to loosen that sense of having to get rid of it,
Having to fix it or change it,
Which is an added layer,
Unnecessary amplification of the initial experience of distress.
And allows us to stop pushing the experience away,
Simply allow it to be.
Maybe this brings some relief to the system,
To the body and mind.
So maybe a few more deep breaths here.
The inhalations,
You can imagine creating even more space around the experience.
The exhalation,
Easing,
Further relaxing,
Maybe some comfort is found in befriending yourself with the experience.
You can trust you're not going to abandon yourself here.
There's a little bit of ease and spaciousness and we've considered how the anxiety is a result of a combination of factors,
Thoughts and feelings and physical conditions,
Conditions of the body.
Maybe we get a sense that it's not personal,
That our anxiety is not some fault,
Some failure on our part.
It's not personal at all.
Anxiety arises when the conditions for anxiety are appearing and anxiety arises in the minds of all living beings.
It's also not personal in that sense.
Right now at this time,
This moment where you're experiencing a strong anxiety or fear,
Many,
Many living beings are experiencing the same.
So we can also hold that with compassion,
Thinking of others who share the human condition,
Which includes storms of strong feeling.
May they be peaceful,
May they take a few deep breaths,
Find ease,
Find the space to be with their anxiety,
Just like me.
And finally we can consider,
Because our anxiety is coming in this way as a not personal experience of an accumulation of causes and conditions that come and go just like a storm,
That it's not permanent.
Our experience is constantly shifting and changing.
What a relief.
If you found in this contemplation and the simple act of breathing and holding your experience with tenderness,
You found some relief,
Just enjoying that for a few more minutes,
Allowing yourself to really relax.
There's no rush.
