Recently I was reminded of the devastating affects anxiety had on me when my menopausal symptoms were at their worst listening to others sharing their own experiences with anxiety & panic attacks whilst in the throws of menopause.
I wrote about this not so long ago & if you want to understand a little more about why the menopause can cause anxiety & panic attacks & the impact caffeine & alcohol can have aggravating this, please check out my blog on 2nd June earlier this year.
However, I was so inspired by the struggles of others (& reminded about my own horrifying experiences with panic attacks – I thought it was a heart attack) that I decided to share some of my favourite techniques for beating anxiety from my own yoga, mindfulness & meditation practice.
Let’s start with child’s pose! Child’s pose is a beautifully restorative pose that is an excellent way to balance anxiety. It’s a pose I return to daily especially if I notice my anxiety levels are rising. In child’s pose repeat the phrase: I surrender to all that is as it is now.
Resting in child’s pose repeat this mantra until you feel a shift.
A shift is a subtle change, a yawn, a smile, a sigh, a lightness in the shoulders or a sense of feeling more grounded. These subtle shifts end up creating quite profound changes – good bye anxiety!
Tadasana, mountain pose is a really grounding pose, which is an excellent antidote to anxiety.
Standing in Tadasana connect to your feet & the ground beneath your feet. Then imagine roots growing from your feet down through all the layers of the earth. Visualise these roots wrapping themselves 3 times around the earth’s core. Draw this grounding energy from the earth back up through these roots, up through your feet & up into your legs. Continue to draw this grounded energy up through your torso giving your heart a beautiful hit of grounding energy. And then allow this energy to continue up through your head & out through the crown of your head.
Peace Begins With Me – this is one of my favourite techniques for reducing anxiety. It’s a Kundalini Yoga practice & I practice this daily.
To practice you repeat the mantra Peace Begins With Me out loud whilst using corresponding mudras (hand gestures or poses).
Mantras work in a couple of ways. Firstly, by saying the mantra out loud you are literally shifting the activity in your brain away from whatever anxious thoughts are going on inside your head to a different part of the brain.
The sound of the mantra also creates a vibration, literally raising your vibration. As energetic beings we vibrate with a frequency, anxiety lowers our vibration as we draw from our energetic field, the mantra helps to raise our vibration, raising our energy.
Mudras also create an energy. We have 72,000 nerve endings in our hands & fingers. Bringing our hands together in different posture, or mudras creates different energy.
So how do you practice Peace Begins With Me?
Sitting in a comfortable seated position when we say:
Peace – bring the tips of the forefinger & thumb together, this unites the body with the universe & generates wisdom
Begins – bring the middle finger & thumb together for patience
With – bring the ring finger & thumb together uniting the body with the sun’s energy for vitality & vibrancy
Me – bring the little finger & thumb together together for communication
Repeat the mantra with the mudras until you feel a shift & then continue with your day.
Finally, the safe place meditation gave me so much comfort when my anxiety was at it’s worst. Imagine your happy place, visualize it in as much detail as you can. And repeat I am happy, I am safe I am well out loud or in your head. Then using your 5 senses ground yourself into your safe place.
Identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel or touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell & 1 thing you can taste. Depending on how you perceive your world you may visualize each item or you may be more word-y & go to town describing it or you may just get a sense of each thing. And it doesn’t really matter which order you go through the senses just cover them all.
Then finish the meditation by reminding yourself again that you are safe, happy & well.
You can also use the 5 senses technique if you are out & about & find your anxiety levels rising. For example, if you are in the supermarket & start to feel anxious & overwhelmed just pause & run through your senses to ground yourself.
If you would like an audio copy of this meditation just email me at alex@alexbannard.com quoting SAFEPLACE. Or check out my YouTube channel (Alex Bannard) on Friday 27th August my latest video is a yoga & mindfulness practice which brings together these techniques & many more to help alleviate the devastating impact of anxiety & panic attacks.
By incorporating these techniques into my own daily practice as well as ditching caffeine, reducing alcohol & by challenging my anxious thoughts when they arose, reminding myself that thoughts are just thoughts, they aren’t real, which is a technique we use in mindfulness, I have stopped a panic attack in it’s tracks several times & have not been plagued by one in almost a year. and you can too!