Small steps can have large effects with persistence. The intensity of your anxiety will affect how long or how often you need to employ this meditation. By sensing, releasing, re-grounding, you can progressively cleanse your body of the tension – this, in turn, will help to reduce your anxiety-provoking thoughts and associated emotions. So you might start with a particular sensation and experience it fully and then return to your sense of groundedness, so the anxious sensation does not throw you off-balance.

Revisiting your groundedness – Diana advises you to take the previous step progressively and iteratively.

The important thing is to get in touch with a bodily sensation at this stage and focus on it so that you can work towards its release. The task here is to tap into how you are experiencing your anxiety or disturbed feeling in your body – it could be tightness in your neck or arms, soreness in your shoulders or legs, a queasy stomach, tightness in your forehead or any other bodily sensation or combination of sensations. Your mind-body connection means that feelings find expression in your body, whether experienced as good or bad. Whatever anxiety-generating event/incident you choose, it is important to feel how it is experienced in your body. Alternatively, you may find it important to focus on the anxiety that is really troubling you the most, so you can create a sense of ease as you go about your day. You may want to start with a small source of anxiety in the first place as Diana suggests.

Exploring bodily manifestations of anxiety – to achieve equanimity you have to be able to face your anxiety and the bodily manifestations that it generates, but this can be done gradually.

a painting or a tree) which itself can lock in your attention. Diana suggests that you can always use the grounding sensation itself or focus on an object (e.g. However, it is important to choose something that does not itself trigger further anxiety, stress or trauma. There are many choices for an anchor – your breath, the sounds in your room or externally, your hands resting easily on your lap.

Choosing an anchor – one of the issues with anxiety is a racing mind, so it is important to have an anchor to constantly bring your mind back to your desired focus.

When you locate an area or point that is tense, you can bring your attention to this point and consciously breathe out to releases this tension (you may need to do this a couple of times, if you are particularly uptight).

Body scan – begin a non-specific body scan by exploring wherever there is tension in your body.

This is your return point throughout the meditation.

It is important to use whatever imagery or bodily sensation is useful to enable you to feel “solid” and grounded.

The central focus of the meditation is to pay attention to the sensation of solidity provided by the ground – you can access this sensation by focusing on your feet on the floor, your body on the ground, or the bed or chair on the floor which, in turn, is linked to the earth via the foundations of your house/building. Next, adopt a comfortable posture wherever you are undertaking the meditation – on a chair, lying on the ground, sitting on the floor or lying on a bed. Grounding – starting with a couple of deep breaths, you can begin to release some of the bodily tension through your out-breath.Guided mindfulness meditation for anxietyĭiana’s approach to the guided meditation followed a number of steps: In these situations when we experience news that is traumatic, upsetting or triggering, our minds tend to move to the worst possible scenario…”What if.”, ‘How will they cope?” Diana decided to turn to mindfulness meditation as a way to manage her anxiety and disturbed mind. Starting the day with meditation is often recommended by mindfulness experts as a way to set your intentions for the day and strengthen your capacity to manage the challenges that will inevitably occur in the day ahead.ĭiana found the news disturbing and she found herself very anxious – an anxiety that she experienced physically as well as emotionally and intellectually. On the occasion she described, Diana started the day with listening to the news – a departure from her normal routine. She explained that she normally began her day meditating before anything else. The catalyst for the meditation was the anxiety she experienced listening to the news one morning before undertaking her daily meditation. Diana Winston introduced the use of mindfulness meditation to reduce anxiety in a recent guided meditation podcast through the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center (MARC), UCLA.

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