Belly breathing and anxiety questions

[Rara]

Rara....

What did you do before you go to bed? You didn't read some thing or stay on the internet for a long time before you go to sleep, did you....???

Hello! No, I mean, I live with my partner and if anything, I'm having to tell her to get off her smart phone before bed!

 

My career uses a lot of internet, but I try my best to avoid it and only read during the day. We often watch some TV together to wind down in evenings. Sometimes it's harder if I have things on my mind, it just depends what is happening in life on each day.

 

It probably doesn't help that sometimes I work days, sometimes nights (last week I was on night shoots finishing at 5am, this week, I was starting at 7am)

 

Looking at that, it says a lot. I do my best with what I've got, I guess...

[dawei]

Looking at that, it says a lot. I do my best with what I've got, I guess...

 

You may need to look at your energy cycle... and I mean in a really simple way... Log your impressions of your energy feeling throughout the day. It may simply be that you have excess energy at times when you need to release it; etc. So the energy does not have a place to flow when it really needs to, and there is excess when you don't need it.

 

One thing you might gain out of this is being mindful of your energy levels-high and low-and how your current schedule is not conducive to your life style. Something as simple as a walk in the morning, or a salt bath at night might help.

 

I am feeling this is about your life style vs energy level... but you will ultimately be able to know this better than anyone else.

[thelerner]

Music and biaural recordings are a meditative crutch, in time you have to leave them. You may want to try finding a piece of meditative music and meditate to it. The extra input can often relax the mind or give it something to chew on. Ultimately you have to drop it, but for now it might be just the ticket.

 

When anxious I like to listen to Stin's Evening Inventory meditation, a short 15 minute hypnotic session where you face your anxiety instead of covering it up, (google it) then music maybe rain or one of a dozen musical pieces that entrance me. I have a couple of such playlists on my ipod. Hypnotic piece followed by soothing music can put me under and greatly relax mind and body. You can find selections of both as free podcasts on Itunes. Though I've noticed some of favorite ones have gone commercial.

[Mark Foote]

Rara, I think intention is the difficulty. There's really only one effective way to let go of intention that I know of, and that's to relax and be where I am.

 

The sense of location moves and shifts with sense contact; it's the heart-mind of classical literature. In the freedom of the heart-mind to move and shift as though in open space, waking up and falling asleep takes place.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Mark Foote

[silent thunder]

when my mind starts churning in anxiety or gains inertia that makes me uncomfortable...

I use mantra.

 

works great, every time.

[Rara]

 

You may need to look at your energy cycle... and I mean in a really simple way... Log your impressions of your energy feeling throughout the day. It may simply be that you have excess energy at times when you need to release it; etc. So the energy does not have a place to flow when it really needs to, and there is excess when you don't need it.

 

One thing you might gain out of this is being mindful of your energy levels-high and low-and how your current schedule is not conducive to your life style. Something as simple as a walk in the morning, or a salt bath at night might help.

 

I am feeling this is about your life style vs energy level... but you will ultimately be able to know this better than anyone else.

Sounds about right One thing I do know is that I naturally struggle with energy in the morning but always seem to get excited 7pm onwards. I will keep a closer eye on it, thanks.

[Rara]

when my mind starts churning in anxiety or gains inertia that makes me uncomfortable...

I use mantra.

 

works great, every time.

Over time, I'm inclined to agree, but I stopped mantra and affirmations a long time ago, so I'm sure my persistence with this will help again.

 

Any mindfulness or mantra gets rudely interrupted, loudly, by my thoughts. Last night was bad. I couldn't get to sleep until 2:30/3am, and awoke at 6. However, this time I did manage to get back to sleep a lot quicker than the previous night So slight improvement. Bit by bit, I'm confident this phase will pass sooner rather than later.

[Rara]

Update: Last night, slept 12:30-8!

 

Nothing has changed in my life over the last week, but now I feel much better for no obvious reason.

 

The meditations and affirmations must be doing something behind the scenes.

[freeform]

I feel slightly uneasy adding more to the already large amount of decent advice and opinions. But just a few tips.

 

Your heart is beating harder for a number of reasons - the main ones are that

a) your breathing is not smooth and fluid enough just yet

b ) you're focusing too hard and too narrowly

c) you're not focusing on the right point.

 

The fundamentals are always very important, and you really can't go wrong in doing things one step at a time.

 

Just observing your breath and not intentionally changing it in any way is a great first step. Your mind will certainly interfere, and you just notice that happening with a smile and then back to focusing on your breathing.

 

Now the way you focus is important - it's something I keep noticing with people (including myself!). There's usually an unhelpful eagerness to get the most from limited amount of time for practice... Along with that we spend 80% of our time focusing sharply (and the rest of the time almost unconscious - whether in front of the telly or your meal)... As a result we tend to approach our practice in the same way. But a sharp, focused beam of awareness causes an unnatural movement and concentration of qi. This leads to blockages, stagnation, heat etc. (including symptoms like the irregular heart beat) The key with most practices is to develop a soft, diffuse, internally directed quality to your attention.

 

To illustrate this. Right now after reading this sentence, pick a spot at a distance from you (on the wall or whatever) slightly above your eyeline and for just 30 to 45 seconds, focus strongly and unwaveringly on that spot only. Now check in with yourself, how do you feel?

 

Next, you will look at the same spot, and without moving your eyes, notice something to the very left edge of your peripheral vision, then keeping your eyes on that original spot, notice something in the very right of your peripheral vision. Carry on keeping your eyes at the original spot, whilst at the same time simultaneously attending to the very left and very right of your periphery. You'll notice as your mind grapples with it for a few moments, but at a certain point you'll settle right into it. Do that for a couple of minutes now. How do you feel? Notice the differences?

 

That short technique got you into a broad external mode of attending. When practicing (almost) any form of cultivation, you should use the same quality of attention, but direct it internally - it's actually easier to do so internally once you get the taste of it, as its not based on seeing but on feeling and is even more effortless.

 

PS - did you notice whether your mind calmed down and stopped interrupting more whilst you tried that?

Edited December 5, 2014 by freeform

[Rara]

I feel slightly uneasy adding more to the already large amount of decent advice and opinions. But just a few tips.

 

Your heart is beating harder for a number of reasons - the main ones are that

a) your breathing is not smooth and fluid enough just yet

b ) you're focusing too hard and too narrowly

c) you're not focusing on the right point.

 

The fundamentals are always very important, and you really can't go wrong in doing things one step at a time.

 

Just observing your breath and not intentionally changing it in any way is a great first step. Your mind will certainly interfere, and you just notice that happening with a smile and then back to focusing on your breathing.

 

Now the way you focus is important - it's something I keep noticing with people (including myself!). There's usually an unhelpful eagerness to get the most from limited amount of time for practice... Along with that we spend 80% of our time focusing sharply (and the rest of the time almost unconscious - whether in front of the telly or your meal)... As a result we tend to approach our practice in the same way. But a sharp, focused beam of awareness causes an unnatural movement and concentration of qi. This leads to blockages, stagnation, heat etc. (including symptoms like the irregular heart beat) The key with most practices is to develop a soft, diffuse, internally directed quality to your attention.

 

To illustrate this. Right now after reading this sentence, pick a spot at a distance from you (on the wall or whatever) slightly above your eyeline and for just 30 to 45 seconds, focus strongly and unwaveringly on that spot only. Now check in with yourself, how do you feel?

 

Next, you will look at the same spot, and without moving your eyes, notice something to the very left edge of your peripheral vision, then keeping your eyes on that original spot, notice something in the very right of your peripheral vision. Carry on keeping your eyes at the original spot, whilst at the same time simultaneously attending to the very left and very right of your periphery. You'll notice as your mind grapples with it for a few moments, but at a certain point you'll settle right into it. Do that for a couple of minutes now. How do you feel? Notice the differences?

 

That short technique got you into a broad external mode of attending. When practicing (almost) any form of cultivation, you should use the same quality of attention, but direct it internally - it's actually easier to do so internally once you get the taste of it, as its not based on seeing but on feeling and is even more effortless.

 

PS - did you notice whether your mind calmed down and stopped interrupting more whilst you tried that?

Thank you. This was a very useful exercise, and your description on how to go about focusing is probably the best I've ever seen!

[freeform]

I'm glad it made sense

 

In fact the Yi, or intention/focus is the spiritual manifestation of your spleen / the earth element. Improving the quality of your focus over time, will effortlessly stop over-thinking, worry and mental anxiety.

 

Further to that, the earth element is classically understood to be at the centre of the other spiritual elements, stabilising them and 'holding' them... having a clear, ungrasping, soft, freeflowing awareness will help it to bring the other elements into balance.

Edited December 6, 2014 by freeform

[Rara]

I'm glad it made sense

 

In fact the Yi, or intention/focus is the spiritual manifestation of your spleen / the earth element. Improving the quality of your focus over time, will effortlessly stop over-thinking, worry and mental anxiety.

 

Further to that, the earth element is classically understood to be at the centre of the other spiritual elements, stabilising them and 'holding' them... having a clear, ungrasping, soft, freeflowing awareness will help it to bring the other elements into balance.

 

Would I be right in descibing this as a sort of "focusing using peripherals?"

 

i.e Having a central focal point, like the breath while not shutting off feeling/listening to the rest of the body?

 

What I think you are saying, is that I could have been doing a meditative equivalent of fixing my eyes to the TV screen trying desparately to ingnore the background noise...

 

That appears to be the case if I've been under some stress. This makes a lot of sense...and it's like a feedback loop when it gets going. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Or in this case, the intense focus (i.e on strategic career moves, family affairs etc) or the anxiety? They seem to feed each other, if I'm anxious or have adrenaline, then the tunnel vision arrives...and if I'm too much in the tunnel, it's hard to escape with the mind going 100 mph. The mind just wants to say "stop trying to drown me out while I'm focusing" and becomes anxious because it isn't getting its own way (desire?)

[Rara]

Wow. I think I've had a "eureka!" moment! Haha.

 

What causes urgency? Panic? Adrenaline? Anxiety? Anger? Paranioa?

 

Being too immersed in the moment. Tunnel vision. Works just fine if you're "winning" your game of football, but we can all get over-excited if we're not careful. And if we're too focused on something negative, we can end up with the above list. Like focusing on your partner intensely to make sure she doesn't cheat...only to find that because you're in the tunnel, it creates the anxiety and paranioa that she's cheating. Meanwhile, she's shopping with girlfriends then popping to her mum's for a cup of tea.

 

Interesting. Contemplation is a big part of meditation, and in times of stress, I seem to forget this and try too hard to find the breath.

 

Trying too hard. After all, I'm absolutey fine when under no stress, so naturally relaxed. I guess it's time for some fine-tuning during this current period of change! If there's a lot on my mind, acknowledge it. Focus on my breath and listen to the noise that is yelling at me in the mind. Don't react, just listen.

 

So this "pressure" that I'm under is a good test for me, and good practice for my cultivation Keep it simple I guess. Just keep calm and carry on. Lol.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Rara

[Mark Foote]

"I have a practice that I’d like to offer...

 

The practice I have in mind is a practice that everybody is already familiar with, even if they don’t think of it as a practice. What I’m referring to is waking up in the morning, or falling asleep at night; if you’ve ever had a hard time waking up or falling asleep, then you know that there can indeed be a practice! In my experience, the practice is the same, whether I am waking up or falling asleep: when I realize my physical sense of location in space, and realize it as it occurs from one moment to the next, then I wake up or fall asleep as appropriate.

 

This practice is useful, when I wake up in the middle of the night and need to go back to sleep, or when I want to feel more physically alive in the morning. This practice is also useful when I want to feel my connection to everything around me, because my sense of place registers the contact of my awareness with each thing, as contact occurs.

 

Just before I fall asleep, my awareness can move very readily, and my sense of where I am tends to move with it. This is also true when I am waking up, although it can be harder to recognize (I tend to live through my eyes in the daytime, and associate my sense of place with them). When my awareness shifts readily, I realize that my ability to feel my location in space is made possible in part by the freedom of my awareness to move."

 

That's my write; there's a bit more if you're interested, here.

[Aetherous]

Another idea I've recently been playing with, myself (due to having anxiety): take a solid 10 minutes at least, and just sit there. No need to try and do anything for the meditation method. Doing is what happens all day and involves the self, which generates anxiety...so take a break. Or as the six nails of Tilopa says, "relax right now and rest".

Rest the self. Rest the doing.

It's been helping me lately! Especially to do it before starting any other practices.

[freeform]

Trying to block out the background, yes. Trying too hard - yes.

 

Imagine your attention is a torch (flashlight for some) - and imagine you're in a dark room (reality). You've been used to having your torch focused into a tight beam - so when you look around the room you see things individually and out of context. When you have a problem, you focus the beam onto the problem and because the room is dark, that is all you see, and your consciousness is fully enveloped in this problem.

 

What I'm suggesting is to adjust the beam, until it becomes almost like a bare lightbulb, bathing the entire room with a soft glow - not lighting any part of it more than the rest. Now when you notice a problem, you're also able to notice everything that is not a problem, and possibly even something that's a solution.

 

The tight beam isn't.a bad thing and the even glow a good thing. Not at all. It's just in our society we're told that we should have a tight beam all the time. The tight beam, historically, was used in situations like hunting - stalking pray, focusing on the pray and excluding everything else. It gets your adrenals going, it gets your nervous system ready to go catch that prey. However historically we didn't hunt for 90% of the time... For 90% of the time we were the gentle soft glow, that gets us relaxed, in tune with everything and the nervous system is not on alert. In modern society we're asked to be in that hunting state for 90% of the time instead. And that's what (I believe) is the greatest contributor what we call stress.

 

Doing most practices requires us to get into that even soft glow state first. Eventually as you develop more and more, that soft glow will be replaced by a blazing sun, where everything is under intense, bright focus at the same time, with the benefits that the tight beam brings, but without the negatives of over identification, or effortfullness. But that's not so important right now

Edited December 8, 2014 by freeform

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

I have been all the way to the end of the path you are talking about,

probably due to different causes though (wink).

I have an article coming out in In Recovery magazine this winter on using meditation to help deal with ptsd symptoms.

if you have serious anxiety, you ought to take a look at the article.

 

here are my 2c in a very short sense.

 

if you are dealing with anxiety, ptsd, depression, addiction, panic attacks, or just feeling extremely crappy for whatever reason,

you need to be doing a few things

first:

if you eat sugar and drink coffee, or eat lots of chocolate, or drink too much alcohol, slow down for a while.

you need to cut sugar right out until you basically feel good every day, caffeine too. alcohol is also pretty much a no go for anxiety sufferers (there are just so many good resaons for this). all of these drugs have a very serious effect on the brain and central nervous system. when i was suffering the most, i was also frequently taking coffee with lots of sugar in order to get myself high enough to avoid the onset of the crazies. the problem was that the drop after the high brought the crazies on even worse. all that stuff needs to be cut out for a while.

secondly: don't meditate using fire practices. you need to be focusing on achieving the rest state.

this means that when you breathe to the dantian you ought ot be focusing on "breathing like a child."

make your breath as soft and natural as possible. don't try to take it anywhere. just stay there breathing.

you can also try excercises where you let the gravity feeling pull you down into a more relaxed posture.

best to start with the dantian and move outward to the extremities.

thirdly: you need to cut down stimulation a bit. no tv, chill on the internet a bit too. don't read too much of what other people have to say, especially on message boards (so you can stop looking at my post now lol).

avoid angry people is what I'm trying to say.

if you have any particularly extreme habits, start ot try to reign them in a bit.

 

when you are dealing with your family, remember that you are only strong enough to take any problems that may emerge in small doses. you need to know how to bail out of bad situations if need be.

 

I can't go into exact detail about what happened to me, it would take too much time,

but here is the jist of the thing:

from 20-26 years old I was crazy messed up, was boarderline schizo, and totally had a lot of psychic trauma due to an accident when i was 19. I started training qigong and gongfu when i was twenty and by the time I was 27 I was well on my way to living a happy, pain free life. at that time i quit taking meds, started travelling in asia, and really developing.

I'm now 32 and completely emotionally healthy except when i have to deal with the culture shock of my Chinese fiance (LOL here). It probably took at least ten years from start to finish to get through the trauama, but with a lot of work and serious caring for myself and others, I was able to pull through.

you will too.

 

treating yourself with compassion is the first step to treating others so.

[Rara]

I have been all the way to the end of the path you are talking about,

probably due to different causes though (wink).

I have an article coming out in In Recovery magazine this winter on using meditation to help deal with ptsd symptoms.

if you have serious anxiety, you ought to take a look at the article.

 

here are my 2c in a very short sense.

 

if you are dealing with anxiety, ptsd, depression, addiction, panic attacks, or just feeling extremely crappy for whatever reason,

you need to be doing a few things

first:

if you eat sugar and drink coffee, or eat lots of chocolate, or drink too much alcohol, slow down for a while.

you need to cut sugar right out until you basically feel good every day, caffeine too. alcohol is also pretty much a no go for anxiety sufferers (there are just so many good resaons for this). all of these drugs have a very serious effect on the brain and central nervous system. when i was suffering the most, i was also frequently taking coffee with lots of sugar in order to get myself high enough to avoid the onset of the crazies. the problem was that the drop after the high brought the crazies on even worse. all that stuff needs to be cut out for a while.

secondly: don't meditate using fire practices. you need to be focusing on achieving the rest state.

this means that when you breathe to the dantian you ought ot be focusing on "breathing like a child."

make your breath as soft and natural as possible. don't try to take it anywhere. just stay there breathing.

you can also try excercises where you let the gravity feeling pull you down into a more relaxed posture.

best to start with the dantian and move outward to the extremities.

thirdly: you need to cut down stimulation a bit. no tv, chill on the internet a bit too. don't read too much of what other people have to say, especially on message boards (so you can stop looking at my post now lol).

avoid angry people is what I'm trying to say.

if you have any particularly extreme habits, start ot try to reign them in a bit.

 

when you are dealing with your family, remember that you are only strong enough to take any problems that may emerge in small doses. you need to know how to bail out of bad situations if need be.

 

I can't go into exact detail about what happened to me, it would take too much time,

but here is the jist of the thing:

from 20-26 years old I was crazy messed up, was boarderline schizo, and totally had a lot of psychic trauma due to an accident when i was 19. I started training qigong and gongfu when i was twenty and by the time I was 27 I was well on my way to living a happy, pain free life. at that time i quit taking meds, started travelling in asia, and really developing.

I'm now 32 and completely emotionally healthy except when i have to deal with the culture shock of my Chinese fiance (LOL here). It probably took at least ten years from start to finish to get through the trauama, but with a lot of work and serious caring for myself and others, I was able to pull through.

you will too.

 

treating yourself with compassion is the first step to treating others so.

Thank you I've been quite good, cutting down on my exposure to negative/angry people (forums, media), handling family in small doses haha.

 

Generally, I don't drink much alcohol and quit coffee years and years ago...that said, I notice I have broken that rule recently and had the "odd one".

 

Sugar. Ok, guilty haha. I noticed how playing high intensity computer games was not doing me any favours at night so am mindful of that. Intense career, then intense "down time" is no good.

 

Anyway, two nights ago, I awoke at half 2! I didn't get back to sleep but just breathed calmly, despite all sorts if anxieties flying around, then I got up at half 6 and did a full day of work. Last night, I managed to sit down, watch wrestling on TV with a friend, have a laugh, go to bed at 10, fall asleep at 11 and get 7 hours!

 

Laughter is a great medicine.

 

Where can I find your article?

Edited December 9, 2014 by Rara