Is it possible to overcome anxiety with the help of Eastern practices?

When you come to a psychologist with a complaint of anxiety, he usually recommends additional forms of activity, among other tasks, that will help restore mental balance. As a teacher of Eastern practices, I can analyze this particular direction: does it help to cope with anxiety and fear? And what exactly should we do to calm down?

Meditation

This is a standard recommendation for anyone dealing with an anxiety disorder or phobia. Meditation balances the state of mind, slows down, calms the person and makes him more aware. However, it can have a negative effect on people with an anxiety disorder.

Anxious people are most often dynamic, fast and agile. How mobile their mind and emotions are, their movements and gestures are just as fast. Therefore, for them to sit down and sit still for fifteen, yes even five minutes, is a real torture. They may try very hard to follow their therapist’s advice and meditate, but after a couple of days they come back to the appointment and state: “I can’t! That’s horrible!”

For such people, this is unnatural: as soon as they sit down and close their eyes, disturbing thoughts overwhelm them, and the situation only gets worse. What to do then? Don’t force yourself! Later we will tell you how you can gradually make meditation acceptable at first, and then habitual – and bearing a healing effect.

Yoga with an emphasis on strength training

For many, these classes can be a great solution. Due to physical activity, you seem to “transfer” tension from the emotional sphere to the muscles. Delegate it to the body, not the mind. The downside of this practice is that it will not be easy for people without physical fitness or with injuries to immediately get into the rhythm: they will have to start from the basics.

Sports loads with an emphasis on balance

Oriental practices develop balance, and this can be very beneficial, as a balanced body provides peace to the mind. True, if you want great results, then you need to not only perform balance exercises, but also apply them to some more complex types of activity – for example, surfing.

Why is this sport so popular among young and successful businessmen? Because they work like hell and are in constant stress because of the thought of work. But if you try to think about working on the board, you are guaranteed to fall off it! The sea, and even more so the ocean, does not forgive the lack of concentration: either you are worried, or you mentally relax, find balance with your body and surf – there is no third way.

This method is almost perfect in the fight against anxiety, except for one factor: airfare and living by the ocean. However, in large cities you can find schools where they teach surfing, and try to “ride” an artificial wave in the pool.

Meditation in motion

Remember we talked about making meditation acceptable even to those who can’t sit still for long periods of time? For this, in Eastern practices there are sets of exercises that are done in a meditative state. That is, you move and do exercises, but the concentration of attention at the same time corresponds to the point that is maintained during meditation practices.

For example, in qigong for the spine Sing Shen Juang, a person, while doing exercises, immerses himself with neutral attention in the active points located on the spine. Not only do you need to find them with attention, for example, by feeling the fourth thoracic vertebra, you should also track what sensations appear during the exercise and how they change.

As with surfing, when you exercise, you are either anxious or you are practicing. Such meditation in motion gradually retrains the mind, slows down endlessly jumping thoughts, makes the state more stable and much less anxious. As a person gets used to his new state of motion, ordinary sitting meditation becomes more understandable and accessible to him.