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Which comes first? Stress or anxiety? Without stress, anxiety doesn’t have a chance to take hold of you. And without intervention anxiety will keep adding stress to your life and stress will continue to feed anxiety.
How do we break this vicious cycle of stress and anxiety? Meditation!
If you are afraid you cannot meditate, don’t worry. We have easy guided meditations for you. Plus, the last meditation technique for stress and anxiety you’ll ever need!
What’s the difference between stress and anxiety?
To better understand the relationship between stress and anxiety, let’s define each.
Stress is the feeling of being overwhelmed or unable to cope with mental or emotional pressure. When we feel stressed our body produces stress hormones that trigger the flight or fight response.
Basically, as far as our body is concerned we have to run away from the stressful situation or we need to put up our dukes and fight for our life. Although helpful in a life-threatening situation, this is no way to live. And it’s both physically and emotionally exhausting.
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
It’s easy to see that repeated stress leads to anxiety.
Since we cannot avoid stress completely, we need a powerful, effective tool to help manage both.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Meditation
When it comes to generalized anxiety disorder, meditation can be a big help. What is generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)? GAD is marked by excessive, exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events for no obvious reason.
Anxiety disorders like GAD take a massive toll on mental health and the ability to live a meaningful life. Clearly, stress unchecked can have profound negative impacts on our well-being.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MSBR) is a fairly popular technique for dealing with stress and anxiety issues. A technique you may not have heard of yet, SKY Breath Meditation, definitively outperformed MBSR in a Yale study. Following the SKY sessions, students reported improvements in six areas of well-being: depression, stress, mental health, mindfulness, positive affect, and social connectedness. While MBSR, which relies heavily on mindfulness techniques, resulted in no reported improvements.
Meditation for anxiety and stress relief
Meditation helps with both stress and anxiety. And it’s easy to use! I promise!
Here are the 3 best meditation programs for managing stress and anxiety:
Guided meditation. This is probably one of the most well-known methods. Temporary relief happens in mere minutes. We have included four guided meditations throughout this post for you to get started.
Mantra meditation. Sahaj Samadhi Meditation is an effortless meditation practice that you use for 20 minutes twice a day. Relief is usually gradual with long-term benefits.
Breath-based meditation. SKY Breath Meditation has helped millions of people find their calm by breathing in specific patterns for just 10 minutes a day. Participants report immediate benefits that are also experienced long-term.
Practicing meditation is easy peasy (sorta)
I promised that meditation is easy to use for stress and anxiety relief. And it is. But there is a catch, as well very specific instructions on how to meditate that you will need to know.
First, the catch so to speak. You have to practice meditation daily. You cannot poke it with a stick one day and not the next. Imagine a ferocious tiger that is ready to pounce on you. If you poke it with a big stick like meditation the tiger backs off. But if you put the stick down, the tiger will come after you. That tiger will eat you alive unless your stick is a meditation practice you do every day.
Now for the how-to meditate instructions. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding meditation. The biggest misconception is that you should use a lot of effort to try to get rid of thoughts. This will not only keep you from a relaxing meditation session but it will likely add to your anxiety! Why? Because you cannot get rid of thoughts by trying not to think. It’s a simple law of the mind— what you resist, persists.
Don’t worry about your mind wandering. Breathing exercises done right before your meditation will help with quieting the mind so your thoughts are not so bothersome.
Tip for how to stop panic attacks
Obviously preventing a panic attack is preferable, and is possible with a daily routine of meditation. But what can you do if anxiety triggers a panic attack? BREATHE. Try a few moments of deep breaths. Breath can make all the difference simply because breath is in the present moment. While anxiety is about worry and what will happen in the future.
Try the most simple breathing exercise on the planet. It’s called straw breath. Simply observe your breath as you take a long deep breath in through your nose and slowly exhale through the mouth as if you have an invisible straw in your mouth. Do this for 3-5 minutes and you will find panic turning into relaxation. This technique is highly effective and can even lower blood pressure.
You can also read about a 5-minute meditation using breath awareness here.
If you think you have a panic disorder, please seek treatment from your health care professional.
Guided meditation to stop overthinking
Are anxious thoughts bombarding your mind? Here’s a guided meditation by Art of Living founder and meditation master, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Sri Sri helps you stop overthinking and start enjoying inner peace in less than 30 minutes.
Take time for yourself, hit the play button, pause all those thoughts and experience a deep state of relaxation!
Remedy negative emotions
If negative emotions and negative thoughts are getting the best of you, try this daily meditation for positivity led by Sri Sri. This 22-minute meditation will make a difference in your everyday life.
Mindfulness meditation for anxiety
Sit back and relax as Sri Sri guides you through this easy 10-minute mindfulness-based stress reduction meditation resulting in more mindfulness and less anxiety.
Reduce anxiety with meditation for acceptance
Since anxiety has a lot to do with worrying about what might or might not happen in the near or far future, acceptance can help us feel less anxious. Sri Sri leads this guided meditation for acceptance. And it’s only 6 minutes, try it out!
Anxiety and depression association
When anxiety continues over a period of time and gets too deep into you, worries about the future become more and more around the idea of “What will happen to me?” This kind of worrying leads to depression. But even depression can be overcome with meditation.
From anxiety to relief— a healing journey with SKY Breath Meditation
Check out this impressive testimonial of a SKY Breath Meditation practitioner’s healing journey.
Long-term anxiety relief is possible with SKY Breath Meditation. SKY reduces serum cortisol levels (a stress hormone) by as much as 78%! SKY also significantly reduces anxiety and depression. SKY even helps with PTSD.
SKY Breath Meditation is quite possibly the last meditation technique you will ever need! Millions worldwide think so!
You can learn more about SKY Breath Meditation by attending a free breath and meditation online session. Just click on the image below to choose your day and time and start your journey to inner peace now.
