In the early to mid-1970’s, Dr. Herbert Benson, Harvard Medical School professor of mind/body medicine, founder of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, writes in his book, The Relaxation Response, about a simple practice of counteracting the flight-or-flight response. The Relaxation Response practice in the book outlines nine steps, but the essential elements are the use of a mantra and passive attitude.
By the mid-1980’s, Dr. Benson’s book was the number one best-seller recommended by psychologists to patients. This tells us something powerful about stress and its related ills–we can combat it using simple practices. While Dr. Benson promoted transcendental meditation (or, TM) in his book, there are many types of meditation practices to reduce stress and anxiety available today. As we start National Stress Awareness Month, let’s discuss how meditation can help diffuse stress and anxiety for greater health and productivity.
Does Meditation Reduce Stress and Anxiety? | Meditation Exercises for Reducing Stress and Anxiety
Curiously, Dr. Benson, when discussing The Relaxation Response, states that his work is not claiming any new insight into meditation exercises for reducing stress and anxiety. He is purely confirming the practices known for millennia with modern scientific research.
While you might think meditation would be known and practiced throughout the United States, it is still far from practiced by the general populace, notwithstanding the vast amount of research bearing forth its benefits. As Dr. James Lake writes in the article, “Meditation Reduces Anxiety,” for Psychology Today, “Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an integrative approach pioneered by [Dr. Jon] Kabat-Zinn that has been validated as highly effective for reducing the physical, emotional and mental consequences of chronic stress.” Further, he says,
Research findings show that the regular practice of mindfulness meditation, in which the individual practices detached self-observation, significantly reduces generalized anxiety and other anxiety symptoms. Almost 100% of individuals who started a 10-week MBSR program successfully completed it, and the majority reported significantly decreased physical and emotional distress, improved quality of life, a greater sense of general well-being, increased optimism and increased feelings of control.
Meditation works well to reduce stress and anxiety, and all it takes are a few, easy skills and a willingness to try consistently.
How Do I Meditate to Reduce Stress and Anxiety? | Meditation Exercises for Reducing Stress and Anxiety
A most important step in reducing stress and anxiety is to become aware when you are experiencing either emotion. It’s all too easy in our workaday, hyperactive worlds that emotions and our responses are suppressed or ignored in furtherance of short-term productivity gains. Of course, these lead to long-term productivity losses when stress and anxiety build up, coming back to haunt us. One frequent recommendation is to keep a journal where you can note briefly the triggers throughout your weeks when you feel stress and anxiety. Over the course of a few weeks, you start to learn when stress and anxiety are happening.
Next, you can determine when you can meditate to buffer yourself and restore your equilibrium from these stress- and anxiety-inducing events. This is determined by how much time you make to meditate daily or weekly, and what types of meditation practices you choose to try.
While there are a wide variety of meditation exercises for reducing stress and anxiety stemming from religious antiquity in the Eastern World, for your purposes, there are three main categories of meditation today: physical postures to control attention, mindfulness, and mind-silencing (or known also as Sahaja Yoga Meditation). What meditation practices you choose ultimately is based on its effectiveness when you try them earnestly and see which is best for your circumstances and lifestyle. Of all the different meditation techniques, breathing, body-scan, loving-kindness and observing-thought meditation techniques are the most popular that people choose.
As this five-minute video describes, a basic breathing meditation practice for beginners is fairly easy to incorporate into our daily lives, even though there are more complex ways to meditate. The hard part is consistently coming back to your meditation practice.
Finally, it is important to meditate regularly to build up your mind-focusing abilities. The best way to manifest this is to build it into your daily routine. This helps you redirect your attention from stress and anxiety to reframe and choose more positive angles on any given situation. As well, you can meditate (sometimes for as little as a minute or two) in response to a stressful or anxiety-ridden event so that you can productively move forward in your day.
Additional Resources for Stress and Anxiety-Reducing Meditation | Meditation Exercises for Reducing Stress and Anxiety
Kaiser Permanente has provided some really great resources for using meditation and other breathing exercises for a variety of issues, including this great video below (explaining the paced breathing, diaphragmatic breathing and the research behind it) and these podcasts.
Meditation techniques are not the only stress and anxiety reduction tools available to you. There are Reiki, massage, yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, and many more available to you. But, meditation is one of those ancient healing practices that is undeniably powerful if used regularly.
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Returning to Dr. Benson, he is quoted as saying, “The mind and body communicate constantly. What the mind thinks, perceives, and experiences is sent from our brain to the rest of the body.” So, as important as good nutrition and sleep is to our body, so is mental and emotional hygiene to our body.