Anxiety -- "What you resist persists"

I'm working on a special series of meditations, "exercises" really, for anxiety. I'm editing one right now using deep breathing. In it, the first thing I suggest is bringing attention to the anxiety. This is quite the opposite of the usual tendency to want to run away from it. Anxiety builds in a kind of vicious cycle. Anxiety is an expression of fear, and part of what creates it is the fear of the anxiety itself. We resist the anxiety, try to run away from it, and that resistance does indeed cause it to persist. Anxiety, like any other feeling state, comes and goes. Feelings come and go like the weather, but when we get involved in them either through resisting them or ruminating about them, they tend to be prolonged. Let go of the resistance, and the feelings can "pass through".

This is only one small piece of the approach I am using for anxiety, but it is an important one. I'll write more when I've finished my Anxiety Solutions project.

June 2010 Update -- It's almost exactly a year since I wrote this post and we've just finished our anxiety program. What was going to be a series of meditations evolved into a program with meditations, suggested daily exercises and journaling. You can read about it here.

Can you meditate too much?

Unfortunately I have to disagree with Mae West who said "too much of a good thing is wonderful". When it comes to meditation, as well as almost every other "good thing" in life, there can be too much. Food, water, sunshine, exercise, rest -- everything in life -- needs to be in balance. As wonderful as good as meditation may seem, too much is not wonderful at all, but may cause discomfort and interfere with our functioning. LoraC left a comment today saying that since starting meditation, she finds herself crying more easily and also has become clumsy and has been tripping and even fell. She loves the relaxation of meditation, but these things concern her. Of course, I didn't have enough information to know for sure what is happening with her, but it is certainly possible that she is meditating too much.

Too much meditation can make you "spacey" and ungrounded. It can weaken your mind-body coordination. This could be why LoraC is feeling clumsy and tripping. As for her crying more readily, it's just possible that some emotions are being released as a result of the deep relaxation in the meditation. Usually emotional releases would happen during meditation time and not create any concern. But if there starts to be a lot of release or intense emotional processing outside of meditation, it could be that too much is happening too fast. Since these things seem to have started after LoraC began "meditating in earnest", an easy way to find out if it's from meditation is to stop meditating for awhile or cut back on the meditation time or frequency. If the clumsiness and crying go away, then clearly too much meditation is the culprit and the time and frequency of meditation can be adjusted accordingly.

What is the right amount of meditation? How often and how long should you meditate? The answer is it depends. It depends on you -- your constitution, lifestyle, goals for meditation and many other factors. It also depends on the type of meditation. For most people and most meditation styles, usually once or twice a day for 15 - 30 minutes, would work well. Unless you have the personal guidance of a teacher, you will need to experiment and find out what works best for you.

If meditation is enhancing your life, you've found a good balance. If it seems to be creating problems, it may be that you are meditating too much or that you might need to be doing a different kind of meditation. LoraC might find that if she does the grounding meditation or body awareness meditation, she would feel less clumsy as these meditations can help strengthen mind-body coordination.

Enhancing Creativity Guided Meditation

We're all creative. Life is naturally creative and so are we. And yet so often our creativity seems to be stifled. There are millions of hits on Google for "creative blocks". Once you've tasted the joy of creativity flowing easily, it's extremely frustrating to hit those blocks. And if you are an artist, writer, musician or anyone whose work requires a lot of creativity, there's a sense of pressure to create that in itself can hamper the creative process. When the creative juices are flowing, it's a high. It's effortless. In fact, artists describe the creative process as one in which something simply comes through them. There's a sense that "I" didn't create this, it came on its own. It feels like a gift that comes spontaneously from a source outside ourselves. In fact, it's the bypassing of the "me" who gets involved in trying to control the creation that allows the creativity to happen. It's the "me" with all its doubts and anxiety about outcomes that becomes the block. It's the "me" who wants to control the creation that gets in the way.

This latest podcast episode is designed to disarm the me, to help you drop into the natural flow of creativity that's going on all the time in your own consciousness. Life is a flow of creativity. Our own consciousness is a flow of creativity. Ideas come, things get created naturally when we get out of the way.

Hope this meditation helps get your creative juices flowing. If you wish, you can use the meditation right before you do your creative work.  Just let go of any expectation of outcomes and enjoy the process!

Is prayer meditation? Where prayer and meditation meet.

I just read a beautiful and thought-provoking quote from Ramesh Balsekar's Net of Jewels.

"True prayer means not solicitation but communion. Prayer is communion in the same sense as that in true meditation there is neither a meditator nor anything meditated upon."

When I read it, I felt a "yes!" inside. It was one of those "that-feels-so-true-but-I-can't-say-why" moments. It seems to describe a state of oneness that could be seen as both the goal and means of both meditation and prayer. What the quote conveys to me is beyond words, and yet usually I associate prayer with words. Perhaps the deepest form of prayer is indeed beyond words. 

What do you feel? What do the words "prayer" and "meditation" mean to you? Is prayer the same as meditation?

Meditations for Stress

I recently had an email from someone under a great deal of stress asking which meditations to use to keep stress from making him sick and out of balance. Although anything that's relaxing will help relieve stress, I recommended the following podcast episodes in particular:

• Mini Relaxation Break
• Breath Awareness
• Simply Being
• Effortless Meditation
• Deep Rest
• Letting Go

I recommended these particular meditations because they don't have a specific focus or ask you to be active in any way. My sense is that they would allow for the deepest rest and therefore the most release of tension. When we are deeply relaxed, our body chemistry and muscles switch gears from the flight or fight response into a more relaxed style of functioning. The energy of the body can then go to work to release tension and recuperate.

Ultimately, though, I encourage you to try the various episodes for yourself. Try the ones whose titles and descriptions appeal most to you. That way you can see the effects of the various meditations. It just might be that a focused meditation would be most helpful with some specific types of stress. If you are grieving, for example, the Grief Meditation might be most useful.

(You can listen to our podcast on iTunes or on this page.)