Help for Anxiety – Try this Breathing Meditation Technique
If anxiety and stress are causing you to be bent out of shape, maybe it’s time you discovered the transforming power of meditation. To meditate simply means to think, to intend or plan.
When we focus our thinking on problems, scarcity, and the anxiety that we feel, our minds are filled with stress. We get stuck and can’t move forward to live the life that our Creator intended us to live. We are bent out of shape, like our pretzel friends.
Is Anxiety Making you be Bent out of Shape? Try this Breathing Meditation
If you are feeling stressed right now, stop for a moment and use the following meditation technique focusing on breathing. Focusing on your breathing will bring you into the present moment and clear anxious thoughts.
Breathing Meditation Technique to Help Anxiety
- Free yourself from distractions
- Find a chair where you can sit up straight
- Close your eyes
- Take in a deep breath through your nose and mentally count to 10 as you inhale. Hold just briefly and exhale slowly through your mouth to a count of 10 – Pause after each breath
- Repeat this five times
- Sit quietly for a moment before returning to your day
It is easy to allow the stressors of life to consume us. Our culture is filled with noise. If we have allowed other thoughts and voices to control us, we have conditioned our minds to become anxious and fearful.
The Apostle Paul gives us a prescription for living and how to meditate or think when he says, “Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds. Whatsoever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praise worthy – think about such things.”
Learning to meditate, or to think on pure things will help you to not get bent out of shape. You’ll also find a clear direction for your life.
As my choir director always says, “Blessed are the flexible, for they will bend and not break.”
Carve out time to be still, even if it is doing this simple breathing meditation technique each day. You will begin to see a difference in your life and you’ll learn how to help anxiety go away as you replace anxious thoughts with peaceful thoughts.
If you know someone who could use help to be less anxious, please share this post.
If you want to go further into a meditation practice, I’ve created a simple meditation CD to guide you focusing on Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” There is a short version under 10 minutes and a longer version under 15 minutes. There is also 15 minutes of soothing meditation music to calm you any time throughout your day.
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About Jackie Trottmann
Jackie is a writer, author and awareness advocate. Her passion is inspiring others to listen to the still small voice inside of them in order to focus, follow and fulfill their dreams professionally, physically and spiritually. Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+