Breathing away anxiety

Reduce Anxiety

Anxiety is the result of an on-going conflict, between your body – your physical feelings and emotions and your need to express them – and your mind, which thinks that the effect of expressing this need in the real world, of sharing it with others, would inevitably lead to personal disaster.

Anxiety, then, originates from experiences which, although they happened long ago, are perpetuated in the here-and-now by fixed mental attitudes and belief systems and set patterns of behaviour.

Here’s a simple procedure you can use whenever you have time to spare. You’ll find that, because all human beings share the same basic needs and feel the same range of emotions, the insight and understanding you will gain by working on yourself will help you achieve charismatic levels of authenticity in your personal and professional relations with other people.

Get yourself a quiet place where you don’t expect to be disturbed for a while. Just as long as you’re comfortable, it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting, standing, or lying down. Close your eyes, and watch your thoughts as they arise. As each word-bubble forms, let it grow, but don’t get caught up in it and carried away. Wait for the next one, and then let that go as well. Once you cease to identify yourself with the thinking processes that keep forming and bursting in your brain, you’ll notice that the space between each one gets longer. In these intervals, let yourself become aware of what’s going on in your body. Notice particularly your pattern of breathing. Don’t try to change it at first, just watch the breath going in and out. As your thought activity slows down, focus on the blank space behind your closed eyes. Keep paying attention to the rise and fall of your breath. Imagine the picture of a wave, projected on the living darkness of that screen. Synchronise the movement of the wave with your breathing. Now, let the image develop. Watch any colours that begin to appear. Is it a stormy scene? Is the sea heavy and threatening? Now, let the scene change. Imagine the waves becoming less high, and the sea becoming calmer. Does the sun come out? Does it get warmer? Try not to think about it – try to stop trying at all! – just accept whatever image floats before your inner mind’s eye.

You’ll soon begin to realise that as the picture in your imagination becomes more tranquil, a corresponding feeling of calm will start to develop in your body. The scene will automatically change to represent your mood – they are both aspects of the same internal process. You’ll notice your shoulders, neck and chest become more relaxed, and that at the same time your breathing will become deeper and slower. Also, as the body-belt of armour around your waist begins to soften, the focus of your breathing will move down from your chest into your abdomen.

The internal boundary between the upper and lower halves of your body is your diaphragm. When you breathe in, it flattens downwards; when you breathe out it resumes its original, domed shape. Once you transfer the main focus of your breathing pattern down from your rib-cage into your belly, you will experience yourself quite differently. The area above the diaphragm, with its direct connection to the surrounding atmosphere, has the vital task of ensuring that the body has enough oxygen to maintain all its necessary functions. Thinking, and its physical expression, speech, is located in that region, so inevitably have become associated with it.

The top half of the body, then, is connected with the world and concerned with keeping tabs on what’s going on outside you. The bottom half of the body, below the diaphragm, remains completely in the dark; entirely closed off from the outside world. It has no sense of sight, smell, hearing, or taste. All it can do, is to feel. When you cut yourself off from thought and begin to relax, your breathing will become abdominal. As more energy becomes available to that region, you will develop the ability to get in touch with it, with what’s going on deep inside you. In other words, with your gut feelings. In the absence of thought, not only will you experience these long-denied emotions; you’ll also visualise the long-forgotten images that were originally associated with them.

As you gain more practice in this technique, you will become increasingly aware of the permanent areas of physical tension that exist in your body, both above and below the belt. As the emotional images escape from their muscular prisons, you can record your recollections of them into a private day-dream diary, after each session. Then, you can put time aside to think about their hidden meaning, as part of your creative on-going programme of personal and professional development.

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