Know How Mindfulness and Meditation Can Reset Your Anxiety Meter
Today's world is full of competition and rush, be it for work deadlines or fulfilling personal life responsibilities. In such a scenario, feeling anxious can be normal. While most people feel anxious at some point in their lives, chronic anxiety can become a matter of concern.
If you are constantly worried and anxious, seeking professional help can be quite helpful. This is also when meditation and mindfulness come as a powerful tool against anxiety. Let's understand how these two tools can help you balance back your life!
What is anxiety?
Anxiety can be seen as an obvious response of your body to stress. You may feel worried about the future and fear what's about to come. Such a feeling is common to most people. You may feel anxious before an exam, a racing heartbeat before the race starts, and so on. However, if the feeling persists, it becomes a matter of concern.
Prolonged anxiety impacts not only your mental health but also your physical well-being like high blood pressure among others. It can affect your ability to do basic daily life tasks and interfere with your work, sleep, and almost every aspect of your life. So, it is quite important to address anxiety in its early stages to avoid long-term effects. In this direction, most professionals recommend meditation and mindfulness. It helps you calm down your mind and relax. Let's understand how it can help you.
Understanding mindfulness
Mindfulness simply refers to the practice of being aware of the present. It means acknowledging and accepting the present and happenings around us. Instead of getting into spirals of thoughts, mindfulness preaches being attentive to the present rather than being over reactive.
It is about recognizing when your mind slides into anxious thoughts and breaking things' cycle to be in the present. Someone who is experiencing anxiety may initially find it difficult to follow mindfulness. However, over time, consistent effort can definitely lead to better mental health.
Understanding meditation
Mediation in India has been practiced since ancient times. It is a practice where you train your mind to achieve mental clarity, calmness, and also mindfulness. Meditating consistently improves focus, soothes your mind, reduces anxiety, and improves your overall physical and mental well-being.
Different people may have different ways of meditating. Some may meditate on their own, while some may prefer guided meditation, where a teacher guides the process by explaining a visual.
Calming your nervous system
Practicing mindfulness and meditation reduces the fight-or-flight response that anxiety triggers in you. Rather, the rest-and-digest is activated, which helps you calm down.
Reducing overthinking
Overthinking can lead to a pile of thoughts that may actually never happen. To cut on these thoughts, mindfulness helps. It brings you to the present and focuses without being judgemental.
Stress management
Consistent meditation strengthens the prefrontal cortex of the brain that's responsible for managing emotions and stress. Thus, you can better control your anxiety.
Sleeping becomes easier
One of the effects of anxiety is it disrupts your sleep cycle. Mediation helps your body relax and calm down so that sleeping becomes easier. A good sleep can help you relax and recover gradually.