Anxiety can cause an imbalance in your life whereby all of the mental worry creates a top-heavy sensation. Your entire focus is moved from the center of your body to your head.
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by showing how easily the body can lose its sense of center. A student is asked to come to the front of the group and stand with his legs apart. The teacher then asks him to focus on a personal worry or concern. Once the student is fixated on the worry, the teacher quietly moves to the student’s side and tells him he’s going to attempt to push over the student. The teacher pushes on the student’s shoulder and topples the student with relative ease. The same student is then asked to forget the worry and focus his attention in his body. The teacher once again tries to topple the student, but he finds much more resistance than before. The student is grounded firmly in place. This demonstration shows how important it is to feel grounded and centered in the present moment awareness of your body and not be continuously caught in mental activity.
I’m going to teach you two simple visualizations. The purpose of the visualizations is to enable you to quickly clear mental stress and tension. Use them when you feel your mind is racing with anxious thoughts.
The visualization process, when practiced frequently, is very effective for
eliminating deep-seated mental anxieties or intrusive thoughts. To gain maximum benefit, carry out the exercises for longer than ten minutes at a time, as anything shorter will not bring noticeable results. There’s no right or wrong way to conduct the visualizations. Be intuitive, and don’t feel that you’re unable to do it if you’re not very good at mental imagery. As long as your attention is on the exercise, you’ll gain some benefit. It’s best to do this in a quiet place where you won’t be
disturbed. Then, when you’re more practiced, you’ll be able to get the same
positive results in a busier environment, such as the workplace. You should notice a sensation of released calm in your mind and body after each visualization is
complete.
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1st Visualization to end unwanted anxious thoughts
Either sitting or standing, close your eyes and move your attention to your breath. To become aware of your breathing, place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your stomach. Take a breath, and let your stomach swell forward as you breathe in and fall back gently as you breathe out. (See the breathing exercise for a full understanding of this breathing technique.)
Continue the abdominal breathing for about five minutes.
Now move your attention to your feet. Try to really feel your feet. See if you can feel each toe. Picture the base of your feet, and visualize roots slowly growing out through your soles and down into the earth. The roots grow with a quickening pace and reach deep into the soil of the earth. You’re now rooted firmly to the earth and feel stable, like a large oak or redwood tree. Imagine what it would feel like if this large tree were swaying gently in the wind. Stay with this feeling of grounded safety and security for a few moments.
Once you’ve created a strong feeling or impression of being grounded like a tree, visualize a cloud of bright light forming way above you. A bolt of lightning from the luminous cloud hits the crown of your head, and that ignites a band of bright white light that slowly descends from your head all the way down your body, over your legs, and out past your toes. As the band of light passes over you, feel it clearing your mental state. It illuminates your mind and clears any rubbish that you may have been thinking about. Repeat this image four or five times until you feel a sense of clearing and release through your feet.
In finishing, see yourself standing under a large, luminescent waterfall. The water is radiant and bubbling with vitality and life. As you stand under the waterfall, feel the water run over every inch of your body, soothing you and instilling within you a sense of deep calm. Try to taste the water. Open your mouth and let the water run in to refresh you. Hear the water as it bounces off the ground around you. The
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water is life itself, and it’s washing away stress and worry from your mind and body.
After a moment, open your eyes.
Try to use all of your senses when carrying out the visualization. To make the pictures in your mind as real as possible, use your senses of touch, taste, and hearing. Feel the water trickle down your body, hear the sound it makes as it splashes over you.
2nd Visualization to end unwanted anxious thoughts
This visualization is for unwanted thoughts that are particularly persistent and troublesome.
Begin by doing the abdominal breathing explained in the breathing exercise. Allow yourself a few minutes to get a deep sustained level of breathing going.
As you breathe out, imagine your out breath as a blue cloud shimmering with a positive radiant light. Repeat this visualization until you can picture this image well in your minds eye.
The anxious thought that is troubling you will soon float into your awareness. Imagine the anxious thought in your mind’s eye like a ball of yellow energy about the size of a tennis ball. It comes in from the side floating two to three feet in front of you. As you become aware of the disturbing thought try not to examine or judge it but simply give it a label. Say the label to yourself:
Oh there is ‘fear of going mad’ ‘fear of an illness’ ‘fear of hurting myself’ , ‘fear of hurting someone else’ ‘fear I might never feel normal again’ etc.
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breath enveloping the thought. The glowing cloud of positive radiant light now surrounds and engulfs the smaller yellow thought. As the thought becomes engulfed, internally say the words
“acceptance” and “peace.”
The yellow ball is engulfed in a radiant positive energy. It now starts to defuse in the blue cloud and becomes harder to see. Keep breathing on the thought and watch as the blue cloud carries the small yellow ball further and further away. As it floats away the fear you had about the thought is also leaving you. Each time you breathe out towards the thought you say
“acceptance” and “peace”
Eventually after a few breaths the thought has completely disappeared. Keep your awareness on your breath. Continue to breathe deeply in and out.
The same fearful thought may soon return but this time it is much smaller and less impacting. You feel much less intimidated by the thought this time because you have already reduced your emotional reaction to it. You simply don’t really care that much about it. You are disconnecting your emotions from the thought. Continue this exercise for any number of other disturbing thoughts that arise, always breathing “acceptance” and “peace” on them as they float away from your awareness in the radiant blue cloud.
This is a good exercise to practise daily as it will strengthen your ability to disconnect from anxious or highly disturbing thoughts. Soon you will be able to quickly recognise and label a disturbing thought immediately and you will have no emotional reaction to it whatsoever. The thought will be nothing more then a split second flash on your awareness then it is gone as you move your attention to what you really want to focus on. This does take practise and depending on the severity
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of the anxious thoughts, it will take time to fully release the emotional reaction to the anxious thoughts. The more you practise, the better you will become at it. The more realistic the imagined scenarios, the more benefit you’ll gain. Many people report very beneficial and soothing results from frequently using these simple visualizations. The mind is much like a muscle; in order to relax, it needs to regularly release what it’s holding. By visualizing the different situations, you allow your mind to release tension and restore calm. It’s like sending a message to your brain that when you close your eyes and begin this process, it’s time to let go of anything that it’s been mentally holding onto.
I recommend that your daily visualization practice take place before going to bed, as that will enable you to sleep more soundly. Many people do these visualizations in some room other than the bedroom before going to bed. That way, when they enter the bedroom and close the door, they leave the mental stress behind them. Visualization, as a tool for dealing with mental stress and problems of exhaustion, is very effective. If you do the above visualizations on a regular basis, you’ll
experience more and more released calm.
That concludes the two-pronged approach to dealing with anxious thoughts. With practice you’ll find that you go days without having those anxious thoughts interrupt your life—and, importantly, this significantly reduces the level of general anxiety you feel.