Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic
Language: English
Pages: 227
ISBN: 1572244879
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Mindfulness Solution to Anxiety
Drawing on techniques and perspectives from two seemingly different traditions, this second edition of the self-help classic Calming Your Anxious Mind offers you a powerful and profound approach to overcoming anxiety, fear, and panic. From the evidence-based tradition of Western medicine, learn the role your thoughts and emotions play in anxiety. And, from the tradition of meditation and the inquiry into meaning and purpose, discover your own potential for presence and stillness, kindness and compassion-and the tremendous power these states give you to heal and transform your life.
Use this encouraging, step-by-step program to:
- Learn about the mechanism of anxiety and the body's fear system
- Develop a healing mindfulness practice-one breath at a time
- Start on the path to presence, stillness, compassion, and loving kindness
- Practice acceptance during mindfulness meditation
- Feel safe while opening up to fearful and anxious feelings
views or ideas. These ideas form a person’s explanatory style. A pioneer in the understanding of the impact of explanatory style is Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. In his studies, Seligman observed that how people explained the “bad” things that happened to them had a powerful effect on their health and wellness. Many others have added to this work, including Yale surgeon Bernie Siegel, Charles Carver at the University of Miami, and Michael F. Scheier at Carnegie-Mellon
essentially, to your own practice, you will find powerful support and assistance opening to you as you meditate daily. Overcoming Resistance Encouraging yourself to practice formally, especially when you don’t feel like it, can make all the difference in establishing a regular practice habit. First, just recognize the resistance that is present. Then, try to be kind and patient with yourself if you don’t feel like practicing. At the same time, you must be firm, like a good parent, or
produce anxiety and panic. From the world of meditation and inquiry into meaning and purpose, you will learn about the practice of mindfulness and the potential for presence and stillness in every human being. You will discover that you have the same potential for awareness and peace as everyone else, and that you have an untrained mind with its own hindrances, just like everyone else. In a curious sense, this book represents a major trend in modern society: we now see the crossover between
formal and informal mindfulness practices is the way to develop these habits of awareness and concentration. Awareness of Breathing One of the oldest and most common meditation practices to build concentration and mindfulness focuses on the breath itself. We can call this meditation practice awareness of breathing, mindfulness of breathing, or awareness of the breath. Practicing awareness of breathing immediately brings you back to the present moment. With the breath as your focus, the
of kindness. By learning to cultivate kindness deliberately in this meditation, you will find that the quality of kindness in your mindfulness practice will become brighter, and mindfulness itself will be more accurate and steady. Kindness as an inner quality is something that you can actually practice. You already have the capacity for kindness in you. There is a naturalness to feeling and being kind that you do not have to force. You do not have to manufacture it. You do, however, have to