Anxiety Meditation with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
This is a guided anxiety meditation led by Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes. She explains what anxiety is (a normal feeling tied to the stress response), recommends preparing a safe, interruption-free environment, choosing a short empowering mantra tailored to the anxiety trigger, and then leads a timed breathing practice (inhale 4 — hold 4 — exhale 4) combined with mantra repetition and body/breath awareness to reduce stress and induce calm. The session is approximately a 10-minute guided practice and ends with encouragement to reuse the technique and explore other meditations.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to this video Anxiety Meditations. I AM your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Anxiety often occurs when we feel unsafe or powerless. It increases your stress chemicals, kicks off that HPA axis, or the fight or flight response, and you start to have tunnel vision and become more reactive and impulsive. So anxiety can be a problem. Now remember, anxiety is a feeling. It's a normal feeling that tells you that, hey, there might be something to be aware of, there might be a threat. It doesn't mean there is a threat. The anxiety is just telling you to check and see if there's a threat. Meditation can help calm your stress response so you can think more clearly about what to do to improve the next moment. So if you look around and you decide you know what, there's really not a threat or whatever it is that is threatening, I have no control over like, you know, a pandemic or something, then meditation can help you calm or, or tamp down that stress response so you're not burning up tons and tons of energy and feeling anxious like you're going to crawl out of your skin all the time. It's important before you begin any sort of meditation to examine your surroundings and make sure you are safe from. From interruptions. You don't want to get into this nice relaxed state and all of a sudden have your phone go off or the dog bark. Get into a situation where you are protected from interruption, where you feel safe in your environment. You have the door shut, you may have the blinds drawn, whatever it is that makes you feel the most safe and secure. If you're not comfortable closing your eyes. Some people have trauma histories and they are not comfortable closing their eyes, and that's cool. If you're not, then pick a stationary object in the room to focus on. When I do meditations, I love focusing on the. A candle flame just. That's always been something that has attracted my focus. So candle flames work for me. You can pick a spot on the wall, you can pick a vase, whatever it is you want, just make sure it's not something that's going to move around that you've got to track. You want to make sure it stays. Stays right there. The next thing you need to do, once you feel like you're in a safe environment, think of an empowering mantra that you're going to repeat to yourself. And depending on what is triggering your anxiety, you may have several different mantras that you rotate through depending on the type of anxiety. If you are facing some sort of adversity, you can tell Yourself I've got this or this too shall pass. You know, maybe you are getting ready to go take a your graduate entrance exams or you are going on a job interview or you are experiencing some something distressful. Maybe you and your best friend got into a disagreement and there's tension right there. So this too shall pass can work another set. If it's has to do more with failure, you can remind yourself, progress, not perfection. Nobody's perfect. And it's important to strive for progress, not perfection, to learn from our failures or just I can succeed. If you are afraid of failure and you're getting ready to do something, just telling yourself, I can succeed. I may not succeed at everything, but I can succeed. Now obviously I'm elaborating on some of these. You want to pick something that is not more than a few words to repeat to yourself. If your anxiety has to do with rejection, you may say to yourself something like, it's not about me or I am enough. If you have anxiety about uncertainty, you don't know what's going to happen next. You can tell yourself something like stay open to options or I'm not alone and I'm not alone really appeals to people who like uncertainty. They like control. But knowing that they're not alone, knowing that they've got support people to help them through something that is uncertain, can be very reassuring. Now you can come up with your own mantras. These were just a few that I pulled out for you to give you an idea of. Think something that you might want to say to yourself. Look at the root of whatever's causing your anxiety. Pick a mantra. Make sure you're in a safe place. With time and practice, you'll be able to trigger the relaxation response with your mantra and a deep breath or two. So you may not have to go through the entire meditation, which is really awesome. So when, if you get used to it, you may be able to approach adversity and take a deep breath, tell yourself, I've got this. And exhale and do that a couple of more times and feel relaxed. It can help you get grounded once your body's recognized that, okay, when we start saying this, it's time to relax. You may think that's a little corny, but think about other times in your past when somebody has said something that has just a word has triggered a response. When I used to teach at uf, I would tell my class, okay, clear your desk. It's time to take a pop quiz. And those words would strike fear in the majority of the people in my class and that would trigger their fight orf flight response. Now, obviously we want to do the opposite here. My point is that something as simple as a word can trigger a fight or flight response or a relaxation response. So I'm going to tell you what we're going to do and then we're going to start doing it. You're going to start by sitting comfortably. You know, you're in a safe environment, you've picked your mantra. Then you get comfortable sitting, ideally both feet on the ground, you know, in a relaxed position. Begin by focusing on your breath. You're going to breathe in for four, hold for four and breathe out for four. Going to do that twice and then you're going to continue to breathe in for four, hold for four and exhale for four. But you're, when you do this, then you're going to start noticing your belly expand and deflate. So the first thing you just want to focus on your breath and then you want to start focusing on your breath and your body. The next step is to notice the cool, refreshing air as it passes through your nose. Feel it moving through your entire body. You're going to do that twice. Finally, you're going to. As you breathe in, you're going to repeat your mantra and sit with it while you hold your breath for that four. And as you exhale, you're going to feel the bad energy and worry leaving your body. You're going to repeat this 10 times. Then just sit with this feeling for a few minutes, noticing how relaxed your body feels. It's that simple. You're going to gradually work up to ramp up to focusing on your on your mantra and relaxing your anxiety. But the first thing you got to do is start with your breath. I'm going to walk you through this mantra and it will take about 10 minutes. So go ahead and sit down and get comfortable. Begin by focusing on your breath. Breathe in for four. Breathe, hold for four and exhale for four. Let's do that again. Breathe in for four. 2, 3, 4. Hold for four and exhale for four. Now, when you breathe in for four, notice your belly expand. Hold for four. And exhale for four. Feeling your belly deflate. Again, breathe in and notice your belly expand. Hold for four and exhale for four. Now, as you breathe in for four, notice the cool, refreshing air as it passes through your nose. Feel it moving throughout your entire body. Hold for four and exhale for four. Again, inhale, noticing the cool air as it passes through your nose and feel it moving through your entire body. Hold for four and exhale for four. Now as you breathe in, repeat your mantra. Breathe in for four. Tell yourself that it's okay that you've got this. Hold for four. As you exhale, feel the bad energy and worry leaving your body. Let's breathe in again. Repeat your mantra to yourself. Hold and exhale, feeling the energy, the bad energy and worry leaving your body. Breathe in again, repeat your mantra. Really believing what you're telling yourself. And exhale. Feeling the worry and the bad energy leaving your body. Breathe in, repeat your mantra. Feel the positivity and the strength. Feeling your body hold and exhale. Feeling the bad energy and worry leaving. Breathe in again, repeat your mantra. Notice how you're starting to feel more calm. Sit with this feeling of calmness as you hold your breath and then exhale. Feeling the bad energy, worry leaving your body. Breathe in again, repeating your mantra. Believing your mantra. Feeling that breath you took. Absorbing all of the negative energy. And exhale. Breathe in again. Repeat your mantra. Sit with this feeling of calm and strength. Feeling the breath, absorbing all of the bad energy. And exhale. Breathe in, repeat your mantra. Really believe how strong and safe you are. Feel that oxygen absorbing the bad energy. And exhale. Feeling the bad energy and worry leaving your body. Breathe in, repeat your mantra. Repeat your mantra again. Sit with it while you hold your breath for a minute. Let that air absorb all the bad energy. And as you exhale, really feel your body relaxing and melting into the chair that you're sitting in. One more time, breathe in, repeat your mantra. Notice a sense of hope and energy, but also calmness. Sit with this for a minute and exhale, feeling the last little bit of that worry leaving your body. Notice how relaxed your body feels. Now sit with this feeling. Continue to repeat your mantra until you're ready to start rejoining your activities for the day. There are many different types of meditation. This is just one. So come back and visit the channel often for different types of meditation for anxiety and depression.
