Simple Meditations for Erasing Worry

It seems now that meditation has become a commonplace skill.  Many patients express familiarity with some form of meditation.  When I was first starting out, this was not the case.  I will never forget being introduced to Dr. Brian Weiss’s guided imagery meditations.  I was planning my wedding at the time and my stress level was particularly high.  I listened to his guided imagery right before bed and was astounded by how much it helped!  I slept better and was calmer all day long.  As I continued my practice, I was introduced to Dr. John Kabat-Zinn and became a huge fan of his guided meditations as well.  Now there are even applications for your smart phone, such as Headspace, that help you work your way through meditation.  I often recommend all of this resources to patients in my practice.

The biggest dilemma that is posed by meditation as a treatment is time.  In our fast paced lives time is a commodity that people do not take lightly and meditation works best when performed regularly.  While a lot of these meditation prompts offer shorter meditations, they also require people to have the time to complete them when they are near the source of the guided imagery.  So I spend time teaching my patients small meditations that they can do in a few minutes at any time during their day.  This practice call allow them to function more efficiently in a current task by temporarily freeing them from the weight of a particular anxiety until a later time when that anxiety can be appropriately addressed. 

One of my favorites for worry and anxiety I call “Wiping the Slate Clean”.  I ask patients to spend time visualizing a dry erase board (or a chalk board depending on their age).  Then I ask them to imagine their concerns written or drawn on the board.  I ask them to fill their board with the dilemmas that are stuck in their heads.  By this point they are feeling the stress of ruminating on their worries.  Then I ask them to erase them one by one.  The act of erasing those problems causes a wonderful reduction in anxiety so once we have gone through it together in session they are highly motivated to practice on their own.

While this works extremely well for individuals prone to anxiety, we all have worries that can use a little erasing.  I encourage everyone to use this meditation regularly.  If you have read any of my discussions in the past you know that I think this would be great at bed time to help improve sleep quality, but I also like the idea of people using it with their morning coffee to start their day off right.  Really, there isn’t a bad time of the day to reduce your stress level a little bit and now you can do it in a matter of minutes.