Returning to Self (A "How To" Guide)

It’s been awhile since there has been a new blog update, so I figured the perfect topic would be how to “return to self” or in other words, after you loosing yourself in the minutia of life how do you still return to what you love, are compassionate about, to yourself. Tons of things can distract us from being who we want to be, peers, family expectations/responsibilities, school/work, other things that we busy ourselves with. We can recognize when we have gotten off track when we notice feeling exhausted often, lonely, sad, discontent with life and where it’s taking us. We may start engaging in dysfunctional behaviors like playing video games to excess, over using substances, eating too much or too little, over working etc.

Here are things that you can do to recenter yourself, and connect with who you are:

• Spending a few minutes near a river, stream, or creek or simply outside to enjoy nature

• Lying on the ground and taking in the fresh air

• Being with a loved one without distractions

• Sitting on the porch while reading, or knitting something, or with a nice drink

• Walking or driving for an hour, any direction without a destination

• Play air (or real) guitar or drums while listening to music

• Greeting sunrise

• Driving out to where the city lights do not interfere with the night sky

• Praying or meditation

• Sitting on a bridge with legs dangling over

• Sitting by a window in a cafe and writing

• Sitting in a circle of trees

• Potting plants, being sure to get hands very muddy

• Beholding beauty, grace, gratitude of things in life

All of these examples and more can help you slow down and refill your energy, with little effort. Making this a routine creates a cycle in which you can return home to myself every morning and every evening. Perhaps doing something on a schedule will bare the most fruits of true connection with self. The great thing is that after you do these practices, you can return to the world with renewed energy to go about your daily life. By taking time for yourself, the quality of your work in the rest of your life can improve.

How Meditation Can Help Anxiety

Meditation helps with racing thoughts by quieting the overactive mind. The process of slowing down your mind allows you to silence thoughts that have you buying into your fearful racing thoughts. By meditating you can start identifying what silence can exists between every mental action/thought. This practice is just that, a practice, through time you will be able to practice mediation without the urge to run from the silence. In addition with regular practice, you experience that you’re not simply your thoughts and feelings. You can detach yourself from these to rest in your own being, in your own body. Many people are detached from their body, and mediations allows you to return to your body, and keep you centered rather than pulled outside by a thought or trigger.

 Anxious people often shy away from meditation for various reasons. “I can’t meditate” is code for feeling too restless to sit still or having too many thoughts while trying to meditate. However, anyone can learn to meditate. With being patient and having a guide, these objections and one like them can be overcome.

Numerous scientific studies have found meditation to be effective for treating anxiety.  One study, published in the Psychological Bulletin, combined the findings of 163 different studies. The overall conclusion was that practicing mindfulness or meditation produced beneficial results, with a substantial improvement in areas like negative personality traits, anxiety, and stress. 

All mental activity has a physical correlation in the brain, which has been studied in relation to anxiety. Chronic worriers often display increased reactivity in the amygdala, the area of the brain associated with regulating emotions, including fear, flight/fight/freeze. Neuroscientists at Stanford University found that people who practiced mindfulness meditation for eight weeks were more able to turn down the reactivity of this area. Other researchers from Harvard found that mindfulness can physically reduce the number of neurons in this fear-triggering part of the brain.

Mindfulness practices can be the first step to learning to meditate.

If interested in learning more about mindfulness practices continue to follow the blog as there will be follow-up post talking specifically about that.