MOL: Breaking The Cycle Of Worry

This is a Virtual Meditation on the Lawn session hosted by the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia with the guest facilitator, Cawood Fitzhugh. This guided meditation focuses on breaking the cycle that comes with worry and anxiety. Virtual Meditation on the Lawn is a free online live program hosted from September through May.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the universe,

Excuse me,

To a warm welcome this morning to our Monday virtual meditation on the lawn from a very chilly Charlottesville.

I want to take the opportunity to thank the University of Virginia and acknowledge the Contemplative Study Center.

My name is Kay Wood-Fitzhugh and I've spent a lifetime in healthcare and now I'm working full time in mindfulness,

Working with individuals and groups in reducing stress by changing their relationship to it.

I'm a facilitator for the UVA Mindfulness Center and I'm also an ambassador for the School of Nursing Compassionate Care Initiative.

Finally I'll be starting my training under Dr.

Judd Brewer to become a certified facilitator for habit change.

These lovely Monday morning meditations invites us to some beautiful ways in which to pause,

To slow down,

Be with ourselves and in community with one another.

So today I want to give you a simple gift of a mindfulness tool.

That can be particularly helpful when sitting and just focusing on the breath is too challenging because of all the worry.

The worry that has resulted from increased anxiety and the chronic stress,

The state of stress that we've been under.

And worrying is at an all time high.

I call it the working arm of anxiety because it actually feels good to worry.

It makes us feel like we're doing something about our anxiety.

The downside though is that worrying,

Although it may feel good,

It doesn't solve any of our problems.

And some of our problems just aren't going to go away right now.

On top of that worrying does become a habit and it increases and begins its own cycle of worrying,

Of anxiety.

So what do we do?

This little meditation practice has been helpful for me and the parents and school aged children in my neighborhood.

It's also helpful for students and business people alike.

And hopefully you'll find this mindfulness tool effective as well.

It can act like a circuit breaker and it stops that cycle of worrying just like when you put a movie on pause.

It lessens attention so that when you return to that movie,

You don't have quite the same emotional charge.

That's what we think happens when we practice this type of five finger breathing exercise.

So what happens in our brain with worry?

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for thinking and planning.

And there's a little part of that that holds the information that we need at our fingertips.

You know,

Like the password to get into a Zoom,

The phone number that you needed to commit to memory to use it in a few seconds,

The test question you need for the exam.

I'm sure you've all experienced that when worrying is so great,

That it's really hard to recall these simple facts,

This simple information.

So it's thought that the worrying kind of takes up and hoards a space in the prefrontal cortex.

In essence,

It gets hijacked.

It also affects us when we sit to meditate,

When placing the attention on the breath and those worried thoughts are just so loud in your mind.

We feel like if you fill up this working memory with some multisensory,

Multi-location awareness,

You can bump that worrying out just for a moment.

So I want to teach you the five finger exercise,

And hopefully it can help cut through the worrying if this is you,

So that you can be more calm and focused in the present moment.

And this simple exercise works for several reasons,

Because you're using several senses at the same time.

You're using the sense of touch,

Listening.

You're sensing into the breath,

And you have to pay attention as you do it.

And mindfulness flows through our senses.

So hopefully this will crowd out the worrying thoughts and allow more spaciousness for ease.

The other thing is when you trace your fingers for five to 10 breaths,

You also calm down your physiology.

So let's begin.

Having a comfortable position in a chair or standing or lying on a soft surface,

And allowing the attention to turn inward.

And if you feel comfortable,

Closing the eyes and just deriving this day and noticing what is here with you.

Is it your do list,

Committee members in your head?

Is your attention drawn to the breath or contact points of the body with the chair or the surface that you're resting on?

Perhaps you're noticing your attention being drawn to the breath and experience a breath of moving in and moving out of the body with the sense of knowing that you're breathing.

And on the next in breath,

When releasing this breath of slowly opening the eyes and reorienting back into the space where you are.

So let's begin to learn the five finger breathing exercise.

You want to raise your left hand and you want to be able to see it.

And you want to take the finger of the opposite hand,

Usually your pointer finger,

And start at the base where the wrist is on the pinky side of the hand.

And on the end breath,

You want to breathe in and allow the finger to move along the edge all the way to the top of the pinky.

When you breathe out,

The finger goes down between the pinky and the ring finger.

Breathing in,

It goes up the ring finger.

And then breathing out,

It goes down between the ring finger and the middle finger.

Breathing in to the top of the middle finger and breathing out between the middle finger and the pointer.

Breathing in and breathing out.

And now you're down between the thumb and the first finger.

Breathing in to the tip of the thumb and breathing out down to the base,

Back down to the wrist.

And taking a pause here.

Just to notice body sensations,

Emotions or thoughts evoked.

And then on the next end breath of repeating this back in the opposite direction,

Breathing in to the tip of the thumb and breathing out.

And I'll let you go at your own pace.

And really sensing the contact of the fingers,

Sensing in to the breath.

Moving at your own pace.

And then moving back down to the wrist.

When you trace your fingers for the five to ten breaths,

You're calming down your physiology.

It's a practice that you can do on one hand or both hands.

And in doing this,

It helps to hoard now that space in the prefrontal cortex with a mindfulness tool.

So when you complete this,

If your thoughts come back,

Hopefully they're not as convincing because they don't have that same emotional charge to them.

Just like when you put a scary movie on pause.

Without that charge,

They have less weight behind them and they're a bit easier to let go.

So now you can do your sitting meditation,

Just noticing the thoughts as thoughts instead of something you have to act on right away.

Even if the only action taken is worrying.

Remember worrying is our brain's way of doing something that we can't really do anything about the situation.

And it feels good to worry.

So the next time you're worrying so strongly,

You can try the five finger breathing exercise as preparation for your sitting meditation.

So that when you come to sit,

You can sit and be with the breath,

Noticing the thoughts as thoughts and not jumping on the associations with the thoughts.

It's a simple science-based mindfulness tool.

So the next time you are starting to get all worked up about your day,

Take a little moment out and try your five finger breathing exercise to calm down the physiology.

The more you get into the habit of doing this,

The more you don't let worrying take over your thoughts.

And perhaps the more ease and calm you may be accustomed to.

And it feels good.

This moment of awareness,

Of calming down the physiology,

Creating space,

Being able to make the proper choices,

Recall the information that's needed when in school or in a business deal and being able to move in awareness on a more daily basis.

This is the end of the instructions for this meditation and you can practice on your own and take this exercise into your week as needed.

On behalf of all of us,

Thank you for joining us and have a good day.

Reviews

Thank you for the new tool I have to help myself and to share with my clients 🙏

Thank you 🙏