Making Space For Anxiety

Ease nighttime worry with a gentle, body-based practice that meets anxiety with warmth instead of struggle. You’ll be guided to shift attention from racing thoughts into physical sensations, locate the “epicenter” of tension, and breathe spaciousness around it. Compassionate imagery and simple cues help you soften, hold what’s present, and settle the nervous system.

The track closes with calming intentions to support rest and a return to peace.

Transcript

This is a meditation for if you wake up and you feel a bit of worry or anxiety in your body or your mind.

And it's really normal to wake up in the night.

Our body is constantly moving through these cycles of deep sleep into light sleep back to deep sleep again.

So if you've awoken with some dread or stress or anxiety,

The first thing that you can do is begin to just move from your head and the worry and the interpretation into your body.

Moving down from your head into your body,

What do you notice in this body?

Where is the epicenter of the anxiety or worry?

Where is it most intense?

What are you feeling in there?

And oftentimes we want to make it go away because it's painful or not think about it.

We want to push it down.

But tonight you're going to do something different.

You're going to take care of your anxiety.

You're going to take care of your worry.

You're going to meet it.

You're going to comfort it.

So find that sensation in your body where it's the most intense.

And bring your awareness there and begin by just allowing it to be here.

You can care for something by not running away from it,

By welcoming it and allowing it.

We don't have to be afraid of our fear.

So you can allow it to be here by breathing in and around this anxiety,

Making space for it.

And the bigger the worry,

The bigger the space that you create with your breath.

Breathing in.

And as you exhale,

Imagining breathing out plenty of space for this to be here.

Breathing out lots of room.

And if you're caring for yourself and your anxiety,

You can also make that space warm.

So that you're breathing out warmth,

Care,

In and around this sensation.

Breathing into it and out of it,

Warmth and care.

Warming it with gentleness,

Kindness.

You can be here.

Because whatever it is that you're worried about right now is an indicator of what you care about right now.

And so you honor that in yourself.

I care.

That's why I'm worried.

And in some ways,

The care takes care of your worry.

You can tell your fear,

I'm here for you.

I'm not going to run away from you anymore.

There's enough space for you.

And I offer you warmth.

I offer you care.

And sometimes that in itself can transform the sensations.

But even if they don't transform,

You're still there for them.

Just like a baby that cries.

Even if it doesn't stop crying,

You still hold it.

In fact,

The louder it cries,

The closer you hold it,

The longer you hold it.

You can do that for yourself.

Holding yourself in this space.

Out of your head,

Into your body.

Creating space.

Offering warmth.

And you can stay in this space and do this practice for as long as you need to.

May you be one with yourself.

May you be free from suffering.

May you be at peace.

Many blessings and good night.

Reviews

A much needed reminder to care for even this part of me. Thank you.

Without going into detail (and there’s lots of detail!), this was so very helpful to us tonight. We can’t say thank you enough.

I loved this meditation. Very insightful, grounding and transformative. Thank you.🙏

I have a bit of anxiety and worry about work performance as I'm learning a new software program. I am making room for this body sensation. Thank you.