Working With Anxious Thoughts - 19 Minute Daily Insight

This is a mindfulness meditation practice to work with anxious thoughts through meeting them with kindness, acceptance, and non-judgment and returning attention to the body and breath. In this way, we untangle ourselves from anxious and worried thoughts that can be debilitating -- and can live with greater ease and freedom.

Transcript

Hi and welcome to The Daily Insight.

My name is Hugh Byrne and I'm a meditation teacher here on Insight Timer.

Today's meditation will focus on relieving stress.

This 20 minute meditation will focus on how we can work with the expressions of stress that manifest in the body and the mind through mindfulness.

When we experience stress and worry,

We're typically over identified with our thoughts,

Treating them as though they were the truth.

And we often create dire scenarios about things that might happen.

Stress and worry are actually habits of thinking that have developed through repetition over time.

We keep repeating the thoughts and the more we keep thinking them,

The more we tend to believe them.

Mindfulness helps us to untangle ourselves from our thoughts and our stories.

By bringing awareness to the thoughts without identifying with them and by coming back to our direct experience here and now.

So sit in a way that's relaxed and alert without any agenda or any sense that you need to get anywhere or have any particular kind of experience or get anything right.

A task in mindfulness meditation is to meet our experience just as it is without judgment or resistance or clinging.

Letting everything come and go in its own time.

It can be helpful to begin by relaxing as much as you can so that you're not being pulled along by worried or stressful thoughts.

You might take a few longer,

Deeper breaths,

Relaxing and letting go on the out-breath.

As you breathe in,

You might invite the body to calm and be at ease and as you breathe out,

You might invite your mind to relax and be at ease.

You could also invite a smile to your face to encourage a relaxing of the body and the mind.

You could put your hand on your heart as a message of caring to yourself.

And let your awareness come to whatever is present right now.

Meeting what's here,

Bodily sensations,

Emotions,

Thoughts,

Pleasant or unpleasant,

With an attitude of kindness and acceptance.

Meeting this moment,

This experience,

Just as it is.

Welcoming whatever guests may be coming to visit.

The Sufi poet Rumi in his poem,

The Guest House,

Speaks of being human as a guest house.

He says,

Welcome and entertain all of the guests.

He says,

Even if there are a crowd of sorrows who sweep your house empty of its furniture,

Still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

And you might imagine your awareness,

This knowing quality of the mind as being as big as the sky and large enough to hold whatever comes up,

However difficult or challenging.

Everything held in this open space of awareness.

A tickle,

A sound,

A strong emotion,

A painful thought.

All coming,

Staying for a while and then passing.

Let it come,

Let it be,

Let it go.

As a way of gathering your attention,

You can bring awareness to the experience of breathing.

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

In breath,

Out breath.

Letting the breath be your central focus of attention,

Your home base.

And when you notice that your attention has moved from the breath into thinking,

You can kindly and gently bring your attention back to the breath.

Breathing.

It's not a problem when the mind moves into thought.

It's a natural tendency of our minds to want to take care of business,

Be on the lookout for what might threaten us and what can help us survive and thrive.

And each time we bring our attention back,

We're building the muscle of attention.

We're making it more likely that we will stay in the present rather than moving into thoughts,

Plans,

Memories,

Worries.

If you notice that you're caught up in anxious or worried thinking,

You can simply note thinking or worried thought and bring your attention back to your breathing.

In breath,

Out breath.

You can notice if there's a strong energy of worry or stress pulling you into anxious thinking and bring your attention back to the body and to the breath.

If you keep getting pulled back into anxious or stressful thinking,

It can be helpful to bring your attention to your body and notice the bodily sensations that might be triggering the thoughts.

It might be feelings of tightness or tension in the chest linked to fear or anxiety.

And you can allow yourself to feel the sensations,

Letting them come and go,

Letting them come,

Letting them be,

Letting them go.

Okay.

When we practice observing our thoughts and letting them go without identifying with them,

Without getting caught up in the storyline of the worried thought,

Things that might happen,

And we come back again to the body and the breath and we stay with whatever feelings are arising.

We begin to untangle ourselves from the stress and the worry.

We see that what we're experiencing as painful stress or worry is actually thoughts,

Sensations,

Emotions that come and go and are only really troubling to us if we get caught up or identified with them.

So with a kind and friendly attitude,

Meeting your experience with kindness,

Friendliness,

Acceptance.

Just observing the thoughts when they arise and choosing to let them go,

Choosing not to be identified with the stories that we're telling ourselves.

And coming back again,

Coming back to the body,

The breath,

This moment.

The Tibetan teacher Chogam Trungpa called this human experience a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.

We have this wonderful facility to be able to think and solve problems and plan and remember the past.

But often we don't bring awareness to our thinking,

The thoughts are pulling us along rather than us guiding our thinking,

Guiding our thoughts.

There's a story of a rider on a horse galloping along at top speed.

Somebody shouts out to the rider,

Where are you going?

And the rider replies,

Don't ask me,

Ask the horse.

So much of the time it's the horse pulling us along,

Our unexamined thoughts driving our experience.

And mindfulness helps us to kind of break the cycle,

Just to be aware of the thoughts,

But not get lost in the story.

By coming back to this moment,

Just as it is.

And finishing this meditation with the words of Dorothy Hunt,

Pieces this moment without judgment.

This moment in the heart space where everything that is,

Is welcome.

So for the remaining moments of this meditation,

Just bringing an open awareness to whatever's here.

Using the breath as a focus or anchor,

If that's helpful.

And bringing your attention back kindly and gently when the mind moves into thought.

Embarked on

Reviews

That was wonderful and very helpful for me as I struggle with anxiety and this meditation helped me focus on the present moment listening to your calming voice and focusing on the breath, allowing my body to soften! Thank you so much for sharing! 🙏☮️🫶🏼

Always good, thank you, a pleasure to listen/hear your words of wisdom. And, thank goodness no distracting music

I love this. Thank you for the gentle guidance thru a beautiful meditation.

This is amazing! Really relaxing and helpful and calming!

Excellent. Quiet, calm voice. Clear instructions and the best tuition I’ve had so far for this practice. Thank you.

Wonderful! Ty
🙏😇✨️✨️✨️

Thank you that was the right combination of supportive and deeply calming.

This was wonderful. I loved the poems and anecdotes interspersed. This helped calm me down and is a practice I can continue to use in my daily life when I begin to experience unwelcome thoughts. Thank you. 🙏

This gave me some good tools to use for when I’m flooded with anxiety

Thank you for sharing this meditation. I have been struggling of late and will help change my direction. Blessings.

I appreciate this meditation so very much! Thank you! 🙏💗🙏

Thank you for this session. I’ve been practicing to reduce anxiety and this guidance was very helpful.

Thanks, this really helped me settle into my meditative focus.

Phew! How helpful! I worked on budgeting before doing this meditation — stressful!! This meditation was an elixir!

I loved the part the end where you encourage the acceptance of all that is.

Hugh's meditations keep me calm and focused throughout my day!

Really lovely meditation. Great voice and pace. Thank you!

Thank you so much for guiding me through ways to manage my thoughts 🙏

Very nice 👍

Exactly what I needed!