Mindfulness Skills for Anxiety Treatment—Part 3, Embodiment
Bringing mindfulness skills to the body can help improve awareness and relaxation.
Remember that these mindfulness skills are useful for anyone—not just for folks working with anxiety! If you haven’t seen Parts 1 &2 of this blog series on using the breath and naming emotions, please check those out as well. All of these skills stack together to become greater than the sum of their parts.
Mind & Body & Breath
Occasionally, I think we can forget that our whole being is on the same team together—the mind, the body, & the breath. We can get fixated on just trying to control or change one part of this whole ecosystem, and forget that it all works together.
Since we’ve talked about a couple of skills that help address the breath and the mind, I think it’s time to make sure the body is fully on board as well.
A Note for All the folks working with pain issues
Dealing with pain is complex and challenging. Whether you are dealing with chronic pain and/or very high acute pain, it can seriously impact your concentration, mood and functioning. It drains a lot of energy away and seems to make everything harder. It can also complicate our relationship with our bodies and our experiences of being present within them. The practices described below may need some modifications and adjustments for you (look for optional tips and hints for this below). If you are dealing with pain, this may just not be what you need at this time, especially if your pain is extremely high in the moment. There are a number of other ways of working with the senses and sensations that may work better for you than the skills we’re going to jump into here but many principles of how to approach these practices will still apply. I’ll come back to working more with pain in a future post.
Awareness, again?!?!?!
This whole awareness thing seems to be a bit of a trend with these mindfulness skills, doesn’t it? Well, yes. We spend so much time in fantasies about the future, and imaginary replays of the past, and grumbling and scheming about how the present should or could be different than it is. We don’t spend a whole lot of time on simply observing the present moment, without judgment. This is true for our awareness of our minds, our lives, and our bodies. So, we start where all our mindfulness skills start—with awareness.
The Body Scan: A Foundational Skill for Anxiety Therapy in Maryland & more
To start this mindfulness practice, we will start with the foundational step of that relaxed belly breathing that was detailed in part 1 of this series (feel free to go back for a refresher, if you need it). You can do this activity laying down, sitting up, or standing. For maximum relaxation, find a comfortable way to lay down or sit, with plenty of support for your whole body. Begin that slow, gentle belly breathing—focus on the sensations of the breath for a moment.
Now, we’re going to start at one end of the body and gently place our focus and awareness there—noticing, WITHOUT JUDGMENT, whatever is present. Sorry to get shouty about the judgment bit but it’s such an essential part of this. It’s ok if that doesn’t come easy, but it’s really worth a try because when we get judgy with ourselves about our experiences, we end up creating more energy around them and spiraling out a whole bunch of reactions that are not about what is happening right this very second.
You can start wherever you want in the body—head, feet, hands. ****SPECIAL NOTE FOR FOLKS WORKING WITH PAIN****: Pick a starting location that is far away from the most intense discomfort or pain. If you have a bad headache, start at the feet. If you have pain in the knees or legs, start at the hands or head. You’ll eventually get to the spot that has the discomfort, but it’s helpful to start in a spot that isn’t as challenging and allows more ease in the moment, which can help the nervous system calm down (which then, in turn, can decrease pain perception and intensity).
Notice whatever is present in terms of sensations, or tension, or even emotions or images that come to mind when you concentrate on this one, first part of the body. Are you still breathing? Stay with this first part of the body as long as you would like—20 seconds, a minute, a couple of minutes. Then, move on to the next adjoining area of the body—either moving up or down the body, or from one side to the other. Go slow. You can focus on larger parts, like the whole left arm, or smaller parts, like the right eye and then the left eye. Thoughts will pop up and distraction will try to pull your attention away. Accept the fact of having thoughts and feelings, without getting too caught up in the story about them or reacting to them. Just note them and keep coming back to the breath & the area you are focusing on.
Keep going until you’ve had a chance to scan the whole body, like the slowest copy machine ever. Be curious about what you might find and don’t worry about it whether or not it makes logical sense. If you get an image of green goo in your feet, it doesn’t mean you think you actually think you have green goo in your feet. Does the right shoulder feel the same or different than the left shoulder? Were there parts that were easier or harder to notice/feel? Are there parts of your body that need your attention that you didn’t know were having challenges?
One out of every three Americans does not get enough sleep. If you are in this group and have gotten that nice, relaxed breath down pretty good, it would not be surprising if you drifted off to sleep in the middle of this. It’s a good signal that you need more sleep and that your nervous system calmed down enough to allow you to rest. But to get the benefits of this awareness practice, we do want to be awake for it. Sitting up, with or without supports, may help make that easier. For the super sleepy ones that still want to give it a go, try standing up.
Variation: Progressive Muscle Relaxation For Anxiety Therapy in maryland
The body scan is fantastic for improving awareness for what’s happening in the body, and that may lead to increased relaxation on its own. But we can really improve the relaxation response with a slight variation on the practice and use progressive muscle relaxation. It’s just like it sounds—we are relaxing muscle groups in the body one by one.
Just like the body scan, you start with that slow, relaxed belly breathing, and pick one end of the body to start with—head, feet, hands. This time, we’re not just noticing what’s present there—we’re actively inviting those muscles to relax. Some people can do that by just telling the part of the body to relax. Other folks find that relaxing imagery is helpful, imagining that area of the body pleasantly warm or heavy or whatever sensation is relaxing to them. Many of us can help our muscles to relax by first tensing them up in a concentrated way, holding that tension, and then letting it completely go on an exhale.
If you start at your feet, that can look like crunching up your toes and all the muscles in your feet, holding that tension there for a couple of slow breaths (keep breathing!), and then letting the feet completely relax on an exhale. Then, moving up, you could flex your feet, pointing your toes back towards your head, so that the muscles in the backs of the legs tense up, holding that tension as you breath in and out, and then releasing all those muscles on an exhale. Then, pointing the toes or pushing the feet into the floor if you are sitting on a chair, to feel the muscles in the front of the legs tense up, holding, breathing, and letting it all go. And so on all the way up the body. Again, go slow. When you’ve practiced this a bunch of times in a slow, steady way, and your body and brain associate this strongly with relaxing and calm, you can utilize an express version of this when you are out and about in a stressful situation and want to bring the tension down (a turbulent flight, a contentious meeting, before a high stress presentation). Sitting in a chair you can press your feet firmly into the floor, pull in the muscles of the abdomen, bring tension to the upper body by pressing arms into a chair or table, breathing and releasing it all on an exhale—all while keeping your eyes open and looking like the pro you are! But practice is key for this. It’s hard to make the game winning free throw, with all the eyes on you, if you haven’t practiced that skill a whole lot beforehand.
Listen along
It can be especially pleasant to practice when someone leads you through it, step by step, so you aren’t having to engage the thinking part of your brain to know what to do next. Someone else leading this can also pace you a bit, if you have a tendency to rush your way through these practices. It is not second-best to do this in a guided way—this is just as good as doing it all on your own. Life is an open book test. You get to use any resources that are helpful to you. When I teach this to clients that come in for therapy in Maryland, I lead them through it in the appointment so that they can experience it as fully as possible without trying to figure out how it all works. There are great, free resources for listening to all kinds of guided practices like this at home. UCLA Health has short and long versions of the body scan in more than 15 different languages. Dartmouth College has a free, guided progressive muscle relaxation meditation (and others) on their health services website. There are other great, free resources available from many other major medical centers and universities as well, as more and more research confirms how valuable these practices are for physical & mental health.
A free consultation for Anxiety therapy in Maryland
Give yourself a gift and try one or both of these practices out for yourself—either on your own, or guided. If you want to explore more about how to reduce stress or anxiety and find more ease in your mind & body, feel free to contact me for a free 15 minute phone consultation. You can also find out more about how I help with anxiety treatment, mindfulness-based therapy, and other services throughout my website.
