Tags
Anxiety, Breathing, Cancer, Health, Medicine, Meditation, Mental Health, Mind, Mindfulness, Panic Attack, Psychiatry, Psychology, Resilience, Science, Self-help, Stress
This week, I worked on shooting my second YouTube video, Stress: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It got me thinking about a rather stressful situation I found myself in a while back and how breathing got me through it.
A few years ago, during a total body CT scan for cancer follow-up, the power went out. Total darkness! Stuck in a coffin-like tube! The technician came in and said the power should be back up soon, then vanished. I said to myself, “I’ll nap or meditate…”
After ten minutes or so, I realized that my body was on-alert! No napping today. I began meditating, focusing on my breathing. It calmed me for a while, but then the body took over. It was trapped! Heart rate began to increase; a scream was pushing to come out! It took every ounce of mindful attention to keep managing my breathing. I knew if I stopped meditating, my body’s PANIC would hijack my brain and body. BREATHE! So my mind carried on—at least 5-10 minutes of watching my heart rate soar, then plateau, then begin to slow down. My mind had sustained the Relaxation response and navigated through my body’s terror.
The mind-body link in the diaphragm, that great muscle that produces every breath, had prevailed. My mind—the parent of the child-like body—had reassured me that I could sustain a calm sense of self in a terrifying experience. BREATHE.
Links on Mindfulness and Meditation:
Harvard Blog: Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress
Goldin,P. and Gross, J. (2014). Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on Emotional Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203918/
Mayo Clinic: Meditation: A simple fast way to reduce stress
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/meditation/in-depth/meditation/art-20045858
Image Credit:
Photo by Fabian Møller on Unsplash
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