3 Minutes To Shift Anxiety
In 3 minutes you can:
Poach an egg
Tie your shoe laces several times
Go to the toilet
Read a few pages in a book
Clean the bench
Brush your teeth
Take 15 slow breaths
I was the person that resisted meditation. There was always something better to be doing.
So I started with just 3 minutes a day. I knew it was achievable, I was not going to resist it, and I could easily fit it into my day without coming up with an excuse not to do it.
Fast forward to today and I have now completed 1000 days of Ucchara - a Tantric chanting and meditation practice that takes roughly 25-30 minutes a day. Committing to a meditation practice, and in particular 1000 days of the same practice, is in my opinion the ultimate expression of:-
The goal of mastering the mind is to show up daily for your practice with no attachment to the result. Abhyasa (consistent practice), Vairagya (non-attachment).
This is hard to do in a society where we are hardwired for reward, goal orientation, and we are addicted to dopamine. It's why we find it so hard not to look at our phones regularly.
To start a meditation practice you need to treat it like running or any other physical endeavour. Your body and mind need to be slowly conditioned to it so that you actually crave, desire and want to do it, rather than feeling like you have to.
A consistent meditation like Ucchara, according to Tantric philosophy, helps us to experience the unbounded nature of who we are, free from all fear, suffering and delimitation. It brings to the surface any of our conditioned beliefs about ourselves so that can process and dissolve them in order to reside in our true nature.
Who wouldn’t want that?
From a scientific perspective it is stimulating the vagus nerve promoting the relaxation response, resetting out chemoreceptors so we are less prone to panic and anxiety, thickening the pre-frontal cortex leading to better attention and impulse control, reduces amygdala activity so we are less prone to fear and anxiety as well as increasing levels of dopamine, serotonin and GABA which leads to feelings of well being, better mood and less fear.
Committing to a regular meditation practice of just 13minutes a day has been shown to improve sleep, lead to more calmness, clarity, and focus, increased happiness, creativity and self compassion as well as a decrease in pain, blood pressure and over-reactivity.
WHOA!
So here are my tips for starting.
START SMALL
I started with 3 minutes a day initially. When that felt comfortable I slowly increased the duration to 5, 10, 12 minutes then eventually Ucchara.
Here is a short meditation to get you started.
HABIT STACK
Put it either at the start of the day, before dinner or lunch or just before bed. A time of day you know you can do it and commit to it.
CHOOSE TO MEDITATE
Make it a choice, not a have to or should. That's where starting small can help so that your nervous system becomes conditioned to it and actually craves more.
CHOOSE A TECHNIQUE THAT WORKS FOR YOU
There are many ways to meditate. An easy place to start is with focussed awareness. This is bringing your attention to something and holding it there. It could be staring at a candle flame or image or focussing on your breath and counting each breath.
From here you can move to more open awareness where you pay attention to everything without focussing on any one thing. Non-judgemental open awareness.
ITS OK IF THE MIND WANDERS
The mind thinks 60,000+ thoughts a day. It's unreasonable to think there will be no thoughts during your meditation. Just come back to the breath every time the mind wanders or focus on the space between your thoughts.
CHANT
It can be a great way to still the mind, stimulate the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system making it easier to sit in meditation. I love chanting, it has not only helped me learn to meditate but also improved my lung capacity and breathing.
COMMIT TO 30 DAYS
Set yourself a little challenge of 30 days in a row - the amount of time it takes to form a habit. What I have noticed with the 1000 day commitment is that now it's just part of my day. I don’t have to think about it, it just happens, just like cleaning my teeth.
Here are some other meditations you might like:-