Unraveling Anxiety

 

02.04.2022 UNRAVELING ANXIETY We live in a time of high anxiety. As Buddhist practitioner and psychotherapist Bruce Tift discussed in a recent episode of The Lion’s Roar Podcast, anxiety is a pretty reasonable response to the realities of our time, which include widespread illness, environmental disaster, and social unrest. “What else could you feel, given the pressures you’re under? Anxiety seems to be the only realistic option,” writes Judy Lief in “Unraveling Anxiety,” in the new issue of Lion’s Roar magazine. Luckily, our March 2022 issue features a wealth of Buddhist wisdom for finding calm in times of anxiety. Inside, you’ll find teachings and practices from leading Buddhist teachers to help ease the suffering of an anxious mind. In these worry-filled times, this issue serves as a helpful resource to find calm, care for yourself, and ease anxiety in any situation. Below, you’ll find three helpful Lion’s Roar teachings that explore how to work with anxiety and relate to it constructively. May they help bring a sense of ease to your weekend. —Lilly Greenblatt, Digital Editor, LionsRoar.com

Unraveling Anxiety Buddhist teacher Judy Lief explains the Buddha’s deep analysis of the roots of anxiety and shows how mindfulness can help us ease the suffering of an anxious mind. Mindfulness of the breath is especially helpful in working with anxiety. Through meditation practice we learn about our own breath patterns—how our breathing changes from fast to slow, shallow to deeper, from tight to free-flowing, depending on our thoughts and emotional state. As we become familiar with these variations, we are able to work with the breath as a healing force. If we feel anxious, we can deliberately regulate our breathing until it is slow and steady. We can drop the habit of holding and tightening our breathing.

How to Work With Anxiety on the Path of Liberation Anxiety is actually a necessary part of our path. Psychotherapist Bruce Tift gives an instruction in how to relate to it constructively. From this point of view, we can see that anxiety is actually a necessary part of our path. As we move in the direction of waking up, increasing our tolerance of more and more awareness or open mind, we will inevitably experience anxiety. At some point or another, anybody committed to a spiritual path may find it important to commit to the experience of anxiety as an approximation of an open state of mind.

Worried About Worrying Susan Piver gives advice on working with a mind that can’t stop working over every detail. When the story tries to hijack the situation (I am so messed up, if only I hadn’t said this, done that, I’ll never be successful/happy/proud/funny/smart), it is very important to let that go. Return to the felt sense of the worry. Feel the texture. Get to know it. In this way, you establish some agency within the situation rather than falling victim to it.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!