Anxiety and the present moment…a contradiction.

If you are experiencing the present moment through your senses it is likely that you are not feeling anxious.

Anxiety is usually a thought about the future. Or perhaps a thought about the past that we call regret. But what about the present moment? Focus on what you can hear or what you can feel in the body and your mind will quieten down bringing down the anxieties as it quietens.

It is quite difficult to be in the moment and to feel anxious at the same time…try it. Notice that your mind will roam to other times and places but if you here and now you are probably feeling calm. Spooky eh?

The ideas behind mindfulness are quite a blow to traditional therapy which seek to do a lot of thinking about the past. For some it seems, it is the nature of our consciousness that is the issue and the source of our problems and not anything more than that.

How to be in the moment is a learned technique and not as hard as you think (joke).

Mindfulness Meditation- the art of the now

Mindfulness as a concept is gaining interest. I recommend the idea of Mindful meditation to everyone, even the hard bitten hypnotherapist or CBT therapist who has seen it all before.

I use Mindfulness in my Harley St room as a great way of getting things started after the chatting bit. I invite the client to listen to the traffic, I am on the third floor on a busy central London street, the sound is a bit like the rushing of waves plus a few sirens now and again.

Focus on the senses and you have the essence of Mindfulness. Sound is often the preferred sense but physical sensation is also popular. Clients often report that the mind quietens down, it seems that sensation in the present moment helps to shut out the mind that is usually concerned with other times, other places. The present moment is often a place of very little anxiety or worry or fear, almost enjoyable!

For some Mindfulness in itself is the answer to their problems. The past has gone, the future hasn’t happened and the present moment, experienced through the physical senses, is good enough.

Recommended

Sessions in central London