The Blog

Isn’t anxiety a real bitch at times? I mean, how debilitating it can be and how it can literally ruin so many social aspects of our life.

For me anxiety manifested in so many ways, one of which was social anxiety. I really struggled to sit around a table with people and have a meal. It was the weirdest thing. I felt that at any moment I was going to have a huge anxiety attack and would need to rush out. The bodily sensations I experienced at the onset of my anxiety attack were all-encompassing and I didn’t have any effective tools to help me deal with such a rise of stress energy.

I used to feel so uptight and unsafe in my own skin and underneath it all, I felt like I wasn’t really good enough. Good Lord, so many emotions to juggle all at once and I wondered if there was ever a way out. I wondered if I’d ever feel calm again and if I would ever be able to live a normal life.

(5 top tips for Meditation - online article Daily Echo)

I got to a point where it was probably just easier not to go out. I used to make every excuse under the sun why I couldn’t do something but really I was just trying to avoid the horrendous anxiety attacks that I would experience so regularly.

At the onset of an attack, my mind would take over and I would go into fight or flight mode. Yup! The lock down. The downward spiral. And I had to flee. The hot flush, the racing heart and the feeling of impending doom. Jeez! Life became so tiring living in this way. I was fed up and something had to give.

I decided to make a few lifestyle changes, one of which, was taking my meditation and mindfulness practice more seriously. I learnt that my nervous system was so shot and my sympathetic nervous system (responsible for the stress hormones) was in the driver seat of my life. The only way to bring some kind of balance was to learn to calm this aspect of my nervous system down so that I could activate the parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for the feel good hormones) and bring a sense of calmness to my mind, body and life.

You can imagine how I felt I noticed this method worked. The “normal”, that I thought was a pipe dream, started to become more of a reality and I started to experience windows of bliss and calm that I thought were lost for ever. It proved to me that I was much more in control of my anxiety than I had realised and this began to fill me with confidence that something could be done.

I increased my meditation practice and made sure that I showed up for myself with my meditation medication persistently and consistently. As a result my world started to change and 95% of my anxiety disappeared. What a massive relief!

Meditation and mindfulness is no good if it is something that is just done “now and again”. It has to be a consistent and persistent practice for it to work. Even when you are a well-established meditator, it is a good idea to review your practice to make sure that the meditations you are doing are still creating the same relaxing effect. Every now and then, it is a lovely idea just to change things up a little bit and keep things fresh.

I became a meditation and mindfulness instructor and have run endless classes with hundreds of people passing through my doors and experiencing exactly the same peace that I discovered. That is why it is such an honour for me to share this life changing wisdom with you so that you too can experience the peace and calm that you so deserve.