Headspace, Managing Anxiety pack, Session 4:
Today we’re going to continue with same idea of noting, but going to introduce a second little exercise to do in everyday life as well. It’s important to understand why we’re placing such an importance on physical sensations and being present in the body.
Generally speaking, emotions need a lot of thought to fuel the emotion. Once we stop thinking about it, or about anything which uses that emotion, essentially the emotion runs out of fuel, runs out of momentum.
But what usually happens is, a thought arises, we give it a lot of attention, we give it a lot of fuel, it encourages the emotion, then we get a physical sensation which then the brain acknowledges is a reflection, say of anxiety or worry. Before we know, it we’re in a loop where the mind is reflecting the sensations in the body and the body is increasingly reflecting the sensations of the thoughts in the mind. So we’re in this sort of negative loop.
But by coming into the body and by very deliberately placing our attention and our focus on the physical sensations in the body, even just with the breath, we start to cut the loop. we step out of that loop and we’re just present with one thing, something very physical and very tangible. Therefore the emotion isn’t being fed in quite the same way and we’re able to get a slightly different perspective on it.
These are incredible thoughts and observations that are just the lead-up intro comments on today’s ten-minute exercise.