Calming the Rush of Panic Read Online Free PDF Page B

meant not to create more panic or pressure in your life but as a way to help you practice engaging with panic in safe and relatively comfortable surroundings. Know that you can stop at any time. Please take care of yourself in the best way you need to. Remember: easy does it; one step at a time. Slowly and gradually you can learn to live with more ease.
    Mindful Breathing
    Mindful breathing is part of the foundation of MBSR and often our first recommendation to anyone living with the challenges of panic. It involves diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing, also known as belly breathing, which is very helpful in calming the body because it’s the way that you naturally breathe when asleep or relaxed.
    Take a moment right now to be mindful of your breath. Gently place your hands on your belly. Breathe normally and naturally. When you breathe in, simply be aware that you’re breathing in; when you breathe out, be aware that you’re breathing out. Feel your belly rise and fall with your breath. Now take two more mindful breaths and then continue reading.
    The reason diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing is considered an “anti-panic/anxiety” breath is that it helps regulate irregular breathing patterns fairly quickly. Often when you feel panicked, your breathing will become rapid, irregular, and shallow. You’ll tend to breathe mostly in your chest and neck. When you shift to diaphragmatic breathing, this will help regulate the breath so you can begin to feel more balanced and relaxed.
Foundational Practice: Mindful Breathing
Find a quiet place where you can be undisturbed. Turn off your phone and any other devices that might take you away from this special time that you’re giving yourself. Assume a posture in which you can be comfortable and alert, whether sitting in a chair or on a cushion or lying down.
You can learn mindful breathing by reading the script below, pausing briefly after each paragraph. Aim for a total time of at least five minutes. You’re welcome to download a (fifteen-minute) recording from New Harbinger Publications at newharbinger.com/25264.
Take a few moments to congratulate yourself that you are taking some time for meditation.
Now bring awareness to the breath in the abdomen or belly, breathing normally and naturally. As you breathe in, be aware of breathing in; as you breathe out, be aware of breathing out. If it is helpful, place your hands on your belly to feel it expand with each inhalation and contract with each exhalation. Simply maintaining this awareness of the breath, breathing in and breathing out. If you are unable to feel the breath in your belly, find some other way—place your hands on your chest, or feel the movement of air in and out of your nostrils.
There’s no need to visualize, count, or figure out the breath. Just being mindful of breathing in and out. Without judgment, just watching, feeling, experiencing the breath as it ebbs and flows. There’s no place to go and nothing else to do. Just being in the here and now, mindful of your breathing, living life one inhalation and one exhalation at a time.
As you breathe in, feel the abdomen or belly expand or rise like a balloon inflating, then feel it receding or deflating or falling on the exhalation. Just riding the waves of the breath, moment by moment, breathing in and out.
From time to time, you may notice that your attention has wandered from the breath. When you notice this, just acknowledge that your mind wandered and acknowledge where it went, and then bring your attention gently back to the breath.
Remember, there is no other place to go, nothing else you need to do, and no one you have to be right now. Just breathing in and breathing out.
Breathing normally and naturally, without manipulating the breath in any way, just being aware of the breath as it comes and goes.
As you come to the end of this meditation, congratulate yourself that you took this time to be present and that you are directly cultivating inner resources