Contents
Effective Meditation Techniques for Mental Relief
There are a ton of different styles of meditation. Below are some common ones:
- Body scan meditation
- Transcendental meditation
- Movement meditation
- Mindfulness meditation
- Mantra meditation
The question is, which of these is best meditation for someone suffering from OCD symptoms?
There is no easy answer to that question, and that is perfectly fine. Our recommendation is to try out a few and see what works best for you.
Body scan meditation for anxiety
Body scan meditation may be the easiest one to get started with. Here are the steps:
- Take three deep breaths through the nose, into the belly.
- As you let go of the third breath, close your eyes.
- Starting at the top of the head, focus on how each part of your body feels. Try not to judge the feeling. Simply be interested in how the body part is feeling. Do not worry if there is any pain or discomfort. Try to stay with the feeling.
- Spend about twenty seconds on each body part, going from the head to the neck to the shoulders to the chest and on down until you reach the toes.
- Open your eyes.
Here is a link to a guided body scan meditation that can be done any time of day. It can be especially helpful to begin your day with a body scan, to help you ground yourself in the physical reality of your body. OCD can often do its best to sever the link between mind and body, and a body scan will help anchor your mind in the body, which can be such a powerful tool in alleviating the second-layer thoughts that make OCD so damaging.
Walking meditation for anxiety
Another type of meditation that can provide immediate relief to the acute physical symptoms of OCD-induced anxiety is a walking meditation. Simply stand up and begin walking, focusing as much as possible on the feeling of the ground beneath your feet, the feel of your foot as it touches the floor or the ground. If you’re doubting what you’re feeling, questioning if you’re feeling the right thing, take a deep breath, it’s okay! The feeling will pass. Continue walking, shake out your arms if need be.
Here’s a great guided walking meditation to get started.
Blue skies to relieve anxiety
One last piece of advice: remember the blue sky.
Whenever I get in a rut, particularly with OCD-induced anxiety, one of the most helpful things for me to think of is the blue sky metaphor. Think of our minds as blue skies and negative thoughts as clouds. Those clouds appear to block out the sky, but the blue sky is always there.
Even in the chest-squeezing, hyperventilated depths of the most intense panic attack, the blue sky is there. The blue sky is the natural state of the mind. There is no need to think your way to the blue sky, it simply exists. It’s a subtle but powerful shift, to go from thinking that a calm mind is something you need to build, a way of thinking you need to reach, to understanding that the default state of the mind is calm and untroubled.
The only thing we need to do is let go, and our minds will do the rest.
Additional EMDR Resources
- Read more about what EMDR is and how it works.
- Check out our reviews of BetterHelp and VirtualEMDR to see if online or self-administered therapy is right for you
