self healing meditation

Self-healing meditation is essentially a zero-cost, low-threshold emotional regulation tool. 72% of people with mild to moderate emotional internal conflict and anxiety can feel a clear emotional stabilizing effect after persisting for 1-2 weeks. It does not require you to sit cross-legged and meditate, forcibly emptying your brain, and it is not some mysterious "practice". The method that suits you is effective.

I met a girl who works in Internet operations a while ago. She worked overtime for 21 consecutive days during the Double Eleven promotion last year. She turned off the computer and lay in bed, and her mind was still turning to ROI and saving for the next day. She took two melatonin pills and kept her eyes open until three o'clock. I didn't ask her to go to a "deep healing class" that usually lasted an hour. I just said that after you lie in bed every day, turn on white noise if you want to. If you don't want to, just count your breaths quietly. Count again when you count to 10. Don't scold yourself if you get distracted. You can think of whatever you want. It doesn't matter if you count wrongly. The first time she did it, she fell asleep in 8 minutes. After a week of doing it, she could fall asleep within half an hour of lying in bed, and she no longer closed her eyes and her mind was filled with data tables.

In fact, the popular self-healing meditations on the market have different paths, and there is no "only correct" standard. The school derived from Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy emphasizes "non-judgmental awareness". To put it bluntly, when you feel irritated or wronged, don't hold it back or scold yourself for being so pretentious. Just look at the clouds floating in the sky and watch them go away. This is more suitable for people who have been able to distance themselves a little from their emotions. ； There is also a meditation method extended from the traditional yoga system, which requires you to anchor your attention at the center of your eyebrows or heart. When your thoughts run away, you can pull back to this anchor point. It is more friendly to people who usually have a lot of distracting thoughts and their minds are like a marquee when they sit down. ； There are also adaptation methods that have been adjusted in the field of domestic clinical psychology in recent years, which even allow you to pinch a stress relief ball and spin a pen during meditation, as long as you keep part of your attention on the fixed anchor point, which is especially friendly to novices with no foundation at all.

Hey, I encountered a big pitfall when I first came into contact with meditation. Following the online tutorials, I was required to keep my back straight and my mind empty all the time. After sitting for 15 minutes, my legs were so numb that I almost lost consciousness. All I could think about was, "Why am I distracted again?" Am I not the material at all? ”, I felt more irritable after the meditation than before, and almost blocked this method directly. Later, after asking friends who do mindfulness therapy, I found out that the process of "wandering and bringing attention back" is itself the core training content of meditation - the more times you pull your attention back, the less likely you are to be carried away by the emotion when you encounter sudden negative emotions. There is no such thing as a "perfect meditation state".

Last year, the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued a survey on meditation intervention for the general population. 120 respondents who were anxious for more than three days a week on average only did anchored breathing meditation for 10 minutes a day. After four weeks of persistence, 76% of the people reported that their self-reported anxiety dropped by more than 30%, and the stress hormone cortisol in blood tests dropped by an average of 18.6%. This adjustment effect is similar to that of low-dose mild anti-anxiety drugs, and has no side effects.

Of course, not everyone is suitable for random practice at home. This is a point that has been controversial in academic circles: I have seen cases before where people who had experienced clear childhood trauma followed the online "Inner Child Healing Meditation" practice, and triggered a traumatic flashback halfway through, and instead suffered a more serious emotional breakdown. The current consensus in the industry is that if you are severely depressed, diagnosed with PTSD, or have recently experienced major trauma (such as the death of a loved one, a major accident), you should not do meditation with emotional retrospective content on your own. It is best to do it accompanied by a psychotherapist with registered system qualifications. Ordinary breathing anchoring meditation can be tried, but if you feel tight in the chest and emotionally uncomfortable during the process, you can stop at any time. There is no need to force yourself to "complete the exercise."

If you want to try it now, you don’t need to find any special courses. Just sit upright with your feet flat on the ground, put your hands in a comfortable position, and slowly inhale through your nose for 4 seconds. Feel the cool air entering the nasal cavity. Hold it for 2 seconds, then exhale slowly through your mouth for 6 seconds. Exhale all the air in your lungs and do 3 rounds. This is the most basic self-healing meditation. No need to close your eyes, no need to worry about the unfinished work and unanswered messages in your mind. Even if you focus on your breathing for only a second or two in the whole process, it will already work.

Now I don’t set aside half an hour every day to sit upright and meditate. I just use it as a small tool that can be used at any time: when I work on the plan until my mind can’t move anymore, I lean on the back of the chair and breathe for 5 minutes.； When someone stepped on my foot on the subway and I instantly became irritated, I grabbed the handrail and quietly made three rounds of adjustments. ； When something bad happens and you are about to burst into tears, take a breath before speaking. It has never been a "practice lesson" that requires you to exercise a sense of ritual. It is just an emotional Band-Aid that you carry in your pocket. Just take it out and use it when you need it. If it works well, keep using it. If it doesn't work, just try another method. Whatever makes you feel better.