How five minutes meditation can relieve stress

Inside: How meditation can help reduce stress and anxiety in just 5 minutes.

I am a stress head. I am also a chronic worrier who suffers badly with anxiety. I can sometimes get completely paralysed by the stresses weighing me down. I have always accepted this as being ‘how I am‘ and never really done anything to ease the pressure. But lately, I have been so tired of being bogged down that I looked into meditation as a way to relax.

Meditation is a way of trying to calm your brain using mindfulness or a focused activity so that you can become more aware of your thoughts but train your mind to accept them and let them go. A few minutes is all you need to slow down your racing mind and achieve a sense of calm.

I have always thought of meditation as needing a big chunk of time or a calm and serene space in which to do the practice. However, I have discovered that it can be done anywhere and doesn’t really need to take any time at all.

Meditate to relieve stress

As a busy mum I do not have time in my day for sitting down for an hour in a candle-lit room to meditate. I mean, wouldn’t that be wonderful? But no, I will have to wait a good few years before that will ever happen.

But it was exactly that picture that stopped me ever giving it a go. I just figured meditation was for people with not much else to do in their lives.

How wrong I was!

Meditation is simply the slowing down of your mind by practicing mindfulness or focusing on an activity that stops your mind from racing at full speed.

The idea is not to stop yourself from thinking completely as it is perfectly normal for your mind to wander. But instead of allowing those thoughts to take over and get those stress levels rising, you gently steer yourself back to the meditative exercise and let the thoughts drift away again.

Busy lives, busy minds

We live in such a busy world now that our brains are constantly bombarded with stressors. We are designed to react to stress by producing hormones to help us flee the situation (think of a big bear chasing us when we were hunter-gatherers) but we live in such a society now that we can’t run away. We are surrounded by stresses such as work, family pressure, money, commuting, and trying to balance it all.

As a result, we become overwhelmed and exist in a constant state of stress.

I know that I struggle to unwind even when we have relaxed days as the worries of life never leave me. I am permanently switched on.

After trying meditation I just had to share my findings with you as it has had such a profound effect on my days. I feel calmer and more in control in general but I also know that if I find myself feeling stressed out I can bring myself back to a place of calm quickly and easily.

How does it work?

The reason we are existing in a heightened state of stress is that we have lost the ability to hold attention to our surroundings and have no awareness of what is going on. Our brains are so underdeveloped in the modern world that we react without fully processing a situation.

For example, you may post a photo on social media and not get as many likes or comments as you’d like. Instead of thinking rationally and telling yourself “people are probably busy, likes don’t play any part in my value as a person”, you will go straight to fight or flight mode and tell yourself “the photo is rubbish, nobody likes me, I am so unpopular?”

Meditation works by strengthening your attention, slowing down your thoughts so that you can focus clearly on what you are meant to be doing instead of worrying about something else. Just like building a muscle, the more you work on it the stronger you become. Eventually, the muscle gets so strong that our attention is great even when we are not meditating.

The other thing that it does is to build your awareness. So often we rush from situation to response without properly analysing what is happening around us. By slowing everything down, allowing thoughts to drift in and drift out, you learn to regulate your thoughts without jumping to conclusions.

5 Minute breathing exercises

Focusing on your breath is one of the best ways to do a meditative exercise as it is boring and repetitive.

Senses meditation

Take 2 deep breaths, expanding your lungs on each inhale and letting them lower on the exhale.

Begin to check in with all of the senses and thoughts.

• What do I hear?
• What do I smell?
• What do I see?
• What do I taste?
• Am I hot/cold/warm?
• How do I feel?
• What is on my mind?

Breath meditation

Inhale to the count of 4

Exhale to the count of 4

Counting meditation

Take a deep breath in and let it out again. Say to yourself ‘1’

Take a deep breath in and let it out again. Say to yourself ‘2’

Take a deep breath in and let it out again. Say to yourself ‘3’

etc etc…

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With each of these mediation exercises, you mind will begin to wander. That is perfectly normal and acceptable within the practice. When it happens, recognise that you have wandered from the activity and gently bring yourself back to the breathing. The more you practice, the easier it will be to bring yourself back to a focused state and the less you’ll wander off track in the first place.

Mindful activities

Meditation isn’t for everyone. My own husband thinks it is a load of nonsense and refuses to “sit and breathe when he could be doing something more interesting”. That’s fine, some people really do struggle to sit and do ‘nothing’.

Instead, try some mindful activities that are equally in need of your concentration.

Colouring. There are lots of adult colouring books available these days. The act of focusing on carefully colouring an intricate picture helps people to zone out from everyday thoughts and concentrate on colouring instead. Lots of people swear by it as a way of unwinding after a stressful day.

Running. I discovered the power of running during lockdown and it truly did help my mind. It is important to focus on your breathing and where you are running and so that leaves little room in your conscious to stress about anything.

Walking. If running isn’t for you, walking is equally as good for helping you escape your stressors. Of course, your mind is able to wander but you can train your thoughts to return to appreciating the beauty of nature around you or you can go walking with a friend so you are too busy chatting to be inside your own head.

Reading. Books offer an amazing way to escape reality and of course you need to focus on the words to get through the book.

Puzzles. This is how I get my husband to relax – a 5000 piece puzzle does not allow any time for worrying when you are searching for puzzle pieces let me tell you!

Sleep meditation

Another great way to access the benefits of meditation without losing any time within your day, is to listen to a guided meditation at bedtime.

Often, it is as soon as our heads hit the pillow that our minds begin to race and we are unable to relax to go to sleep. By following a guided meditation, we are forced to listen in, switch off, and allow our minds to empty.

There are lots of ways to access guided meditations…

Apps such as Headspace and Calm come highly recommended.

Amazon Alexa has a few sleep meditation programs you can access from the app or your smart devices.

YouTube offers lots of audio-only videos with guided meditations of all lengths. Of course, you can also find many CD’s and MP3 downloads on Amazon.

Deep sleep and stress are closely linked and so by getting a better night sleep, increasing your REM sleep period, you are able to battle those stress levels to a more manageable level.

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However you practice it, meditation strengthens the muscles that we’ve lost in today’s society and brings us back into a state of calm in an otherwise hectic world.

Let me know how you get on!