Jane,

In addition to Buddhist Wife’s tender words, a couple things came to heart as I read your words. There are a few different reasons our body can become overwhelmed with anxiety, and i’ve found a few ways of working with them. I’m not a doctor either, so if your mental state doesn’t improve or worsens consider looking into professional help.

The first cause of anxiety is an abundance of energy in the body, with no outlet. This makes breath awareness meditation tricky, because without a steady concentration we can over-breathe (sometimes called a piston breath) and actually increase the amount of energy… like stuffing a balloon that is already full. What I have found incredibly helpful for this state is a Zen trick of energy release. We can jump up and down, scream, beat on some pillows, or lay down and flail our limbs around. This gets the energy moving again.

If that doesn’t work or isn’t available (like at work for instance) then another thing we can do is pull our shirt up over our nose and breathe into it for awhile. My doctor told a close friend that sometimes when we have stress, we breathe faster than we need to and change the oxygen to carbon dioxide ratio in our body, which responds with a feeling of heightened anxiety. By breathing into our shirt, we increase the co2 concentration which helps the body shift back to normal. If this method helps, it should help after around 10-15 minutes. My friend still uses this method for her anxiety. Another thing that just occurred to me is the use of “sepia”, which is a homeopathic something or other she uses because her anxiety seemed to peak during her period (vibrating between anxiety and aggression, which she swears sepia works well for)

Again, I’m not a doctor, and so there may be other factors unknown to me that warrant additional questions and advice, but if either of these work, the results should be noticeable right away. Namaste.

With warmth,
Matt