TURNING ANXIETY INTO CALMNESS

There is a Youtube on this subject that everyone might find useful, as I did.
It's called

How Your Brain Can Turn Anxiety Into Calmness:



Prof. Martin Rossman at the University of California lectures to students on the subject
of how our imagination can help or harm us. If we suffer from anxiety (who doesn't?),
he recommends using IMAGERY to change our thoughts from stressful to peaceful.

Imagery is a topic often recommended as a technique in TMS healing, and this video
does an excellent job of explaining how imagery can calm an anxious mind.

The video is about an hour and a half long, most of it technical, explaining how
imagination affects the mind. The last half hour focuses on examples of using
imagery to calm the mind. Rossman says this can be done quickly if we imagine
ourself on a sunny beach such as one in Hawaii and feel the sun and let the light
engulf us as we experience the peace and safety of being at such a beach.

I put my mind back on an island in the Minnesota-Ontario northwoods canoe canoe
country where I spent blissful days and weeks on vacation some years ago. Imagining
myself back there never fails to calm me, recalling the warmth of the sun, the gentle
breezes in the trees, the sound of water lapping onto the shore, the calls of loons
across the lake.

You can imagine yourself to be at a calming place, maybe even with someone you love.
Rossman suggests imaging together with deep belly breathing and exhaling as you
tell yourself you are letting go of all anxiety and tension.

Imagining yourself at a peaceful place can be done in an instant and you don't have
to take a plane to get there. Let your mind go there, and feel the calm.

 

Thanks, Forest…it really is worth the time to watch. (BTW, I DID watch again yesterday afternoon.) It is part of a "mini medical school" for the general public and the guided imagery exercise at the end demonstrates its effectiveness.

 

this was an excellent class. Thank you so much for posting it. It really was worth it to watch the whole thing.

 

I really like Professor Rossman's imagery video and find that when I switch my mind
from anxiety to visualizing myself in the northwoods canoe country, I do calm down.

If anyone has a favorite calming place, that's wonderful. If not, imagine one.