Breathing — Blog — Healy Chen

The active mind

Zen buddhist philosophy preaches we should always stay in the present moment. The mind wants to wander on about way too many thoughts, and it’s imperative for you to recognize it and then detach yourself from the constantly thinking mind. Take a deep breath and feel the presence in the now. Focus the sensation onto the extremities of the body: the fingers typing on a laptop, your feet touching the cold embrace of the floor. The mind will want to fight you on this, but anytime you see it go off once again onto yet another thought string, let it go and return focus to your breathing.

This practice is particularly useful during stressful situations, or when things aren’t especially going your way. Negative thoughts of fear, anxiety, or sadness will flood the brain channels during these times, and it can be quite overwhelming if you are unable to keep attention to the present moment. The mind will draw from your pass memories, or create future scenarios in order to torture you; I think we can all attest the mind is very good at doing both when we most need it to be calm.

Being in the present is also surprisingly useful when things are going well. Surely you’ve experienced this: the night before a huge trip or big life event, it’s rather difficult to get a good night’s sleep. The mind is preoccupied with great anticipation for the positive things that’s about to happen, and it cannot wait for you to get this proper sleep first - it wants to time travel. So there you are, lying in bed wide awake, the mind full of sweet scenarios of what’s to come. Or perhaps you’re like me: anxious about those future event turning out badly.

Sometimes the mind wanderings are so strong that you just have to let it be. Resign to that fact it’s going to be active for awhile, and simply observe the thoughts as they come and go. It’s useless to waste additional energy to fight it - just observe. The mind will quiet down eventually, and you can then go to sleep.

Dance to the heartbeat

I think I am now able to pinpoint exactly when my anxiety levels are elevated.

It’s in the frequency of heartbeat, and I’ve train myself to feel for it when my heart-rate gets elevated when it really shouldn’t be. The body is pumping additional blood in preparation for potential calamity, even though I’m merely in the simple act of getting ready to leave the house. That’s true anxiety, and it’s a problem I’m working on lately.

The increased heart-rate due to anxiety creates many stress hormones, causing the body to constantly be in a fight-or-flight mode, unable to relax. There’s lots of triggers, though for me it’s primarily the habit of thinking ahead into the future and dreading the negative scenarios or possibilities. Funny thing is, most of the time the bad outcomes I’ve created in my head never come to pass, so I suffer the consequences from being anxious without any benefit whatsoever. I’ve steeled myself for nothing.

Being ‘in the moment’ is tough, and it’s a constant practice. At least now I know how to spot when I am overly anxious: an elevated heart-rate for no tangible reason.

How do you control something as involuntary as the heart? Via something you can control: breathing. Whenever I feel a brash of anxiety hitting me, I go into deep breathing mode: going super slowly with both inhale and exhale. I’d also try to clear my mind and concentrate on the breathing alone. That will usually do the trick to get me back to base-level, though sometimes it doesn’t work, and the anxiety will continue on unabated.

It’s definitely a process.