Finding Calm: An Awareness Meditation for OCD

The OCD and Anxiety Podcast by Robert James Coaching. Music. Hello and welcome to The OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders disorders taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears. Music.

Hello and welcome to episode 401 i hope that wherever you are today you are doing marvelously well and if you are struggling though with ocd or anxiety and you would like to get some support with that well you can get a free session with me to get that you can head over to my website, robertjamescoaching.com there you can book in directly for that free session or if you prefer you can send me a message and let me know about what you're struggling with in

today's podcast i'm going to be sharing a a short awareness meditation for ocd it's awareness and having Having more awareness of the body is incredibly important when it comes to OCD because so often we're disconnected from the body. So today's episode is all about helping you to build that kind of connection. If you find the podcast helpful, it would be great if you could actually subscribe to this podcast. Most people who listen are not actually subscribed.

So if you could subscribe, it really does help us and I would really, really appreciate it. So many thanks guys i really hope that you enjoy and if you have any questions do please let me know off we go.

As you will already know one of the big issues when it comes to ocd is the fact that we so often get stuck in our heads with the persistent thoughts and the ruminations it can be so easy to just keep going round in circles with those thoughts to try to disprove them you know and it's very exhausting when we're when we're doing this and unfortunately the more that we we think about something you know the more that we act out that that compulsion basically the

more stuck that we actually get because you know all of this thinking is actually the thing that is keeping us kind of stuck in the OCD trap and learning how to to let go of that and do something else is is really of the utmost importance and that's something else is is really about learning how to come more into the body learning how to get more in touch with your in your intuitive self your your kind of being rather than this incessant doing all the time you know this busyness that

i talked about in the previous podcast of always feeling that you have to be doing things in order.

To keep the ocd uh in in check is is not necessarily a very helpful way of going about things and actually when we do learn how to to get more in touch with our bodies to be more in that kind of sense of being more often it can really help us with with managing the the OCD in in the long term and you know I think different types of meditation are a really good way of being able to develop this this skill of awareness awareness of the body and.

And, you know, it's almost like you've got to kind of move your awareness down. When we're stuck in rumination, we're in our heads and we're going around in circles, we're kind of heating up those circuits in our brain. We're getting frustrated and upset about things. Actually, if we just move our awareness down out of our heads and move it down to the heart, and I really think of the heart as a kind of symbol for the body.

When we get more in touch with the heart we're getting more in touch with with the body our general sense of awareness in ourselves and you know so often when we do this we just start to figure things out automatically we don't need to think about things we just begin to know things we know that we don't need to engage with a particular thought we know that that thing that we've been worrying about for ages is not actually quite so threatening we know that

you know by thinking about things incessantly, that it doesn't help us. And we're more in touch with that helpful, positive intuition because we've come into the body, we've let go of thinking and trying to figure things out all the time. We've actually come into kind of resting in ourselves. And when we do that, we just begin to figure things out. We feel healthier, we feel more able to recognize the nonsense that OCD is so often trying to get us to believe.

And so, you know, today we're going to be focused on this meditation that really helps with just kind of getting.

Bit more awareness of of our body when we find ourselves triggered by OCD so as always if you're going to do a meditation activity you need to make sure that you're doing it in a safe way in a safe place never do it when you're when you're driving operating machinery or if you're somewhere where you obviously don't feel safe ideally at home so what I'd like you to do then is to to just sit Sit down either on the floor or on the bed, whatever's comfortable for you.

And just make sure that your spine is straight, but that your shoulders are relaxed. You can even roll your shoulders a few times. Just perhaps allow them to relax a little more. And then close your eyes and bring your attention to the breath. And I'd just like you to notice the inhale and exhale of the breath at the nostrils. And if thoughts come up, just try to allow those thoughts to be there in the background, but bring your attention back to awareness of the breath.

And then I'd just like you to become more aware of the body, to check in with the body and to get a general sense of how you're feeling right now. Checking in with your core, the stomach, the chest, noticing the shoulders, the neck, the throat, the head. And just see if you can notice any tension anywhere in the body. And if you can, just see if you can pay attention to that tension. I'd then like you now to really focus your awareness onto the shoulders.

See if you can move all of your awareness to your shoulders. And to help with this, I'd like you to imagine now that you're breathing in a white light. And this white light is helping you to build that sense of awareness. And you're going to breathe this white light deeply down into your shoulders. And then just simply breathing out and letting go. And then breathe back into your shoulders again. And with each in-breath, you're building more and more awareness in your shoulders.

You might notice them drop a little as you pay attention to them. You may notice sensations in there that you hadn't noticed before because now you're really paying attention to your shoulders. Now we're going to repeat this process but for the hands. In particular, we're going to focus on the palms of your hands.

And you might like to just turn your hands so that the palms are facing upwards and then we're going to breathe into the palms of your hands using the white light breathing deeply into the hands feeling what you can feel there breathing out, letting go and repeating, building that sense of awareness in the palms of your hands and you may begin to feel tingling sensations, or other sensations in the hands and if you do that's fantastic and if you don't

that's also not a problem at all but just keep breathing into the hands building that sense of awareness and focus.

And then moving your attention to the soles of the feet so you're going to breathe in this white light deeply down into the soles of your feet feeling what you can feel there breathing out again, letting go and repeating, breathing deeply into the soles of your feet just allowing yourself to feel to be more aware of what you can feel there, experiencing any sensations that are there and being curious and then moving your attention to the stomach,

breathing in this white light down into the stomach and just paying attention to what you can feel there. And then we're going to finish by taking two very deep and slow breaths. So I'm going to ask you to breathe as low as possible down into the belly, up into the chest, and then to breathe out a nice, long, slow exhale, and then repeat, breathing in down into the belly, up into the chest. And then breathing out that extended, long, slow exhale.

And then just stretching the body a little. Stretching out the arms, stretching the legs. And there we go. This is a meditation that I sometimes use myself in order to try to get a bit more in touch with the body, as I was talking about at the start.

The more that we can get in touch with feeling, rather than being stuck in our heads all the time with those obsessions, for me personally it really does help with with this ability to to kind of let go and to to allow myself to feel the discomfort of the obsessions but not be taken away you know by by all of the the horrible thoughts about it so often when we just allow ourselves to feel we get in touch with that intuition and we realize that we

don't need to worry about those things that actually we are okay and you know i think it's a really good practice if you can to build this kind of meditation awareness practice into your into your daily life and i think the more that that we do that you know the more we actually get the benefits from it so there we go guys i really hope that you enjoyed if you have any questions at all about anything i've spoken about today don't hesitate to get in touch and I will see you next time.

Just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session all you need to do to get that is to head over to my website www.robertjamescoaching.com and there you can leave me a message and we can arrange the free session and now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer Any information that you view on my website, Instagram page, Facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended

to be a substitute for actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor, psychologist or any other medical or mental health professional. Music.