{"id":13587,"date":"2020-07-19T12:29:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T12:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mastermindcontent.co.uk\/?p=13587"},"modified":"2022-08-05T10:30:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T10:30:42","slug":"5-simple-exercises-to-help-manage-your-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mastermindcontent.co.uk\/5-simple-exercises-to-help-manage-your-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Simple Exercises To Help Manage Your Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you suffer from anxiety and depression, I know how yo feel. I struggled with social anxiety for at least 20 years, maybe more. In my search for a cure, I visited several psychologists with zero results. The anxiety exercises I was shown offered very little in the way of managing anxiety and did absolutely nothing for curing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anti-depressant pills were even worse. They made my anxiety worse – to such an extent I felt my skin crawling. The pills went in the bin after just days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After several years of working with trained psychologists, I gave up. I was not convinced then, and I am not convinced now that conventional treatments for anxiety and depression offer a solution. Even medically trained professionals are questioning the value of pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a reason for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It is very difficult to make economically viable models for antibiotics. With heart medication or anti-depressants, a lot of people take them for a long time so you can make money back. An antibiotic that works is unlikely to be used for more than a couple of weeks.” ~ Colin McKay, from the European Federation of the Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), around 260 million people suffer from anxiety disorders. The precise causes for anxiety are unknown, although mental health studies <\/a><\/span>attribute them to genetics, environment, and personal experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What experts do know is that anxiety is largely attributed to psychological disorders. How you think has a knock-on effect with your biological system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, psychological disorders can easily be avoided because the mind creates a perception of reality that is not always true. But what the mind can create, the mind can cure.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Anxiety<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In the 1950s, the Hungarian physician, Hans Selye coined the word \u2018stress\u2019 and theorised that individuals respond to threatening situations in the same way \u2013 the brain triggers a survival mechanism such as adrenaline which shuts down the Sympathetic Nervous System<\/a> (SNS).<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The ancient Greeks used a similar concept Hippocrates called ponos<\/a>. The \u2018Father of Modern Medicine\u2019 discovered that prolonged exposure to stress is a significant burden on the body and causes an imbalance that leads to illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ponos would later be written into Greek mythology as the God of hard labour which is literally associated with the toil of work. However, when the meaning is applied symbolically, it reveals the strain the body suffers from the release of neurotransmitters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neurotransmitters are chemicals that are naturally released in the brain and the cause of emotions. They also carry messages from the brain, through the central nervous system and peripherals nervous systems so the body functions as it is supposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the functions performed by the brain is to release neuro-chemicals in relation to a thought. When you have a thought, or experience you are affair off, the subconscious mind tries to protect you from perceived threats by releasing adrenaline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neurotransmitters are essentially nature\u2019s way of self-preservation. The subconscious is merely protecting you from physical and emotional stress. Once the perceived threat has gone, your bodily functions return to normal and work begins on cleaning out toxic chemicals so that infected parts can grow and heal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, because modern lifestyles cause the brain to trigger stress hormones on a regular basis, the body struggles to regulate toxic chemicals. The result is a mental and physical illness, one of which manifests of anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety Starts in the Mind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The root cause of anxiety will be different for everyone, but in general, it is a psychological disorder that originates from a false perception manufactured by the mind.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"anxiety<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

And the mind has a terrible way of inventing stories that convert stress into distress.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Perceived threats cause the mind to close down in order to protect you emotionally. If this happens on a regular basis, you can develop psychological patterns of negative thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can speak from experience. When I was a teenager I\u2019ve suffered from stress-induced anxiety. My belief was that nobody liked me because I used to get picked on a lot. Most days I felt outcast and alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, I had a lot of friends. However, I was small and had alternative views. Because of this I lacked confidence and was often afraid to speak for fear of being ridiculed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This caused me to feel anxious. Yet the problem was not that people did not like me, I was just an easy target for people to pick fun out of me. But the reason for that is because in my mind, I didn’t think people liked me. Subsequently I developed an attitude that was a barrier to protect my feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that nobody liked me was a self-fulfilling prophecy and by the time I left school I had lost friends and rather than being picked on was bullied. In reality, it was because I didn’t like myself. And that’s a whole other story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were times when I was walking to school that my stomach would churn and my legs felt weak. At the time, I didn\u2019t realise anxiety festering throughout my body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was 31, I had a full-blown anxiety attack. My entire body froze, I was vomiting, and I couldn\u2019t breathe. At one point, I couldn’t breaths and seriously thought I was going to die of asphyxiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To overcome my anxiety disorder, I visited several psychologists. They gave me pills that made me feel worse. They asked about my family but didn’t explore feelings about my past or help me find a root to the problem. The root of the problem was never even mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For an hour or two after these sessions, I felt better. But as I lay in bed at night, that familiar heavy feeling lingered in my stomach. On a bed night, I would lay in bed shivering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I decided conventional medicine was a waste of time of money. So I turned to meditation. At first, that made the anxiety worse, because I couldn’t relax. And I didn’t know how to. Furthermore, I was not meditating properly – I was using a handbook method which, practically, is useless.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Meditation\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Once I mastered the art of meditation<\/a> over several years, I developed mechanisms that enabled me to relax my mind, and subsequently my body. I then developed a technique that enabled me to determine the root cause of my anxiety. it turned out to be the same technique the alchemists have been showing us all along – albeit their teaching are disguised by esoteric symbolism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decoding the hidden meanings of symbolism, essentially helped me to perfect healing techniques you can use to cure anxiety and other illnesses. Both my sister, Michelle and I have removed the emotional wounds that were responsible for limiting believes in our subconscious programming that caused anxiety and debilitating mental disorders including drug addiction, bulimia and body dysmorphia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Causes of Anxiety<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The pinnacle of my anxiety disorder occurred in 2006 when my entire body froze and I vomited violently. I almost choked to death on my own vomit. In the subsequent three years, it became apparent psychology had not accounted for the mind\u2019s role in causing anxiety. It was certainly never explored by the practitioners I visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, brain chemistry is being studied much closer with the use of fMRI technology. Researchers now think that the areas of your brain that control fear responses may be involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This diagnosis makes perfect sense. Studies have shown that anxiety is generally linked to experiences in life that trigger the Fight-Flight, or Freeze mechanism. Common problems include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n