 Hello and welcome to day 67 of the mindfulness challenge. Yesterday we were live on YouTube and we did a forgiveness meditation. Today, day 67 on May 25th. Hello and welcome to today's session. Today's session we're going to be talking about anxiety. Now that word may make you feel anxious the moment we mention it, anxiety. And I hear a lot of people saying oh I'm really anxious, I'm very anxious and I think I'm going to have an anxiety attack. Unfortunately, I can tell you from experience that I've had an anxiety attack. I was doing a presentation in a when I was working in football in the boardroom of the Premier League football club and I was talking to these gentlemen and all of a sudden I felt this rush on my chest. And I thought I'm in trouble here, something's gone wrong. And somebody was talking to me and the only way I can describe it was like they were talking like that in slow motion. So I left, I floated on the stairs and I said to receptionist please can you call me an ambulance? I think I'm having a heart attack. And to be fair the fast responder was there within seconds and he walked in the door and said don't worry mate, you know I'm having a heart attack, you're the one colour. So he sent me to hospital and they did checks. I'd had an anxiety attack never before that I've ever had that anxiety attack. And when people talk about the anxiety rush when it runs from your chest to the top of your head and to the bottom of your feet, I know all about it. And it wasn't pleasant and that was one of the main catalysts for me going back 12 years ago to be able to find mindfulness and start practicing mindfulness. And I know that mindfulness really helped me to dissolve the anxiety by being able to understand that if I wanted to I could separate myself from my feelings to actually what was going on. So I could sometimes feel this anxiety of just feeling myself becoming edgy and anxious. And I would just breathing out and there's a great way of doing it before we go into the meditation is just basically whenever you feel anxious or you feel as if you're becoming a bit edgy, just close your eyes and just count your breaths in one out one, two out two, three out three, four out four, five and out five. And by doing that and focusing on your breath and counting, I learned to be able to when I felt this anxiety come in to use that technique just to be able to dissipate it. And it works really, really well. And you know, people worry about anxiety and being anxious and all of these things and all of the panic attacks that come with it. And yeah, but you know, there's a lot of people out there who have them and and there are ways that we can help ourselves get back into control and not letting the body run away with it by just saying, well, hang on a minute. I know what's going on here. There's nothing wrong. You should fight your flight kicking in, but we don't need it. We're okay. I'm just just having a bit of a rush here. So it may just flick you out a little bit. So think about some of the things that potentially could make you anxious without getting yourself into an anxious state. And we're going to go into a meditation whereby we're going to face some of these anxieties and we're just going to hold them with loving kindness and we're going to, you know, touch and feel them and and let them go and realise that they actually don't have any control. Like yesterday we were talking about forgiveness by sitting with somebody and saying, I forgive you means you take back control. I forgive you. It's the same in anxiety. I understand it. But I know it's an emotion and that emotion serves me no purpose. And I know that emotion is being amplified because of my mind. And the situation is, I'm not going to have a panic attack. There's no need for me to have a panic attack. There's no need for me to get anxious. It's a thought. We are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are, you know, a real. They're there, but they're not true. They very rarely manifest. We've had this conversation a million times, but your anxiety builds on within because you start thinking about a situation. You know, some people struggle going into crowds. I get it when you're in a big crowd. Oh, I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like what. I think it's going to happen to you. Just breathe. In fact, appreciate the energy of people in the crowd. Okay. So as always, we've cut my fingers. I'm going to put a picture up. And I want you just to get very comfortable today and just sit and relax and drop your shoulders and just move your neck from side to side and get into that really comfortable position. And I want you to take a deep breath in. And as you do, just hold it for two seconds before breathing out. Breathing in, holding it for two seconds and breathing out. As you do so, you feel yourself just softening as you just check into your body. And I want you to bring your focus and your awareness to your heart. I want you to breathe through your heart. I want you just to sit and be with the beautiful love and energy that comes from your heart. Breathing in, breathing out. Just spend and check in with your heart. Just sit in that energy. Feel yourself just relaxing as you're just settling in and just focus your awareness to your heart. And realise that it beats every day, every minute, every second. And it's a human life force that just keeps us alive and it's so beautiful and just a lovely energy. Just breathing in and breathing out. I want you to now move your attention to bringing your awareness to your feet and how they're planted on the ground. And do you feel any sensations and many tinglings in your right foot or anything like that? But you feel the connection with your feet onto the surface of where you are, grounding yourself, feeling and dispersing any negative energy or stress or strains as we breathe in and we breathe out. We allow it all to dissipate into the ground. It's focussing on our feet for a moment. Now I want you just to bring your attention to your third eye, which is be in the middle of your eyebrows. This is your visionary. This is your penal gland that allows you to visualise and imagine and see things and experience things. Just I want to bring your attention there and just bring your focus to that. And in doing so I want you just to see yourself stood in this beautiful room which is full of healing crystals and beautiful smells of incense and it's such a beautiful spiritual room. But as you look in the middle of the room there is a box and next to it there is a shelf. And what we're going to do is we're just breathing in nice and gently, understanding that we are in a very safe and secure environment. I want you to bring to your awareness on that shelf. I want you to bring your fears that are written down on a piece of paper. What makes you feel anxious? And I want you to imagine that written down on a piece of paper on a shelf just in front of you. Breathing in and breathing out. Knowing we're safe, secure, we're showing no emotion or attachment to that. I want you to see on that piece of paper what makes you feel anxious. And I want you to pick that piece of paper up and I want you to rip it in half and I want you to rip it in half again and I want you to rip it in half again and I want you to put it into the box. Now I want you just to close the lid on the box and to the right hand side there's a beautiful red ribbon. And I want you to tie a beautiful bow on this box and that fear that makes you feel anxious, the anxiety that causes you now is in that box. And I want you to pick that box up and I want you to put it onto the top shelf. And as you do, you just stand there and I want you to focus your attention to this box on the top shelf and I want you to keep breathing in it. Every time you're breathing you feel this lovely feeling of contentment and satisfaction and just ease and as you every time you breathe out, the box slowly disappears. You're breathing love and harmony and light and you breathe out and the box disappears. Breathing in again, breathing through that lovely calming sweet beautiful spiritual air and as we breathe out now the box just disappears. And it takes away the anxiety, the things that make you feel anxious. And in doing so you feel your body being a lot calmer than it's been for a long time, being a lot more balanced, a lot more settled. You feel a lot lighter, you feel a lot more confident in yourself. You now know that you can do this as many times as you need to take away all of your anxious, all your anxiety, anything that makes you feel anxious. And you have the ability just to breathe in and breathe out and just watch those anxieties just disappear, allowing you now to be fully in a position where by nothing really bothers you anymore because you know everything will pass and the reality of the situation is always far less than the picture that our mind paints. Take a deep breath in, hold it, breathe out and when you're ready slowly wiggle your fingers and come back into the room. So that's a meditation again by visualising how we can deal with our anxieties and things that make us anxious. It's very powerful if we use it and you can use that meditation as many times as you want to get to that point whereby you're putting something in a box and you're tying it up and you're putting it on a top shelf and it just disappears because it doesn't serve you anything. We're here to live our best life. We don't need the fight-off-flight mode that you know has been with us since Neanderthal days, you know. I hope you enjoyed it. Day 67, day 68, tomorrow I'm going to go and enjoy some bank holiday sunshine the moment I've finished editing and popping this video up. I hope you have a lovely day and I'll see you in the next video. 68 days tomorrow. Thanks for watching. Be love and give love and don't forget good morning Julian, I love you. Good morning Julian, I love you. Take care, bye-bye.