Can meditation really reduce your stress and anxiety? Yes, but not by making the stress go away.

People assume I am relaxed. I am not. I get stressed and I get overwhelmed a lot. I sat at a wedding next to people I did not know and my body did the whole thing, blood pulled to the muscles, digestion stopped, pancreas working overtime, all for a room with no danger in it. Meditation will not sort out your boss. What it does is let you catch the stress early, while it is still small, before you stack the next one on top.

One thing to try: Sit, rest your arms on your legs, and watch the breath breathe you. It does it all night without your help.

In this episode

• (1:38) Since I started meditating I feel it less
• (2:51) Thirty seconds of waiting and out comes the phone
• (3:49) The wedding, and a table of strangers
• (6:40) What my body did with no danger in the room
• (9:14) It will not fix your workplace
• (10:18) Catching it early, before the comfort eating
• (12:43) Try this with me now
• (14:05) Just watch it. It breathes all night without you

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

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So, why does meditation reduce stress? It's quite a simple question, really. What a lot of people don't know about

me is I really do get stressed, and I suffer from overwhelm a lot.

And people say, yeah, but you're so relaxed and you're so chilled, and you never seem to let anything get

to you. Well, the truth is, I do get really stressed, and I do get overwhelmed. And what people don't

see, and they certainly don't see it so much on my podcast or on Facebook, is they never see the

full picture. You never see the full picture of someone else's life.

And my overwhelm creeps up about every three or four months, and I want to run

it sounds funny saying, I want to run. I'm paralysed from just below my neck. And, yeah, I just want

to turn my back on it and get get away from everything. I want to draw the curtains, lock the

door, sit down on the front room floor.

I cannot cope with this anymore. I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed, and I don't want to do it anymore.

Enough is enough.

And yes, I feel like that quite often, not all the time, but I do feel like that. But here's

the thing. Since I've been meditating, I feel like that less. And here's why. On today's podcast, I will

share why and the kind of techniques I use in meditation that will help you to reduce your stress and

anxiety. But before that, I want to say thank you to my patrons and to my supporters on Facebook. You

are awesome. Without you, I would not have been able to upgrade my microphone. So you've got a better sounding,

cooler, Steven.

And for anybody new to this podcast, I'm Steven Webb, and I'm paralysed in a wheelchair. I have been for

nearly 30 years. And I use my suffering as a stepping stone to find more inner peace and help to

spread inner peace around the world. And this podcast is Stillness in the Storms. So let's get on with the

show.

Stress, anxiety. You know, they seem to be a normal part of society now. It's just

life. We're just all stressed. We're busier. Well, we are busy. We don't have a moment peace. If we have

a moment peace, we pick up our phones and start scrolling. If we're waiting for the train for just 30

seconds, we whip our phone out or we do something else. You know, I smoked. I have smoked for the

best part of my life. And when I did not have a phone or anything like that, I would light

up a cigarette you know It almost Seems like we don't want to sit and do nothing. If we sit

and do nothing, we let boredom creep in and we don't know what to do with ourselves. And here's the

thing. We don't know what's going on inside of our bodies. We don't know what's going on inside of our

minds and how our emotions are if we don't give any time to have a look at them. I can

remember I was sat at a wedding, and I was one of the ones in the. Near the front of

the wedding it's a really small room, and we're all sat in like, a square. And just in front of

me was the square where the bride and groom were going to come in. And I didn't know most of

the people at the wedding. I was sat next to my partner, and I did not know any of them

any more than, you know, that day. And people to my right was the same, and a few dignitaries that

I'd never seen before. And I was sat there and I was. It was warm. It was, you know, quite

stuffy. And we've been sat there about an hour. And while I sat there, I was starting to feel a

bit anxious. I could feel myself warming up. And then my breathing started changing. And then I thought

I was gonna pass out. I thought I was gonna pass out. I thought I was gonna you know, die

there. In the next 10 minutes, my heart started beating out through my chest

my I say my hands and legs started to go dead. They're already dead anyway, because I'm paralysed. But I'm

sure they would have felt dead if I. If they weren't paralysed. And

I just. I didn't say anything to my partner, but I was sitting there really thinking, I am gonna pass

out any minute. This is not right. Something's not right in my body something's really And little did I

know I was having a panic attack. I didn't know anything about panic attacks. I never heard the phrase before.

I didn't even know I was someone that gets stressed or overwhelmed. But there I was in this room,

and I I had the image in my head of me passing out in front of all these people um

ending up laying on the floor, my bum stuck stuck up in the air, you know, exposing that tattoo that

I've got on the bottom my bottom of my back, the one that says, if you can read this, please

place back in chair.

I'm joking. I haven't got that tattoo. Really. If you could want to have.

Oh, it'd be fun And I wouldn't Even feel it if they did that for me, you know, if you,

if you could read this tattoo, please place back in chair. Oh, anyway, right. Where was I to Yeah I

had this image of me lying on the floor in front of me and I just realised I'd had a

panic attack a few months later. It was like, oh, that's what a panic attack is. Here's the thing. I

had no idea that in that moment my body and myself thought I was under attack.

I thought at that moment my body done the equivalent to as if I was going to be eaten

by two saber-toothed tigers My heart started beating faster, my blood started thickening, my breathing started

to become deeper. My body was preparing for a fight of its life. My body

was preparing just in case I got cut, that it could heal the cut. It stopped digesting my food. It

stopped putting the blood to my hands and legs it put all the blood to the muscles just in case

I needed to run. My, my pancreas was producing enough glucose of the equivalent of two or three

chocolate bars, all in those few seconds. And normally if you're really under attack,

you don't worry about the feelings because you're so in that fight, flight or freeze scenario

that you're not feeling them. You know, if you're fighting someone, you're not feeling that your belly's feeling a bit

off or your breathing's a bit heavier and your heart's beating out your chest. But

there I was, I was been attacked by saber-toothed tigers without even knowing it, and my body was doing that

the same thing. So where does meditation come into helping this? In meditation, unless you're meditating that you

want to communicate with aliens or you're trying to find some blissful, wonderful state, you know, I'm not talking about

that kind of meditation. I'm talking about the kind of meditation that you're trying to reduce your suffering. You're trying

to wake up to what's real. You're trying to really improve your life. So when we sit in that kind

of meditation, we observe our feelings, we observe our thoughts and we recognise them

and we're a bit inquisitive about them. Why am I feeling like this? Where is this feeling coming from? What

is the information in the feeling? And now, because I do that, because I meditate several times a week, sometimes

several times a day, and I try to bring meditation into my normal day, I

now recognise when my body's feeling a certain way. I recognise when I'm starting to feel overwhelmed because I can

see the Signs.

So that day when I was sat at that wedding, I would have sat there. If I was a meditator

at that point I would have gone ah I'm feeling a little anxious. I am amongst people that I don't

know ah My breathing's going a bit heavier, that's okay. And I would have recognised the process.

I would not have gone down the or. It's highly unlikely that I would have gone down that same scenario

of the body coming under attack by a couple of saber-toothed tigers So meditation

really helps you to reduce stress. It won't get rid of the stress out of your life. You've got to

deal with the things that's given you stress. You know, it won't sort out your workplace. You won't meditate and

go into work and your boss will suddenly be kind and compassionate and lovely towards you and suddenly give you

that pay rise you're looking for. Suddenly when you phone the bank, they're not going to suddenly go, oh, here's

five hundred dollars When you're a little skinned. No, it's not going to change the external world, but it changes

the way you experience the external world from an internal perspective. It reduces

the effects of what the stress give you. And stress is like something that builds up. So you you take

the first step onto the stress ladder and you're feeling a little anxious, feeling a little stressed. Most people can

cope at that point. And then things pile on top of you a little more and you get a little

more stressed. You step up another one. Now then what meditation does is recognise you're on the ladder. Oh, I'm

on the ladder. I'm starting to feel stressed. I'm starting to really get annoyed and short-tempered with people and I'm

starting to feel overwhelmed. And

then instead of just automatically jump into the comfort things of comfort eating or avoidance or drinking or whatever we

do to try to avoid the stress. Because what we're doing is running around trying to disconnect from the stress

instead of dealing with the stress and recognising it. So what we do is we recognise the stress. Ah, I'm

starting to feel stressed. Why is that? And sometimes it's okay to be stressed. Sometimes you

got a couple of deadlines at work and the boss, rightly so, is on your back a little bit. He

might be able to do it a little bit nicer away rightly so things need to be done. Perhaps you

haven't done that work you needed to do or perhaps you haven't completed something. You know, whatever the reason, you

know, perhaps people are off sick and you've got an extra workload on you and they're relying on you, things

like that. So it's okay to have a bit of stress. What it is, is when we stack it on

top of each other and we don't recognise it, we don't see it. So meditation, just by simply observing

our thoughts, watching them come and go, not recognising that we don't have to do anything with them, or recognising

why they are there, automatically has the outcome of reducing our stress. I hope that makes sense.

I hope that makes sense. Just by recognising and becoming aware of something, you can do something about it.

Very often we get stressed and we try to disconnect because we think that's the only way of feeling better.

And yes, having a drink, having a night out, yes, having sex, all those other things do give us

that little bit of freedom from stress temporarily, but really they're just adding the more chemicals on top of each

other and they're adding to the stress.

In the long run, you just end up more stressed. So at the beginning of the podcast, I promise you

that I would tell you what I do, some of the techniques I use in my meditations, and it'll

probably disappoint you because you may be looking for something profound and something amazing. It's really not. I

sit and

I become aware of my breath. And we can do this now do this with me.

So just take a breath and let your arms go down either side of you and rest them on top

of your legs.

Don't think about grounding. Don't think about all the other meditation things. All we're going to do is sit and

watch our breath.

I'm breathing in and I'm breathing out.

And invite your body to relax. Don't tell it to relax. Don't tell it to speed up its breath or

slow down. Don't tell it to do anything. Just invite it to be there with you now.

And as you invite it, just allow it to happen. So breathe in, calm. Breathe out. Relax.

When you breathe out, relax. Just allow your body to relax. You're

just giving it permission.

You cannot tell it.

You don't have to do anything with your breathing. Just observe your breathing. Just watch it. Just sit back and

watch your breathing. Because it breathes all night and does it all day. When you're not involved, when you're busy

thinking to make your to-do list or your ice cream or your wonderful partner or your intimate moments. Whatever

you're dreaming and whatever you're thinking about could be your food, your Body's doing the breathing,

so we just become aware of what's coming up, what's going on in our bodies right now, what's going on

in our minds. And the idea is not to focus too much on your breath, not to focus too much

on your thinking is to have a soften with it. So imagine observing your breath right

now. If you observe your breath, just watch it. I'm breathing in, I'm breathing out. But do it from a

soft focus, not as in a rigid. Right. That's a breath. Ah, A

gentle breath.

Ah, A gentle thought. When we soften our gaze on it, we can allow

whatever's going on inside of our bodies, whether it's a stress or whether we're worried about something, we can allow

it to come up and we can soften that focus on it without it affecting us too much.

And it's almost like we're not focused on it. And we gain clarity

just by allowing it to be. Very often we're pushing these things away. And when

we allow things to come up and we gain clarity on it, we gain insight, and we gain insight to

how the body works, what is going on in our lives, what's going on in the world, why are we

feeling stressed? And with that information, you can do something about it it

really is that important? And like, we just sat there now and we've come out of the meditation now, but

meditation's around all the time. You know, it doesn't stop stop when you stand up off the cushion. Just, you

know, if you're stressed out during the day, take a breath.

Why am I stressed? What's

going on right now? What can I take out my life right now? What can I do to just help

this current situation? It

doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to ever You know, it would help if you meditated one hour

every morning and you had brilliant techniques. Yes, of course it would help. You can get a lot of the

benefit just by spending 15, 20 minutes once a day and then just learning the technique of observing

what's going on inside,

observing how you respond and how you are seeing things and feeling things in your life. And very

often, a lot of these things you don't have to do anything with. They're just screaming out to go, hey,

pay attention to me. You should be really worried about this one thing. And then you just go, oh, okay.

Thank you for bringing that to my attention. And then it goes, that's okay. And it disappears. It disappears. After

weeks of like, oh listen to me. It's like a child that wants to be listened to. And that's the

reality. So I'm Steven Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms. And you can head over to my website,

StevenWebb.com spelt with a V. I'll repeat that so you can picture it in your head. Picture it right now,

the word Steven with a v web double b.com

head over to my website. You can go and listen to all my meditations online completely free, just clicking the

meditations. And if you're really awesome and it's not for everybody, but if is for someone that really wants some

more inner peace, and if you really want to transcend your anxiety and stress, consider becoming a

patron. There's a link on my website at the top, right next to the meditations on that website that you

visualize so brilliantly in your head, StevenWebb.com you're awesome. Thank you. And namaste.