Sanjay Gupta, the CNN Chief Medical Correspondent who is also a neurosurgeon, documented the personal instructions on meditation that Dalai Lama’s gave to him. The Dalai Lama taught him to meditate by focusing on his worry while imagining isolating it in a bubble. He did this as a daily practice of meditation for a few months and vouched for it having changed his life in a significant way. By putting his worries in a bubble, he allowed himself to worry, but in a way that did not generate a vicious self-perpetuating cycle. With this approach, the worry does not get worse. It can either stay the same or get better. If the worry is inappropriate or disproportionate, it will not only get better by having you see it in a more reality based perspective.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/health/sanjay-gupta-dalai-lama-meditation/?ref=yfp

One of the worst aspects of anxiety is that it has an all-pervasive quality. So-called “free-floating anxiety” is everywhere which means that one can find it hard to pin-point anything about it. What I sometimes asked my patients to do was to use their imagination to put the anxiety onto some part of their body, such as the chest, or their abdomen. It is like finding a location or a point that enabled them to keep the anxiety in one place. I suggested that they continue, gently but steadfastly, to focus on this point, to look at it and feel it. I encouraged them to keep returning to it if their mind wandered off. I sometimes asked them to move the anxiety just a bit with their breathing; an inch here or there. 

Once you’ve localized some anxiety, just breathe and feel it. Treat it like your friend, stay with it through thick or thin. You can even begin to play with it!

Keep breathing, and keep practicing just accepting this feeling of anxiety – kind of like accepting the feeling of the weight of your pillow on your abdomen. If the sensation of anxiety starts to fade, bring it back and accept it. Simply stay with the anxiety instead of trying to get rid of it or fight with it. Treat it as your friend. Eventually, almost everyone ends up having difficulty maintaining the anxiety.

Call it whatever name you like. Some call it “paradoxical intention”, some call it “reverse psychology, some call it “mindfulness practice”. Whatever you call it, it is a way to empower yourself to work with anxiety rather than being disabled by it.

I do not rule out that in special circumstances, medicine may still be justified. However, it must not be given without considering all the alternatives – including using medication as a support for the kinds of self-empowering practices described previously in Part 1 and 2. It is far better to begin to learn how to heal yourself rather than giving up the autonomy which is your own power, and blindly trusting chemicals alone.