Episode 141: How to Use Meditation for Anxiety and Depression

Hello, my friends, and welcome to today’s episode. I am so excited to share with you today about a topic, a subject, and a spiritual practice that I hold near and dear to my heart. There are several spiritual practices that I can honestly say, hands down saved my life. One of these spiritual practices is meditation. I love meditation. This is something I’m going to be writing about in my upcoming book that I’m going to release in 2024, and I’m very excited about it. But I was guided today to talk about how meditation can support you in overcoming anxiety, depression, or emotional pain. I want to share my journey with meditation with you to support you and to encourage you to meditate. I believe that meditation does not have to be a long, drawn-out process. There are all sorts of different forms of meditation. My belief is whatever works for you, and even if you are only doing it one %, meaning it’s not perfect, you are still going to get a hundred % of the benefit. And that’s the beautiful thing about meditation, is that it supports you in regulating the nervous system.

It supports you in letting go of stress, anxiety, and emotional baggage. When I was first guided to start meditating, I had been practicing Bikram yoga. It’s now called Hot26. And at the end of the yoga practice, you would have two minutes in Shavasana, where you would meditate. It was a lying-down meditation. I craved this part of the practice the most because I would go into these deep trances and I could feel myself slipping into a different level of consciousness. At the time, I didn’t have any of these words. Just so you know, your relationship with spiritual practices evolves, and the language that comes with it the more you practice. For me at the time, I would go and everybody would leave the room, and I’d be the last one in this room. And I would probably lay there for five, 10 minutes, if not longer. And I could just feel myself slipping into this yummy energy that my body craved because I was a perfectionist. I worked a ton of hours. I was constantly stressed. At that time, I was going to school full-time because I wanted to go back and get my degree. After all, I took some time off.

I wanted to go back and get my degree. And I just worked a lot. Not only did I work a lot, I also went to school full-time. So I worked full-time and went to school full-time. And so yoga for me, was a place to have a beautiful experience of just being in my body with my breath. And then at the end, there was this yummy hug I got from the Earth for just giving myself permission to surrender. I would get this yummy hug from God, creation, and the universe, by giving myself the space to listen. Meditation is the opportunity to hear the answers to your prayers and to receive guidance and support in the areas that you are struggling in with your life or just have some extra love, tenderness, and connection as well. And so that’s where my journey started. And when I was there, I was like, “This was so yummy”. I want to learn how to do this. And then I put it on the back burner because I moved to be with my current husband. I moved from Wisconsin to South Carolina. And within the first year of being there, I was struggling.

I had a major depression. And when I found yoga the first time, I didn’t want to be here anymore. I didn’t want to experience human life anymore. And I kept getting this intuitive guidance to go to yoga. And so this next step of meditation was that same thing where I was like, getting this notch. This is the next thing that I need to do. And again, at this time, I didn’t have those words that it was an intuitive download. It was intuitive guidance. I just had this feeling that this is what I want to do. I had a hard time when I got to Charleston because of my perception of what I was going to do next in my life, which was that I went back to school. I was going to go and finish my degree so I could sell medical equipment because I was good at sales. And that seemed like it would be a very lucrative career. Well, since I was starting all over in a city I’d never intended to move to with no friends, no network, no way of making connections, that wasn’t possible. And so I was starting to feel not only homesick, I was starting to feel super uber, duber, duber, duber, duber depressed.

And I could feel myself slipping into a deeper depression. And I didn’t want to get to the point where I didn’t want to be here anymore because that’s not a healthy state to be in. Well, to make matters worse, I cracked my tailbone while we were boating one day with some friends. We hit a wave, I went flying in the air, and I landed right on my tailbone. Well, this is the second time I’ve cracked my tailbone in my life. And so the one thing that brought me joy, that brought me peace, that made me feel good, that just calmed my central nervous system down, was yoga, which I could no longer do because it was so painful. I started walking with a limp on a scale of one to ten. My pain was anywhere from seven to ten every single day. I was in excruciating pain and I couldn’t stand it. I had to start taking pain medicine. And I could feel myself slipping into that dark hole again where I felt like I was going to have to claw my way out. And I didn’t want to get to the bottom of the hole.

That was my thing. I didn’t want to get to the bottom of the hole. I got this guidance to learn how to meditate. That was one of the best decisions of my life. I remember signing up for this meditation course. The day that I signed up, I went and sat down and I meditated. I gave myself permission, which is funny because I’ve been wanting to meditate. I’ve been meditating in yoga class, but I’ve never permitted myself to just go sit and meditate. I permitted myself to meditate. I remember this day so clearly because all I saw when I sat there and meditated was green. I was so excited because I was seeing colors and I’m like, This is amazing. And what green represents is being in the heart chakra. And meditation can allow you to connect with these really powerful energy centers in your body. And so I remember this clearest day that I gave myself permission to meditate. I meditated. I didn’t ask myself if I did it correctly, if I didn’t do it correctly because I was just so excited that I was going to learn something that I’ve been wanting to learn for a long time.

Well, I started this meditation course and I did it every day, diligently. I stuck with it. I didn’t care if it felt like I did a good job or didn’t do a good job. I didn’t care about any of that. And that’s the thing about meditation, is meditation meets you where you’re at. Every day every sitting, every practice that you have, keyword practice, meditation is a practice. It’s not perfection. Every practice that you have will be different, and it is not a striving for perfection. Sometimes your monkey mind is going to go all over the place and you are going to have a hard time concentrating. When that happens, you just come back to the breath. Come back to the breath. You breathe and you remind yourself you’re present. I’m present in my body. I’m relaxed. I am calm. I’m this. I’m that, whatever it is. You can start with an I-am statement. A mantra is very powerful when it comes to meditation. So for me, I meditated, and within a very short period, the pain that I was experiencing for well over a year dissipated in less than 60 days. I was off my pain pills in less than 60 days.

I could feel myself releasing the dark hole that I was in. I didn’t have to crawl my way out. I felt the walls crumbling around me, meaning I didn’t have to do anything but show up, sit in my heart space, and be with my breath for 10 to 20 minutes a day. Now you might be going, Amy, I don’t have 10 to 20 minutes a day. You do. I promise you you do. But I’m not even going to tell you that. You can start with one minute. You can start with five minutes. You can start with 20 minutes, whatever works for you. Take a moment to close your eyes, go within the word be with your breath, and remind yourself you are safe. That is a key thing. You are safe. You are protected and you are safe because the more that you remind yourself you’re safe, the more your nervous system is going to regulate, the more you’re going to get into your body, and the more you’re going to release what is being held, what is strangling, what is contracting within you, and it’s going to release. As you’re releasing it, you’re making more space for light.

You’re making more space for calm. You’re making more space for enthusiasm, for happiness, for grace, for compassion. You are making space for the things that you truly desire to co-create, to have, and to embody within your human experience, within this timeline. That ripples through all of your timelines. Meditation is the opportunity to let go of the emotional baggage that you have been shoving down, that you’ve been holding onto, that you have been experiencing in some way, shape, or form through discord, disease, dis… This is not a word, but I’m going to say it, discreetly, meaning you’re not congruent with what it is that you are doing. You are a magnificent being, my friend. If you are being guided to meditate, if you are being guided to participate in a spiritual practice, I want to encourage you to listen to that intuitive guidance. I also have a ton of free meditations. If you want, click the link in the show notes, click the link in the description, or you can go to my website, theamyrobison. Com/free, and you can sign up for our free sacred gifts. There are 20-plus meditations. I find it easy to listen to guided meditations when getting started.

You can listen to the same one over and over and over again, or you can listen to a new one every day or listen to one per week, whatever it is that you want to do guided meditation allows you to just let go and relax. And then there’s people that are like, Well, I don’t see anything. I don’t feel anything. I don’t hear anything. You don’t have to. That is not the point of meditation. The point of meditation is to get into your being and bridge your inner and outer world and to make space for more light in your life. Let me say that again. It is to make more space for light in your life because as you are meditating, you are peeling your layers back of emotions and mental debris that you collect throughout your lifetime. And so it could be from yesterday, it could be from 10 years ago that you’re letting go of. And we don’t even have to figure out what we’re letting go of in that particular moment. The main thing is to just let go and to release and to have an experience of just being, to be present and to come back to the breath.

And that is the key to meditation. The benefits that you get out of it is less stress, less depression, less anxiety, more space, and more compassion. I know I’m repeating myself. I totally know I’m repeating myself. But it’s really important to understand this. I want to encourage you to meditate a minimum of five minutes a day. You can totally, totally do it. I would not be a good person, and I’m being a hundred % brutally honest, I would not be a good person if I did not meditate. Meditation can be any time of day. It could be in the morning, it could be in the afternoon, it could be at night. When I worked in the car business, and I worked a ton of hours, I would meditate in my car. In the morning, I meditate now. Sometimes I meditate in the afternoon. Sometimes I meditate in the evening. Do you have to do two meditations a day? Do you have to do three? Do you have to do one? You don’t have to do anything. But I do want to encourage you to do it at least once a day because it will change your life you will feel better and miracles happen when you meditate.

So all right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please make sure you like and subscribe. And if you would like some support with your meditation, sign up for our free sacred gifts. It’s 20-plus free meditations. And I look forward to seeing the next one. Bye.