I have practiced various forms of meditation for many years and I began to experiment with it after I was in a coma that nearly killed me.
After the coma, I began having panic and anxiety attacks that grew in frequency and intensity. This happened because during the coma, my lungs shut down, I couldn’t breathe, so I was on a respirator for 9 days. My brain was storing important information about how dangerous it was to “lose my breath”. My anxiety was part of how my brain and body were trying to protect me.
But my brain took it too far, I began to have obsessive fears that made everything worse. When I began to settle back into my routines again, my panic attacks grew. They were always related to a sense of suffocation and fear of death.
I didn’t want to take medication for the anxiety and I ended up meditating with a therapist. She also turned me onto a particular book that helped a lot. I have since read many such books, taken classes on meditation, etc.. I literally don’t have panic or anxiety attacks any more, and that’s a direct gift of the meditation.
The practice was so transformative for me that I began guiding meditations with students, and they loved it. In this video I share a true story about one of the students I currently work with. I guided him through some meditations and something crazy happened… The stomach pain he’d been living with for 10 years
stopped while he was meditating. Anyone who has a child with chronic pain, knows how big this is. It means there is hope that he doesn’t have to live with this pain. Enjoy the video…
Links:
The first type of meditation I explored:
Vipassana style meditation
Amazon link to the first game changing meditation book I read:
The Miracle of Mindfulness