Meditation is most often used on an incremental basis to help prevent and relieve stress or develop a deeper spiritual connection, but did you know that you can also use meditation techniques to handle an emotional crisis when you need to feel better quickly? It does help if you're familiar with meditation before attempting these techniques, but they can work moderately well even for beginners.
Before we get to the techniques, it's important that you strengthen your resolve to use them in the first place, which is not always easy to do when you're feeling unsettled or frightened by a crisis. Most of us are used to blindly reacting to our outer circumstances without a thought of how we might better handle them. However, in order for these techniques to work, you'll need to be willing to distance yourself from turbulent emotions long enough to choose a different response. Doing that might take a bit of willpower and practice, but like any habit the more you do it, the more natural it will feel.
Begin by practicing saying phrases like these as often as you can: "It's okay, I can handle this. I'm strong enough to handle this. Everything is going to be okay." These calming words will trigger your emotions to begin shifting from fear and agitation to peace and acceptance, even if the transition is a bit shaky at first. Even if you haven't been practicing these calming statements for long, you may still notice that they help you feel more settled.
Enhance the calming effect even further by taking slow, steady, deep breaths. When we find ourselves in a tense situation we automatically begin breathing quickly and shallowly, which only keeps us feeling tense and constricted. If you instead make a conscious decision to slow and deepen your breathing, you'll notice that the rest of your body begins to relax, and your emotions will also follow suit.
Finally, close your eyes for just a few moments and consciously release turbulent thoughts and emotions. Imagine that your mind is an empty vessel, and try to keep it that way for a few minutes. This can be incredibly helpful because our natural impulse is to focus obsessively on the situation that has upset us � which keeps us locked into a cycle of negative thought and negative emotion. If you take just a few minutes to break the circuit and clear your mind, you create a space for peace and calm to enter.
Just minutes after beginning these techniques you should feel much calmer, more optimistic, and able to handle whatever comes your way. Then you can focus on possible solutions to the problems, or simply work on coping if that's the only available option.
