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I'm Maura Ernst Mealy, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

It seems like I've been saying this ever since the show began back in 2019, but there's a lot going on right now.

You might never have tried meditation or mindfulness before, or, like so many anxious achievers,

you've tried it and felt like it's just not right for you.

But in the face of anxiety about war, inflation, COVID, plus all the usual life stresses we face,

a few minutes might be just what you need.

Keep listening for a guided, short meditation.

If you're interested in more, you can listen to our full episode with Sharon Salzberg,

a longtime leader in the meditation and mindfulness space.

But for times when you just need to slow down and breathe for a few minutes,

take this exercise from her wherever you go. Often in meditation with the breath, we just use the normal

natural breath, and that's fine, because that will be grounding and help. But there are certain

breath tools that are described by researchers as moving the emphasis away from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system.

So your panic will start to ease, your blood pressure will go down, things like that.

And so that is the major rule of that. There are many fancy ways of doing it, but

the major thing is that your out breath needs to be longer than you're in breath. And your

whole system will start to change. So we can do a few moments, if you like, of a practice,

because it can be inclusive of other things.

The whole idea is we've got this energy.

It's kind of running wild.

We want to balance it out, you know, with greater centeredness or more groundedness.

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