The viper on the path and in meditation

The viper on the path and in meditation

We all have an inner unease, from small worries to intense catastrophic images. What happens when we let the unease in during meditation?

When I was jogging this summer, I jumped with fright when a viper suddenly lay in front of me. Many have an innate fear of snakes, a fear that may stem from evolution and helps us avoid danger. Even today we often react immediately to snake-shaped things, even when they are harmless.

In our modern everyday life, worries are more often about, for example, work, exams or health. Such worries are normal and rational. But if the worry becomes intense, it can affect sleep, concentration and our functioning in everyday life. Such periods of anxiety may last a short or long time, from a few days to several years.

How can Acem Meditation help us with worries and anxiety?

When we close our eyes and begin to repeat the meditation sound, we let in whatever may come of spontaneous thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, images, and so on. Worries are also a natural part of meditation.

The body feels dread

For example, we may have thoughts about a meeting at work. Different scenarios may play themselves out in meditation: what can go wrong, how should we react, what should we say. Perhaps we become aware that we are tense in the body because we dread it. In meditation we repeat the sound as lightly and freely as we can in meeting the unease. Now and then we are completely absorbed in the worry. After meditation, we may have some new thoughts about what may happen and what we can do. Perhaps there is not so much to be afraid of?

In addition to unease about everyday matters, some people may also at times experience more catastrophic images in meditation about things that can go really wrong - we may crash the car, someone close may become ill or die. Perhaps it may be connected to things we have experienced earlier. One episode that has been present in some of my meditations, especially the long ones, is the sensation of the pressure wave I felt through my body when I was sitting at work in Akersgata on 22 July 2011 at 15:25 and a 950 kg fertilizer bomb exploded.

Benefits afterwards

Letting in worries as well, and sometimes frightening images, can give short-term discomfort when we meditate, but can give gains afterwards, and in the long term. It is certainly not pleasant to feel unease or fear, but there is nevertheless something liberating in being able to be close to the worry that lives in one. It is there anyway. In meditation we do not need to use energy to control it; it is allowed simply to be there.

Whether we tend to become worried or anxious will vary - this is often connected with our degree of "neuroticism", which is one of the five basic personality traits in the "five-factor model" (often called the "Big Five") in personality psychology. If one scores high on neuroticism, one worries easily and tends to interpret ordinary situations as threatening, or feel that small challenges are very difficult. A high score on neuroticism also means that one has more psychological discomfort and a more fluctuating mood than those with a low score on this trait, who are often calm and stable. Statistically speaking, it is about as common to be a worried person as not to be.

Is there something underneath the worry?

In meditation we process both conscious and unconscious sides of ourselves: we may get new thoughts about a concrete worry (a conscious side of ourselves), but we also work with what lies beneath the worry, what makes us worried, which is often more unconscious. At a deeper level, it is about who we are as a person. Possibly people with a high neuroticism score have more worries and more feeling of anxiety in meditation.

Whether you are more or less worried than average, meditation may help you get some new thoughts about what worries you. If you are of the more restless kind, you may also become better acquainted with your anxiety. Paradoxically, allowing worries into meditation may reduce worry in everyday life, and also make it possible for you to meet your worries (no, they do not disappear completely) in a slightly different way. You may to a greater extent recognize that you are becoming anxious. Then you have a choice, and can gradually more easily decide that the underlying anxious feeling should not be allowed to govern your actions. For example, you may recognize the impulse to spend a disproportionate amount of time preparing for a meeting, but refrain from following the urge to do so.

Able to relate to the feelings

A recent study on Acem Meditation (2021, Hersoug, Wærsted and Lau) shows that those who learned to meditate had better sleep, less anxiety, less inner unease and less pain. The study indicates that these improvements may be linked to a reduction of psychological defense mechanisms, which are different things we do to handle difficulties, for example stress. When we are stressed, we become more worried, restless, and feel less able to handle challenges. The study indicates that the reduction in anxiety and inner unease can be explained by being better able to relate to the difficult feelings that stress can cause.

Read the study here: Stress reduction linked to lower defense - new study on Acem Meditation - The Meditation Blog

I still jump just as much when I see the viper on the path - but I do not choose another running route for that reason. My children know that I am afraid of snakes, and have placed two soft crocheted purple and gray wool snakes with plastic eyes on the floor beside my bed. I let them stay there.

Carina Heimdal Waag